I was sidelined by some work that was needed for the front door rough opening.

As I have previously mentioned - I have a door frame with sidelights that will need a lot of TLC and restoration as well as some modifications.

It is a lovely piece of carpentry that will eventually scrub up well. However, one of the stiles has a bit of a bow and twist and I am counting on the rough opening to pull it in to shape.

I showed photographs of the stud work to Frank at Barewood Restorations. He advised me that I needed a lot more noggings to stabilise the studs in to which the door frame will be fitted.

So this is where my efforts went for the day.

First off, I had to remove some timbers and sheeting that form part of the temporary roof.

This has left the entrance to the hallway of the street level in a slightly dangerous state - basically there is no longer much support for the weight of a person as they first step on to the temporary roof. For this reason I have placed some warning bunting across the entrance.

The next issue is a piece of stud framing across the bottom of the rough door opening that needed to be removed.

This is standard practice when you build a stud frame that incorporates a door - to maintain integrity while the frame is transported and installed there is a bottom sill for the entire width of the frame. Eventually a piece needs to be cut out.

I have already realised, from working on the East side door frame, that some of the strapping becomes a problem when cutting out this section of sill.

Basically this is from lack of experience when I built the frames.

From the first encounter, I now know how to deal with this but it is still a frustrating and fiddly experience and took me two hours.

I ended up with two small portions of the strapping lying across the floorboards with nails projecting upwards.

After fighting with these nails to remove them, I then bent the strapping in to a vertical position and applied cold galvanising to prevent any rusting in the future.

Turning to the extra noggings - this was a simple exercise to install 6 additional pieces on either side of the door.

I brought my drop saw, air compressor and nail guns to perform this task.

It was time consuming as I had to mark up the positioning, cut noggings to length, nail them in, and finally add strapping.

It was 5 pm by the time I finished.

I was contemplating continuing on to some of the other tasks but decided to put away the many tools that I had scattered around me.