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Good progress.

Another 23 made, I think I’m done making full bricks. I’ll probably need to make a few more partial bricks though. I had to go and dig a wheelbarrow load out of quarry 2, so that slowed me down a bit.

I also put in the next row of brick ties, and stacked up next bricks to lay. Bought some more cement too.

At 20 bricks per day, I’m only 7 days away from being done with the laying. Awesome. 20 a day is a joke too given full days.

I'm not pleased with diminished daylight hours. I'm just grumpy in general today though.

The shack laughed at this morning’s earthquake. If anything, the quake actually made the shack stronger.

I don’t remember disenjoying brickmaking, but it wasn’t much fun today. I do remember not liking having to put the frames together. I made 28 bricks, I wanted to have 50 made in 2 days. This was a good start.

Same

A disappointing day. Sure enough, I had a headache for most of the day, and a nauseous feeling for some of it too. Took it pretty easy.

I bought some more building paper, and some nails too. I’m not going to include the price of the nails on the cost sheet though, because I’ll only use about 8.

I put the black paper up, so it is fully enclosed. Inside it feels like a proper room now. The lighting inside wasn’t bad either which was good news. However, most of the light was probably coming through the door gap.

I did a little more chopping of the iron, that will be ready for the roof tomorrow.

In need of more sand, I paid another visit to North End Sand and Shingle. I showed the guy my camera with a photo of the shack on. We agreed upon a price for the sand – he wants to be invited to the celebratory end of project bbq. Awesome.

I did the calculations. I need 144 more full bricks; I’ve got 99 on hand. This was good news – I’ll be able to make those bricks in a couple of days. And it won’t matter if they’re not ready, by that stage there will only be a bit over a layer left to lay, so it should be liveable then.

324

What a great day. I was out there before 8 a.m. having a look at things. Simon came out about lunch time and we worked for something like 4 hours, breaking to cook up some amazing salmon pasta.

We managed to fit the window today. During, I wondered why I’d shirked it. Really fun cutting wood and smelling it again. It probably did need the feeling that there was a full day there to be able to do it.

The day began with me wondering where the window would go. Astheticly I wanted the window in the center of the wall, but that would mean that the options for arranging bed and table inside would be limited. Eventually convinced myself it would be ok off center. Is that how you spell center? Centre? I’m lost.

We had to make room for the window. We cut off two of the studs part way up and put a whole new stud in. One of the studs I had mucked up when I put in originally. It was on a diagonal. Unfortunately, this was the key stud, would form one side of the window frame. We loosened the nails that held it by way of a hacksaw then belted it where it was needed. I was scared of this because there were brick ties underneath on this same stud. Eventually got it.

It was quite a tight fit in the end and we had to do a heap of hammering and chiselling to make it fit. A pleasing sight.

I spent a lot of time just thinking about what was to be done, I wasn’t exactly sure how to. I think it went ok in the end though. Used a table to check that the height of the window was ok. Eventually just attached it to the top wood.

There was some accidental miscellanery knocking of the bricks today. They crumbled. I didn’t like that.

I ran out of big nails at the end. Si had done a great job all day banging crazy ones back into straight. I’ll need to buy some.

The arc of the window is troublesome. It bangs on the truss meaning it doesn’t open fully. Maybe I’ll need to go to work on the truss.

Justin gave an inspection later on at night and pronounced all well.

I even managed to start cutting some of the corrugated iron, another of the feared jobs. Awesome. Jobs for tomorrow: locate or buy more black paper, get more sand, calculate bricks needed, make bricks, buy nails, finish up stud changes, do roof.

I pushed it all day today and my body, soul, and life cherished in it. Come on health, hold together for tomorrow.

Finished up just before 8 p.m. with a quick 3 bricks layed. There were a couple of tennis sessions in there too. I loved today.

In case you were unsure which line to cut

321

319

My sand got wet in the overnight rain. I wanted to just lay a quick 2 bricks before church, to get on the board for the day. But the wetness of the sand mucked my ratios up, and the more sand I added to dryen the mixture up didn’t work. I had a heap of mortar and that made us late for church. We rocked up at 11. It starts at 10. Was there for the good bits though.

Deidre helped me out today. We laid a quickfire 15 in about 2 hours to make it 19 for the day. A good effort, we were by no means bored by the end either.

I’m up to my line of black paper – I’ll need to put another layer of that on now. I don’t know where the rest of that paper is, or if I have enough left.

I’m on layer 8, and I’m pretty confident that there will be 12 layers. That should make it pretty easy for me to calculate how many bricks I need. For some reason I am shirking this calculation. If I am going to finish my brick laying by the end of my Easter break though, I probably need to be making more bricks, if I need them, now. I think I’ll need a few more. It is just unclear to me how many bricks the new window will occupy. But it is an easy calculation if I just get onto it. My mindset right now is just get out there and lay bricks, while the other tasks of finishing off the roof and getting that window ready remain neglected.

300

A steady run saw me continue until dark and be late for Mel and Heidi’s birthday dinner. A pleasing Saturday at it, not too tired in closing either.

276

272

With Mum’s pending return I tidied the garage up a little bit today. The batts occupy a lot of space once they are sprung from their housing and it was a mess. They are now housed in the shack. I’ve got itchy arms and back.