I spent Monday solving urgent client issues and then managed to get out to site on the Tuesday.

One of the bays of the scaffolding had a sideways deflection to work around a piece of plumbing - this was making everything a bit untidy.

I realised that I could move a cross brace around so that the bay could be straightened.

Of course, nothing is easy. I needed to bed one of the feet down more securely to handle a sideways displacement of its centre of gravity.

I had to mess around for quite some time to clamp on a temporary support while I excavated the footing further in to the bank.

Then I found that the bay would not deflect to its new position.

I had to use the same temporary support and a bottle jack against a tree to force the bay to move to its new position.

All up - probably 2 and a half hours to straighten it up - but well worth the effort.

After this I installed the kick boards.

These had come off the original piece of scaffolding and I needed to sort out the sequence of boards so that I could resuse the same set of joining plates.

The side scaffolding is 1.5 metres longer than the back scaffolding so I also needed to locate a suitable piece of timber to extend it.

Once the kick board was in place I needed to clamp it to the upright scaffold pipes.

I took 5 pieces of threaded rod, heated them up with my butane torch and hammered a half circle on to each one.

These clamped on the uprights and then passed through the kick board to be locked up with the addition of a nut and a washer.

After installing the kick boards I also needed to add some lighter timber inserts to fill up a few gaps (to stop tools falling on anyone below).

I was feeling a bit off and had to keep taking rest breaks (aftermath of a gastro picked up on Christmas Day) so this step took me up to 4.30 pm.

I then installed a second diagonal brace (timber, from scaffold to ground) to stop the entire strucure moving sideways and another 4 braces in to the scaffold itself.

Finally I removed two very stubborn star pickets out of the ground using a lever, connecting bolt and the bottle jack again.

I had hoped to load up the utility with the last of the firewood to take home but by this stage I was far to buggered.

I stopped at 6.30 pm, microwaved a dinner, had a shower and headed home.

I still want to move the TV antenna, clean up some pine needles, rake up some leaves and load the firewood.