Today I completed the last two gable coverings on Rosse's side.

I have become incredibly efficient at this.

The first quarter covering I did took me two Saturdays.

This time, I completed two quarter coverings in half a day.

Off course, there was some extra work completed in advance - I cut the panels to shape at home during the week - about half a day's work and also I made a flying visit to site to install the timbers for the attachment screws to fix in to.

Also, the setup I had previously done with the rolling scaffold added to the efficiency.

As part of the job I had to slide the temporary staircase out of the way. Humping would be a more accurate term.

I built it on two skids so that in theory it could be pushed along but in practice I had to laboriously lever it along 200 mm at a time.

Ross came over after I had finished and pointed out that I should have rolled in on pipes. Annoyingly - he was correct.

The rolling scaffold wasn't a dream run either.

The spacing of the corrugated iron on the deck, and the spacing of the castors, conspired to cause jamming rather than free movement and the whole process became a tug of war.

However, once I was up on the scaffold, fixing off the precut panels, it all went very quickly.

I finished the gable covering by 2.00 pm, had a break and started brushcutting the weeds at 3.00 pm.

I have completed the very front of the property and it looks quite smart from the street but there is probably another two hours work to go.

Also, there are a lot of sticks and broken branches mixed in with the tall weeds and I had to spend some time gathering these up.

I had enough to create another bonfire pile. This was supplemented by stubby, unrotted foliage that I pulled out of a compost heap that Ross created for me.