I even surprised myself by doing a little bit more than I expected.

The objective for today was to finalise the preparation for installing the WeatherTex cladding.

To this end I needed to install a corner stop at the two extreme ends of the wall and the starter railing at the bottom of the cladding area.

The complication with the stops was that I needed to peel back some of the temporary roofing sheets to allow access.

This made the job a little longer.

Also, I had purchased metal screws thinking that I was fixing to a 75 mm SHS column at both ends.

I had forgotten that the front corner was stud framing timber.

Fortunately I found some suitable timber screws in my on site supplies.

These corner stops will be taken off again when I paint the cladding - mainly because they are painted with oil based paints and the WeatherTex will be painted with water based acrylic. I want to keep the acrylic off the oil based paint.

The starting strips took me a while to get organised - I needed to work out the spacing from off the veranda purlins.

After some experimentation I settled on using a 19 mm floorboard with some 5mm spacers screwed on to it.

Once I had settled on a plan the work went quickly.

At around 4.00 pm I was all ready to start installing the weathertex planks.

I visited the excess I had kept over from 6 years ago.

There were a few planks that were close in length to the 2060 mm needed between the back corner and the door frame but mainly I had to cut down full length (3.66 m) planks.

I am hoping that there is a useful location for the off cuts to go in to.

If it means a bit more waste then I would rather spend the extra money and avoid the walls looking like a patch work quilt of short pieces.

Tuesday

Still getting my rhythm on this. By the end of the day I managed to install five long runs along the rest of the wall.

I am using 2 and a bit planks per run.

Fortunately it turns out that if I cut the "bit" out of a whole plank, then the remainder fits nicely in the section near the double door.

By 6.00 pm I had reached the bottom of the window and realised that I needed to do a tricky cut out on this plank in order to fit it.

This was a good point to stop for the day.

Wednesday

I seem to be moving even slower today.

The cut out, using a jig saw, took quite a long time to set up and install.

I seemed to need a lot of breaks to keep going.

At this point, I needed to install the next band of building wrap - I am avoiding doing it all up front as there is a danger that it will become stripped and tattered if we have a storm.

This took me up to 2.30 pm.

I suddenly had a lot of extra floaters in my right eye, some of them quite distracting.

I stopped work, put away all my tools and went to see the doctor.

Not an emergency but I need to see the specialist and find out what is going on - it could just be existing floaters that have moved in to my visual field with all the looking up and down the wall.

Later that evening, as I was pulling the bins out to the verge for collection the next day, I noticed flashing in my eye.

This was the danger signal that the GP told me to watch out for.

So a trip to the ED where they eventually saw me at 1.00 am the next morning.

Turned out this was not a retinal detachment but symptoms from the suspected vitreous detachment.

Thursday

Pretty tired today after getting to bed after 2.00 am but managed to see my local optometrist.

Again confirmed that there is no retinal damage but need to be wary of retinal tearing as the vitreous humor retreats.

Took the rest of the day pretty easy - all I did was to start applying primer to the architrave timber I purchased several months ago.

Friday

I made good progress on installing the WeatherTex - I am now up to head height.

As I suspected - this is not as easy to install as their videos suggest.

Despite following their procedures I found that it was essential to also monitor the total height reached, all the way along the length, after every few boards and to use nylon packers to keep heights lined up exactly.

This is essential as the boards will flow around two openings and then meet up above the opening headers - it is very easy for them to "get out of sync".

I have run out of 1 mm packers so will need to make a visit to Bunnings first thing on Saturday monring.