Linda was away helping to look after her elderly mother.

I was up at 5.00 am and started getting ready.

The whole time I was thinking "I don't really want to do this today".

By 6.30 I had my vehicle packed and ready to go.

The starter motor had a problem and I couldn't go to site.

My first thought was "Yippee!".

Anyway, with a whole day free in front of me (yes I could do a whole lot of work at home refurbishing sashes) I decided it would walk to the café and catch up with Ian.

In the end, we did visit site briefly for him to measure up for some proposed earth works.

Tuesday

Once I had my starter motor sorted, it was time to continue retrieving some floorboards I had purchased back in December.

These were just a few streets away.

Primarily I had been interested in some tree slices that I could potentially dress and use as steps (I have been quoted between $80 and $100 per step for my two level staircase).

I had also made an impulse purchase of 3 packs of floorboards.

I mainly wanted one pack out of the 3 that contained three and a quarter inch floorboards, the other two packs were seven inch floorboards.

I still have half of the loft floor to cover and I am unsure as to whether I have enough materials - at $150 per pack this was to be my insurance policy.

The packs were strapped with only their under surfaces visible.

These had come straight from a mill and had been stored under cover for quite a few years.

I believed that they were jarrah but when we went to break the strapping, the owner noticed that one was marked up as karri.

He asked me if I wanted to withdraw from the sale but on the spot I decided that I could still used them on the veranda.

However, as I loaded them I noticed that they were all seconds, rather short and that all packs were karri.

So at the moment I don't know what to do with them.

My assessment is that about 70% of them could be used and that with a bit of patching, they would create quite a character floor. The short pieces are usable because they have all been end matched.

The only problem for me is that Wooroloo seems to be very vulnerable to termite attack - I only have to leave a karri scaffolding plank on the ground for 3 days and it will become infested.

So far I have knocked back all offers of karri - the entire stud frame of the building is metal, jarrah and H3 pine - so it would be a pity to introduce a vulnerability at this stage.