I was concerned that we would not have enough stud bracing on the street level but he set my mind at rest.

We assumed a 1 Kpa wind loading and ran the calculation against both directions.

We have a good safety margin.

I will build the stud frames to a 3 kN/m rating.

This will be according to the cyclonic wind rating - a bit of an overkill but hardly any effort is involved to double the capacity up from 1.5 kN/m.

He also ran through all the studs I had dressed and he explained why some were acceptable and some were rejects for use as studs.

Saturday I was up at 5 am, down to Bunnings at 7.00 am, bought various galvanised bolts, nuts, washers, spring washers and threaded rod and back to Mundaring in time to vote at the rerun of the WA senate election.

Then I headed out to site and spent about 4 hours welding 5 bolts on to one of the back steel columns to allow the first stud to bolt up against it.

At this point the flu injection I had on Friday seemed to kick in and all I could do was pack up, get myself home and lie around in a recliner for the rest of the evening - there was so much I wanted to accomplish but I was not up to it.

On Sunday I trimmed my existing supply of good studs to length (1685 mm), went to a movie, trimmed the top and bottom plates to length (2745 mm), set up the dado blade in the DeWalt radial arm saw and practiced trenching some sample pine pieces.

Tomorrow during a break I will perform the plate trenching then paint up all the timbers with some exterior paint that I bought cheaply (very good quality paint but it was a 'mistint').

Tony M is buildng me some dedicated 3m frame assembly horses and we are planning to build the first frame on site next Saturday and install it.

However, they are forecasting rain that day so we will have to see what happens.

Monday

It is almost impossible to use the radial arm saw without a dust extractor attached - you end up with a face full of shavings.

I briefly visited site to pick up my workshop vacuum cleaner and brought it home.

I gaffa taped it to the dust outlet on the saw and now life is much more comfortable.

At the end of the day I had a few more practice runs at trenching and tweaked up the depth and right angle of the cut.

I nailed the two plates together and made the trenches.

A tall roller support is really needed for the outer rebates so I pulled Linda away from "Hot Seat" to hold up the ends for a few minutes.

This does not work very well and I will have to go out on site again today to retrieve my chisels so that I can tidy up these two rebates. I really need to obtain a roller support.

Tuesday

Up at 5.00 am, solved a few urgent problems for clients, exercised then headed out to site.

I picked up chisels, my wooden mallet and paint brushes.

Later in the afternoon, at home, I cleaned up the oversize rebates in the top and bottom plates.

A few hours later I started painting the plates and studs.

Once again, what I thought would be a quick simple task is turning out to be time consuming.

Wednesday, Thursday