In the morning I installed 4 out of the 5 planks above the window - the 5th one will need to wait until I have a fine day, remove all the tarpaulins, and finalise flashing and planks across the entire width of the front of the house.

In the afternoon I established the corner reference lines on the 4 corners of the LHS bay window.

This involved some cutting open of the building wrap in order to locate the intersection of timbers.

At the same time as repairing these cuts I also repaired all the other defects in the wrap.

Sunday

I prepared the next 5 boards for the first section of the LHS bay. This involved cutting WeatherTex planks to length and end priming all raw exposed edges.

Towards the end of the day I converted another 20 soakers from 90 degrees to 135 degrees.

Monday

I was all fired up to head out to site and install the materials that I had prepared on Sunday.

However, I had to spend the first two hours of the day sorting out a problem for my client.

This took the wind out of my sails and I realised that what I really wanted was to spend a day doing nothing - ie go for a walk, drink coffee at Dome, fall asleep in front of TV.

So that is what I did.

Finally at around 4.00 pm I roused myself and caught up on a task I had been wanting to square away for ages - cleaning up all the sawdust in my work area.

This took the next few hours but I was surprised how much energy I suddenly discovered.

Tuesday

I had an appointment mid morning so I decided that today would be another stay at home day.

I have a huge list of jobs that can be completed at home for the house building project.

One of these is to investigate the feasibility of turning 83 x 19 mm floorboards in to 60 x 19 mm architraves.

I had a number of floorboards that have been sitting in the reject heap because they have some mucky rubbery carpet underlay glued on to them.

I attacked this with a coating of turpentine followed by vigorous action with a scraper.

They cleaned up well and then I ran them through the table saw to take of the floorboard tongue.

Next I set up, in the Triton router, the new bit that I had I purchased last week, and experimented with some scrap timber.

After some testing, I ran all the pieces through the Triton and then ripped them down to 60 mm on the table saw.

The result was very pleasing and cost me nothing (apart from the new router bit). The timber is not as perfect as the expensive pieces I have been buying at Bunnings but with a bit of repair with epoxy and some sanding they will come up well for paint quality timber.

Wednesday

I was finally ready and psyched up to head out to site again.

Similar problem for my client as on Monday, but I managed to sort out most of it while I was having breakfast.

I headed out to site and after a leisurely chat with Ian next door, it was midday and time to make a start.

Because it was a fine day I rolled the protective tarpaulins away so that I could enjoy the sunshine.

I had been avoiding the job as I knew I had a problem with the first row on the LHS.

I have created a gauge of the plank heights for consistency and to ensure that left and right hand sides meet equally at the top of the wall.

The markings on the gauge indicated that the starter rail was accurately in the correct position, but as soon as I test installed the first row of planks their heights were about 7mm out from the gauge in some places.

In the end, I removed the spines from a few pieces and used nylon spaces to temporarily chock them up to their correct position before finally fastening them.

The next four rows went on relatively uneventfully and I finished at 5.00 pm.

From experience, an hour per row is a pretty good rate for me.

Then time to pack up, reinstate the tarpaulins, and head home

Thursday

Back to work today but during my lunch break I cut up WeatherTex for the next 3 rows.

These will go around the windows - so just 470 mm on the door side, and 650 mm on the other side and a whole lot of 65 mm around the window columns.

Although I carefully measured the small pieces as only 65 mm I have and idea that somehow in two of the positions they will need to be reduced down to 55 mm. This is why I have only cut 3 or the 9 rows - I will go out on Saturday and do a test installation and then return home and cut the remaining rows.

Friday

After work I primed the raw edges of the planks that I cut up yesterday.