404

Day 6 in a row, woohoo! I didn’t sleep particularly well and that concerned me, as I knew I had a big day ahead of me, and an early start. But I was at it just before 8, unheard of early hours for me in my recent state of health. I had a mid afternoon sleep, but other than that charged today.

Due to the fact that I now had a double axle trailer, they were able to put a full cubic metre of mix on. I had been anticipating 2 trips, but it only took 1.

I then headed to Rangers to get some cash out before heading to Paul King’s for some roofing iron. I had a nice coffee with him and Sam there before leaving $130 lighter, but all the iron I’ll need heavier. A fun development was the spotting of some clear corrugated plastic, which will be excellent for increasing the natural light inside the shack.

At Paul’s recommendation I then headed to Select Reinforcing where Wayne gave me what he assured me was an amazing price on some steel reinforcing, while Kevin cut and bent it for me. I’m really starting to feel a lot of excitement about the project now, as everything starts to come together.

I returned the trailer to Amberley and the nice guy charged me $55 for the additional trailer hire, and the cost of repairs to the other one. I’ve gotten out of this pretty well I think. They were fixing the one I messed up yesterday while I was there, it had a drip in its arm, and was looking in a pretty sorry state. Apologies.

The Ravensdown fertiliser bags have been awarded a grade a notch just above useless for their role in transporting the sand from Kate MacPherson’s house back here. They split and made a mess while under light loadings, certainly not the 40kg that are marked on them. I don’t know how they got here, maybe they are seconds.

Kate had some old sand that was left over from some concreting work that she had done. I was able to cart this away, as well as a bag and a half of cement. Cheers Kate, appreciated.

I went back down to the first offal quarry and collected a barrow load of rocks, I reckon these might be useful for putting at the bottom of the trench prior to pouring the concrete. I’ll see what my advisors recommend though.

Thanks to all involved today, I’ve been helped out by a lot of people, and it has been a real good experience.

Below: Kate’s Laser riding low, laden with bags of sand, and Ravensdown fertilizer “bags” making a mess.

404

A drama filled day. I had aspirations of an early start and a full day of work. I was up at 8, but at 9 I was back in bed. I wasn’t feeling great, and as I’m doing at the moment, I am prepared to rest when I need to.

So, I resumed slightly after 12. It turns out that the trailer I was to borrow wasn’t registered, so I headed off to Amberley Hire. I there incurred my first expenses of this project - $15 for a half day hire. I intend to have a separate page linked to this blog which tracks my expenses – I’ll get onto that.

The first trailer journey with 0.5m^3 of 19mm premixed sand and stones ($20 a load) was uneventful. I hadn’t really known how long the process of getting a load, driving home, unloading it and returning was going to take. Hence I started becoming aware that I was running out of time. I reckon the whole process took a bit over an hour for one load, and I needed to push things a bit if I was going to get done in time.

So, on the second journey I was pushing things a little bit, but not driving silly fast. I was going about 60km/h I reckon, on a gravel road, when the trailer starts sliding around behind me. It wasn’t long before the trailer had knifed and I slid to a halt, car and trailer sprawling all over the road. Part of the trailer was ruined, and there was a small mark on the borrowed car. I think I got out of this one pretty well.

I returned to Amberley Hire where the guys were awesome about it, they are going to charge me about $30 I think for a new piece of metal which they will weld in. They gave me a new trailer with tandem wheels.

So, I got 3 loads today, amounting to about 1.5m^3. I think I’ll get another 2 loads tomorrow morning, as well as hopefully some corrugated iron for the roof, some windows, a door, and some rebar for the foundation.

Raking the gravel off the trailer took a bit out of me, so once again at the end of the day I’m nicely done. I think that is 5 days in a row without a sickness crash, good times.

404

I dug a trailer load of clay, which took me a long time but will keep me supplied for a good while.

I foraged for old little bits of wood to act as stakes, and banged about 30 of these in, they will hold the boxing. I reckon I need about 30 or 40 more.

