I must have had a very privileged life so far - I have never had to deal with working outside in "extreme" cold.

On Tuesday morning I was up at 5.00 am and out on site by 6.30 am. The intention was to get in a few hours bolting in bridging brackets and be back in my office by 9.00 am.

Wooroloo is 20 Km further inland that Mundaring and so experiences frost more often than we do at home.

I found that the purlins I was attempting to bolt to were covered in a thin coating of ice.

Within minutes my hands were in agony. Wearing work gloves seemed to make no difference.

I realised that I had no experience with what I was up against and decided to abort the mission, go home, and ask Linda about it (she has lived in the country of Denmark and knows all about working outside in the snow).

I knew enough to run only tepid water over my hands - but this was a 3 minute experience of extreme pain and the palms of my hands went bright red for 10 minutes.

There was no long term damage but I realised that attempting an early start on a sub zero day was not an intelligent move.

I returned home and started work for my clients early so that I could get away a little earlier at the end of the day.

I was back on site at 4.30 pm in the afternoon and managed to do almost 2 hours work before it was too dark to see.

Saturday

All this work on the purlins, moving ladders around and working off them - had broken most of the seals I had previously created between the temporary roof and the studs punching through it.

My intention had been to finish the bridging at least a month ago and then I would not need to walk on the temporary roof for quite a while.

This job seems to be taking for ever - I cannot seem to get it finished.

Unfortunately, with the fairly heavy winter rains, I am getting too much water leaking through the temporary roof.

No damage down below - I have just had to rip out some of the gyprock ceiling and the insulation so that moisture is not held against the floor boards for a prolonged period.

Well today I decided that I had no option to reseal all the interfaces even though it was too early.

The whole day went on cleaning the surface down thoroughly (backwards and forwards with a petrol blower at least 6 times), resecuring loose edges, and pumping in sealant where ever I could.

Sunday

I was frustrated that I had made no progress on the bridging on Saturday so I spent from 9.00 am to 2.00 pm installing brackets, drilling mounting holes and then installing more brackets.