Queen’s birthday Monday. I took out one of the roofing timbers to make way for the flue. That got ugly. Chiselling and sawing away. Had fun and games on the roof when the ladder blew down. Mum spied me up there and came to be of assistance, but by using the tape measure to hook the extension cord, I was then able to lasso the ladder back into position.

Went in to Rangers and bought another piece of flue once I had worked out how it was all going to work. Add another $23.84 for that. Made a hearth base then jammed some bricks in. I think it will do, not sure. The bricked hearth should mean that any rogue sparks don’t come to anything, but they are just jammed together, they aren’t solid. Probably won’t be spending much time standing on there anyway. Unwittingly, that hearth takes up a considerable fraction of the floor space of the shack. It really is the focus in there now. Oh yeah, I banged up a couple of pieces of corrugated iron onto the walls as fireproofing.

The big 3 day weekend didn’t see me in there, but I made good progress. The foot set me back a bit. Even if I had managed to get the chimney in, I wouldn’t have enjoyed sleeping out there tonight, much of the roof is yet to be nailed down, so it bangs and carries on. Oh yeah, I could feel wind coming through the gaps between my lining panels. Everything is not well sealed up yet.

So, next steps. Find the bricks that will hold the tripod legs of the fire. Get fire sitting correctly. Shape bottom flue. Spider bracket that onto chimney. Cut a hole in the roof. Attach flue to inside walls. Attach flashing. Shape and seal the top flue. I’m far from getting the fire going. Maybe next Saturday.