I feel nicely tired at the end of today. I'm excited about resuming tomorrow, provided my health holds for a 4th straight day.

404

An early start yielded 21 half bricks and 1 full brick. I loosened the wires on the fence and pegged them down so now there is uninhibited access to the site.

382

Things got exciting today. In the process of harvesting clay I was attacked by the nemesis birds. I was better armed than I have been in the past, with a heavy shovel as a weapon. They didn’t get too close to me, there was only one swooping too. I returned later on with my camera and tried to provoke them so that I could get some good swoop footage but I mustn’t have been in the right place because they just squawked at me.

I called up Dave Peach to give me a hand getting everything squared up ready for the boxing. In a most useful session we banged in some pegs, raised some bits of wood at the correct level, and strung up where the boxing will go. It was quite dramatic the difference in height of the ground, the ground does look to be on a slight slope, but it was more than I had thought. I think the following Saturday will be the time to pour the concrete. I learnt some stuff today, and that was good.

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I widened the trenches a bit, to accommodate the stakes and the boxing. I’m not exactly sure how I can make it square, I think I could make up the boxing for each of the 4 sides then move them around until they are square. No, having 4 corner stakes would be better, then attach the boxing to them. Yeah.

I’ll have a towball car and trailer this week, so I’ll be able to get the mix that will make the concrete. Tentatively lining up next Saturday as foundation pouring day. We’ll see.

382

Numbering is going to get a bit misleading now. Today I made some partial bricks. I'm not sure why I was so averse to the idea of making different sized bricks and having different patterns of bricks in a wall, which is what these partial bricks will do. They will make functional, good walls, but they won't be perfect. That's ok though.

354 + most of foundation dug

Some heavy overnight rain made for excellent digging conditions. Now after some tidying up to square and depth, I'll be able to put in the BOXING.

354 + some foundation dug

Who would have thought that maths would have some application. According to Pythagoras the shape of the quadrilateral that I have strung up isn’t quite rectangular, but it’s pretty close.

I decided I’d just dig out more than was needed and the rectangle I need should be in there somewhere. To be honest I just wanted to start digging, not muck round getting a string line square at this stage. I dug out one side, but not to proper depth yet.

The dirt that I extracted looked really good for growing vegetables in, a sideline interest right now. I think I’ll use that dirt to make a garden. It was surprisingly easy digging and I reckon if I stick at it I’ll be able to dig the whole perimeter tomorrow. The only concerning thing is I am taking quite a bit out, which means it will need a lot of concrete to fill. I need to buy the stones and sand for the concrete – possibly my first expenses in this project.

I laid some bricks in the shed just to check how things fit together. I think I’m going to need some 2/3 bricks, maybe 2 every 2nd layer. I’ll also need some real little ones, about 5 cm wide.

Today I tried to cook potatoes in a pile of grass clippings that had gotten wet and had started some kind of chemical reaction deep in the pile. It was so hot that I couldn't keep my hand in there. The potatoes didn't cook right through though.

I don't know why Blogger refuses to acknowledge the correctness of my double space after full stops. I'm doing it here but then when the post gets viewed it looks like I'm some kind of 1 space amateur.

353

One of the bricks had a crack in it and I gave it a twist and it disintegrated.

I mowed my site and staked out a rough outline of where the shack will sit. It is so little. I hadn’t appreciated how small it was.

I established a couple of positions that I can take regular photos from.

Because I am changing the orientation of the bricks they now don’t fit so sweetly – the width is no longer half the length. This may mean that I need bricks 2/3 length. I’m laying out the bricks in the shed, and I’ll build a couple of layers high to see what my exact needs are, and what dimensions the shack will be. It is fine to sketch things on paper but things can drop out differently in reality.

The way the bricks respond to water hasn’t been particularly impressive. They just suck the water up like a mop. Maybe I will need to do some pretty severe painting of them.

Progress has been poor of late, I haven’t had a lot of interest in the project, preferring to make picture frames.

How good is this?