120

I was full of aspiration about today, but church, lunch with friends, Simon Peterson, a game of netball, a game of tennis, and dinner out got in the way.

116

Hamish Dean made his debut on site today, and it was a fine one. A few of us had been up till 4 am playing cards, so I was unlikely to be in particularly good form. And so it was. I had a headache that Panadol couldn’t beat. That being said, we managed a bit over 3 hours at it and worked some nice combinations, laying 29 bricks.

The bricks are 3 layers deep in places now, and I’m really pleased with how it is coming along. They’re really starting to look like walls now, solid and hard. Enthusiasm is high. If only I could sustain 20 bricks a day.

I have decided to abandon my post title notation. There are a few bricks, I don't know the exact number, that I've deemed unsuitable. I'm now just going to keep track of the number of bricks that I have laid.

87 / 515

Pasting mortar onto the brick that I’m going to insert dominates the world. The whole world. I’m not sure what went wrong the first time I tried it, but it is a really fast technique for me now.
Michael Peach provided some valuable assistance early in the day. It was so much easier having another person there.

Mike Green timed me late in the day and I laid 3 bricks in about 24 minutes. Not swift.

Mike started talking about making a window out of bottles. This idea was one that I’d written off. But when he showed me photos of them on his phone, I was back on the horse. That would be awesome.

63 / 515

Yeah yeah

54 / 515

17 bricks made on what was essentially a free day was a disappointing effort. Motivation is low for bricklaying. I did sleep twice during the day so maybe I wasn’t feeling too flash.

37 / 515

I returned from my trip not shattered as I had semi expected to be. What an awful sentence.

It seems that the cut I inflicted upon Paul during our normal scuffling around caused an infection. And it didn’t stop there. It proceeded to infect his whole system. Sorry mate.

I have taken great joy in posting photos on this blog whenever I have drawn blood, mostly minor scratches. Unfortunately Paul didn’t take a photo of his finger, but this is the colour his finger was:



Things sped up considerably today as I developed a new method of filling the gap between the bricks. I slapt mortar onto the face of the sitting brick and held it there until it gripped. Paul, Simon, and Alan stopped by today and they suggested the correct technique was to apply the mortar to the brick in hand then quickly slam that home. I’m sure that is the correct technique. I couldn’t get it working for me though.

I believe the stake may have raised as high as 20 cents should Alan manage to touch a cow. He couldn’t.



I’m done using the concrete mixer to mix my mortar. I’m working with such small quantities at a time that there is no point using the mixer, most of the mortar gets stuck in there anyway.

Things weren’t fitting so well towards the end of the row I was working on today so I beat the end off a brick with the hammer. The resulting mangled end didn’t resemble square so a thick smear of mortar was needed. This section of shack is looking distinctly castle-like, though embracing none of that austere structure’s structural capability, nor moat.

23 / 516

Michael Peach helped out with some of the lame job of filling the vertical gaps between bricks. We got on a bit of a role with him doing that and me laying them. It was a lot easier to do with wider gaps between the bricks. This brick laying is going to take a long time.

517 became 516 when one of the bricks was deemed unsuitable for shack duties. Maybe it could still be suitable for ugly duties.

15 / 517

The laying of bricks, the culminating event of this project, is the worst job yet. I figure it took me a bit over 2 hours to lay 15 bricks. Frustrating. I was definetly getting faster toward the end, and it will be a bit easier once I’m up higher rather than scrabbling on my knees.

Getting the mortar to adhere to the side face of the brick is the hardest bit, I’m yet to get a good system going there. I tried smearing the side face with mortar, and some of it would hold on there, then jamming the brick up against that. But like a young boy being told to give his older girl cousins a hug, he just didn’t want to get in there close. My most successful technique from this point was poking mortar into the gap with a stick. Amatuer. I am amatuer.

I hope my mortar mix is ok. It looks pretty dry, but I figure I need it like that in order to push it into position. The bricks do feel really solidly anchored once they are down, so that has to be a positive thing.

My line of bricks wasn’t particularly straight, nor was it level. The level was the fault of the foundation, so over a number of layers I’ll bring it back to horizontal. The straight though is my fault, I just need to be more careful.

78 / 517

I’m pretty pleased with my first day’s bricklaying. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Donald Crowhurst stopped by and we made rapid progress, laying 78 bricks in a bit under 3 hours. Loving it.

517

I didn’t lay any bricks today. Again cycling formed a big part of my day. I spent maybe 2-3 hours on the shack. With Andrew’s assistance I got the bottom layer of black paper on and got the concrete mixer into position. Then I started putting the string up to act as a guide for the brick level. Not easy. I attached some temporary wood to the roof that I’ll put nails into to determine the brick line. Tomorrow there will be bricks. Surely.

