Unfortunately the only photograph I have is the finished job. I was too involved in the process to get out the camera - so you'll just have to take my word for it.

It all went just as I had planned it.

I arrived on site at 7.00 am, untied the beams on the trailer, inserted the lifting eyelets and did a few essential preparatory tasks while waiting until 10.00 am when I had asked Ian to arrive.

Ross came over and assisted as well and we very quickly had all the beams in position and clamped.

We even had time to insert all the high tensile bolts in to the fish plates before the major downpour arrived.

The only disappointment is that the lvls over the bay window voids had expanded slightly from the rain and are now 5 mm proud of the top plate line.

This was despite coating them with exterior paint and a prominent label on them saying "H20 safe".

I am not very concerned - I am pretty sure that with some fine weather they will contract to their original dimensions.

They are almost protected from above now by the beam.

After they have contracted I will give them a couple more coats of exterior paint to keep them stable,

After this, we sat around and had coffee for a couple of hours, joined by Jim and Sandy.

The rest of the day was frustrating - the weather consisted of 20 minutes of sunshine interspersed with 20 minutes of light showers.

I had to keep ditching the power tools under cover and making a run for shelter.

The 8 mm coach screws I am using to pin the lvls to the steel beam are going in fine but it looks like the 12 mm bolts I bought are too short - don't know where I went wrong.

I will see if I can get some more at Bunnings on Sunday and maybe finish the bolting down one day during the week.

Tuesday

Power was off today between 8.00 am and 4.00 pm for upgrading of the electrical network.

The street was full of trucks, cranes, utilities, traffic control personnel.

I could have maybe worked off the charge in my notebook and UPS but decided to go with the flow and work out on site.

From 11.00 am to 3.30 I worked on finishing off bolting the beam to the stud frame.

The new, longer bolts I purchased at Bunnings did the job fine. 85 mm would have been perfect but it was a choice between 75 mm or 100 mm so I chose the longer ones just to be safe.