Very cold - there was ice on the back veranda area and I had to leave the ladder out in the sun for 10 minutes for all the ice to fall off.

Today was the day to wash down all the WeatherTex timber so that the top coat would really adhere well.

I made up a bucket of washing liquid by diluting down the sugar soap concentrate that I bought at Solver Paints on Friday.

I also managed to patch my hose and director together so that I could turn rinsing water on and off as I needed it.

After some head scratching I worked out a way to stop the rinse water entering the window bay areas.

I was finished by 2.00 pm.

The walls looked wonderfully clean after all this work but were too damp to start painting.

I decided to head home and work on sanding down the last two architrave timbers.

This took me about an hour.

Now I need to perform a second round of epoxy patching on the majority of the architrave timbers.

Sunday

The morning was so cold that I intentionally arrived on site at 10 am so that I would not have to contend with any ice and the surfaces to be painted were not too cold.

I continued with the water based paint that I used a year and a half ago on the east side of the house.

The bay windows are very fiddly and detailed - by the end of the day I had completed one and a half of the bay windows. Tomorrow will be fine - so I will need to continue.

The aluminium soakers will need two or perhaps even three coats.

Monday, Tuesday

Finished the first coat on Monday and started the second coat on Tuesday - about half way through by the end of the day.

Wednesday

I needed to start creating the window fills - ie multi-ply sheets to fit in the windows to make the front of the house weather proof.

I am side tracking on this because I know that creating / refubishing all the sashes will take many months and this is a quick temporary fix.

The window dimensions lead to a very inefficent utilisation of materials - for example the small windows are 1290 by 660 which is just a bit larger than a 1200 x 600 sheet.

To avoid this expense I had a look through all the timber sheet that I have stock piled over the years.

While I was at it, in the same storage space, I checked out the doors that I have stored for the last 15 years. Fortunately they had been stored almost vertically so they were fine as they were.

I extracted a whole lot of multi-ply and melamine covered chip board. Also from the building site I brought back 4 sheets of 900 x 2100.

Thursday

I headed out to site early with the intention of applying the second coat to the outer most section of the RHS bay before a week of rain rolled in.

I found that the paint would not "go off" and that paint runs kept appearing - requiring me to keep going over the painted surfaces with a very dry roller.

While I was trying to figure out what was going on - Ian came by and explained that the humidity was very high and that I should just wipe the paint off and try another day.

So I did this, gave up for the day, and headed home and then on to a number of chores in Midland.

We have at least a week of rain forecast so this will have to wait for a dry spell - also - I am a bit fed up with painting for a while.

Later in the day is started working with the multi-ply sheets - these are around 1800 x 400 - so much sheet ripping and screwing on to cross pieces to achieve the dimensions I wanted.

Friday