At the end of the day we started packing up at 5.00 pm and left at 5.30.

The first job out on site was to install the last of the garage side veranda steel.

I set Tanguy to work grinding back the surfaces to be welded.

It really made a huge difference having the two of us to lift this piece of steel in to place.

It was heavy but manageable - we set up two A frame ladders and walked it up the rungs and then made the last lift with it on our shoulders - probably about 25 Kg each.

If I had done this on my own I would have used the hoist - probably a three hour job to place it rather than 20 minutes.

All the bolt holes on the fishplates lined up well and the welded position at the other end lined up perfectly.

The only imperfection was a slight bow that I produced during welding - this will be corrected as I fit the purlins, but for the moment it makes the garage side veranda line look a bit wrong. Anyway - long term it will be fixed.

While I was welding Tanguy continued to tidy up the work on the scaffolding that he started last week.

I had brought some 3.6 metre scaffold tube with me that he needed to swap with 4 m tubing already in place.

We needed the 4m lengths to build a tripod for lifting the last veranda beam.

I will use the tripod at one end and the hoist at the other to lift the steel in to place - this should not be a great drama as I used the hoist, up on the roof, to lift the beams up several weeks ago - these beams weight about 80% of the veranda beam and were handled easily with a single hoist.

Using a hoist and a tripod chain block together I can do the job easily.

It will be a lot more time consuming than just getting a crane in, but it will save on the cash and I can fix up any issues in a leisurely way instead of being under pressure.

As part of these preparations I moved the TV antenna up on to one of the higher street level columns so it would not interfere with installing the back veranda beam.

By this stage Tanguy was ready to start building the tripod.

This was very experimental - I had some ideas but wasn't sure if they would work out.

The end result was very successful - we used a combination of scaffold tube, swivel clamps and right angle clamps to build a strong, stable hoisting tripod.

Tanguy continued working on this on his own for a while, adding more reinforcement.

I needed to reinstall bracing timbers on the column nearest to Ian's side so that I could lock this column in to a vertical position to take accurate length measurements for the last veranda steel.

I took two sets of measurements and arrived consistently at a length of 13 012 mm.

This is 12 mm more than the expected theoretical length but still quite ok - everything will be square and tidy when it is finished.

Meanwhile Tanguy was working on mulching up the bamboo pile and loading firewood on to the utility.

The firewood pile is constantly in the way, will not be used for about 6 years and we need wood at home - so it makes sense just to take it home and use it up.

Many thanks to Tanguy for all the great work he did today.