517

Cycling was the main focus of the day, so I intentionally didn’t get much done. Maybe an hour or so tidying up the site, moving the wood I didn’t use back to the shed and getting some of the bricks in position.

I’m heading away for a few days on Thursday so it would be good if I could get some bricks laid before then. Surely that is on. I have shown terrible skills in estimating times for tasks on this project, but surely I must be able to get bricks down by Thursday. Stapling the paper on will take 20 minutes tops. Getting my levels sorted will require a bit of work. Get the concrete mixer in position. No, unless I wake up feeling gross or it is storming the big one I’ll have bricks down tomorrow.

517

I had a good night’s sleep out there. I heard the coughing sheep a couple of times but it wasn’t sleep depriving. The wind kicked up a bit at one point, I could feel the coldness striking my face. It was a nice sensation. The birds started talking it up at about 6, and it was pretty light about that time. I managed to sleep in till about 8 though.



I played cricket today so called it a rest day of sorts. I tidied up the site a bit for about 10 minutes.

517

The floor is down. It is not completely nailed down yet but all the boards are on and it holds together.

A pretty good session today. I woke up feeling amazing and rode that for a while. The floor is solid rimu and nails. And a bit of glue.

There are lots of little tasks now to keep me busy – I still need to finish up that ridge cap, gum up the roof holes, finish nailing down the floor, work out where the other window is going to go, and paper the bottom layer. Then brick laying.

I’ve got a mattress set up in the shack now and I’m not long away from bedtime I reckon. I’ll definetly start out there, but I’m not sure how committed I am to spending the night. If it is cold and there are bugs and wind and coughing sheep and birds I may just retreat to the house. That’s soft isn’t it.

517

I worked as full a day as I was capable today, and I’m feeling it right now. Maybe something like 6 hours.

It wasn’t as fun today. I’m about 2/3 of the way done with the floor I think. We must have used all of the straightish bits of wood yesterday I think because today I was left with things that were bent and warped. In one place the warp of the wood is so gross that it is going to need big planing to get it approximating flat.

My 3 mm standard of yesterday looks laughable right now, I reckon I blew out to about 10 mm at one point. I’ve inserted a strip of offcut in there so I think that will come up ok. It’s not perfect, but once again I can blame non perfect wood. It is my floor and it is shack like.

I decided that I was going to plane all of the rimu timbers up to see if there was anything worth using for furniture rather than for the shack floor. From our discoveries yesterday, 2/5 had the really nice orange/red colouring and the others weren’t as nice. So, failing to find any that were geniunely lovely I decided I’d just keep using them for the floor. There may still be the need for a couple of pine ones to make it all fit, but not too many, and they should all be invisible if my arrangement of items within the shack goes according to plan.

I think I should probably sleep in it first night that I have the floor down, and that very well could be tomorrow. I hope it’s reasonably still though.

It was a gross day here today, overcast, windy, not warm, bits of drizzle hinting but never really letting fly.

Yesterday’s goggleless antics have left their mark

517

Possibly the most fun day on the shack yet. There were jokes flying around, almost too many to remember.

Paul was there for the duration, in fact his arrival heralded the beginning of work for the day. This was sometime between 2 and 3 in the afternoon. I’d spent the morning running errands but always had plenty of interest in going to work on the floor.

Paul asked me if I used Excel to do a task with the wood. There was no using Excel for that task. It needed a hammer or a saw or something. But such had been my expression of love for Excel.

What are moths doing? You don’t see them during the day then they fly towards the lights at night. Do they spend the day flying towards the sun? What really is their game? What are they hoping to achieve by flapping around a light?

We fell into a nice rhythm of grooming a piece of rimu with the planer, chiselling out one end, drilling, and nailing down. Most of the chiselling lacked quality. I’m not apologising for that though, none of it is visible and it is completely functional.



I stated that I was prepared to accept gaps between the timbers of about 3mm. For those of you who have difficulty with mm, that is 0.3 cm. For the most part we pulled that off. The gaps actually look pretty cool, but not looking down to silver foil. I’ll need to get some black in there.

We got maybe 5 large timbers and 2 small ones down. There was discussion about spending the night out there tonight, but there isn’t quite enough floor space to hold a mattress yet. Maybe tomorrow.

It was so fun planing the timbers down. We would try and guess whether the board would come out looking amazing or not so. Some of the ugliest ones came out amazing, on one, the deeper I planed the more red and beautiful the wood got. 2 of them were a much lighter yellow/brown colour, with no suggestion of the lovely sought orange/red. The floor looks so great though, we were both really really pleased with it. I’m really not looking forward to having to put that pine down.

Before and after


We finished up for the day about 8.30.

517

The day began pretty grossly but got better later.

I moved the possible pine flooring timbers, 7, into position. I also sorted out the good rimu from the bad.

