I was out on site at 6.00 am but couldn't really start until 9.00 am.

The temporary roof was covered in ice and too dangerous to work on until it had melted.

As it was, I slipped, fell and gave my left shin one hell of a wack - I'm expecting a big bruise to develop.

This is the weekend to erect the front wall.

Fortunately I spotted that Ross was up and prevailed on him to help me for a few minutes.

Together we lifted the main front door frame in to place in seconds - this saved me several hours work on my own.

I spent about 2 hours checking levels and distances making sure that the door frame was right in the middle of the wall.

Then about 3 hours fixing the panels off with 75 mm nails.

I'm not ready at this stage to bolt down - I need to install some cross pieces along the front edge to take the bolts.

Plus I want to drop in the LVL's that will span the bay window areas.

I spent the last few hours of the day fixing some temporary beams across the front panels so that I could neatly install the roof sheeting at this edge.

I will need to spend Sunday out on site as well to make everything water tight again.

This is going to take several weekends.

Sunday

A bit of a slow start but I was out on site at 9.30 am.

Sandy and Jim very kindly invited me around for coffee but I had to decline - it is always very fraught when I install a stud frame - I am always racing against time to make the roof waterproof by the end of the weekend.

As it was, I was finishing up in the dark - so it turned out I needed every available moment in the day.

I felt bad - so I hope they do invite me again - the next phase is installing all the floor joists - this should be less pressured - so I will have time to stop for coffe.

For the past few years, the front edge of the temporary roof has been a bit of a fudge - missing support frames and a gentle curve down to the deck.

I realised that with all the complicated notching it would be almost impossible to fit curved sheets. It was time the bite the bullet and create a proper rigid sloping front edge.

I installed a number of short timbers between the existing short frame and the beams I installed on Saturday.

I added some mid length support legs and a second, bolted on, beam to give the correct front edge.

This took me up to 2.30 pm.

After a much needed rest I started trimming all the original sheets to fit the new edge and added in the necessary additional cutouts.

By the time that darkness fell I had not quite finished but I had enough rigid support surfaces in place that I could drag tarpaulins over the structure for the moment.