My one little achievement of the day was to put some of the silver underfloor insulation down. That stuff just looks warm. I'll get that all down tomorrow and hopefully have the floor in some sort of shape.

517

The roof seems to know what it's doing. There has been rain and no signs of moisture on the floor area. Today there was some light drizzly stuff that was floating around and it just reached the foundation, so my bricks may be fairly safe.


Rimu won the battle against pine for prettiest wood. But I think the pine still looks a bit hard. Shack like. Plus most of the limited floor space won't be visible anyway, what with bed, fire, some chairs, and a table. I'm also conscious though that the pine may actually have some value so I don't want to be wasting too much of that. Maybe I'll make the bed and fire side of the floor out of pine then use the worst of the rimu on the rest.

517

So my summary of today’s work – nailing in most of the rest of the roofing nails, covering the ends of the shack where the roof meets the triangle, and putting the polythene down on the ground. I also purchased a tube of silicon sealant for the roof holes. Afterthought – I also moved the fireplace from the shed onto the work site so that I could check its size and chimney angles.

I started liking the way a part of the shack looked for the first time today really. The synchronisation of some old ugly brown and green iron made it look really shack like. I think that was actually what I was envisaging when I first named this a shack – gross corrugated iron.



I’d be interested for it to rain now to see if any gets into the shack body – I’m testing to see what sort of coverage / likely brick protection my roof gives. At this stage that rain would just collect on the polythene then drain off or evaporate, so there would be no problem. Maybe actually some could still get through the roof, I haven’t finished that up yet. While I do kind of trust the roof, I haven’t been brave enough to leave my wheelbarrow load of tools out under the roof. It’s probably better for the power tools to be in the garage than have moist air sifting round anyway.

John Martin Leo Peter Son hopped along today. He confirmed that my flooring timbers are rimu. I didn’t really like this because I love the rimu and don’t want to waste it on the shack floor. Down in the shed there are some similar sized boards but made from treated pine. Maybe I’ll use them.

I think I must have used all of my powers up by about 1 o’clock today, because after running some errands I returned empty. I’m not well here now. I may be feeling the effects of that roofing day a couple of days back.

517

I banged in more nails, and cut 2 triangles out of some old iron that I stomped the corrugs out of. These triangles cover the exposed ends of the shack. This took 2-3 hours. I feel a bit beaten down from the long day yesterday.

517

A big day. The roof is on. It was reasonably easy going until about 10.30 when the wind started. Putting the paper down in the wind was tough going. There is still a bit of work to do on the roof, I need to put in all the nails, secure the top cap properly, and work out how I’m going to cover the ends.



I did plenty of clambering up ladders today. I had one fall which was a bit of fun, I was most of the way up the ladder and felt my balance go, so I knew I had to prepare for a crash landing. No pain.

The McCartneys stopped by today. It was good to hear Justin’s thoughts on my progress, I’ve gone a while unguided, with no real clue. The idea of putting more windows in was floated, and boy it was a good one. It’s dark in there already, and it doesn’t even have any walls yet.

I ate so much today. I did work long and my belly isn’t feeling obviously fatter so maybe I used it all as fuel. The inventory:

2 pieces of peanut butter toast
2 apples
2 honey sandwiches
1 packet of 2 minute noodles
1 can cream style corn
½ a sushi roll
1 fruju
1 medium sized baked potato with chilli beans and sour cream
1 bowl of pasta
1 scoop of chips
2 bread rolls garlic buttered
17 small wrapped chocolates
1 bowl of salad

I just weighed in at 77.5, so maybe that is up a bit. That is a lot of food.

Miscellanery building detritus as viewed from the roof of the shack


The new neighbours asked me to keep it down a bit. I abused them heartily.

517

It took on distinctly shack-like proportions today as I tacked the roofing iron on. It would be better if the iron was grosser, old paint coming off, but this is what I’ve got.

Surely only bad weather can stop me from putting the roof on tomorrow. I’ve got the iron cut to length, and each piece knows its position. First task of the morrow, low wind and no rain permitting, is to paper the roof area. Following that I bang the nails in on the iron, then I need to do some tricky things to cover the ends maybe. It all looks promising. I think I can do it.

517

You can’t shake a baby. But you can shake the shack. It won’t care. It will most probably laugh at you.




Braced up. Today was sweating hot, just humid and lovely even after 8 o’clock at night. I’m not far away from being able to put the roof on. I need to cut some more 4x2 and put it into the frame kind of as more bracing, but its real role is to be a barrier to wind getting into the shack. I only need to cut and nail in 8 pieces of wood so that shouldn’t take that long.

I’m going to have to get the iron ready, lenghted, and I’m going to have to work out what piece goes where. Then I’ll need to find the gun stapler, then put paper on and iron on on the same day. It’ll need to be a still day too, otherwise that paper will go nuts maybe. Plenty to do.