Back to work today so I could only scramble an hour or so at night. Did some more lining of the ceiling. Obvious child remains the song of 2010.

That smoke alarm. Doesn’t deserve first mention today but I just saw it above. I think the battery that came with it was done. Beeping and carrying on.

What a day. Deidre and I worked from somewhere near 10 til a bit before 9. Spent.

So many things achieved, I’m sure I’ll forget some. Sealed up the window. Chopped a heap of the great pile of trees that I’ve accumulated and stowed them in the converted wood bin. Arranged the last of the batts. I really hate dealing with those batts. Put the remaining full length ceiling panels on.

Deidre swept the shack out and it looked great. Tidied up the bricks that were lying round outside and binned all of the pink batts wrappers which were littering up the place.

Yesterday I had it at about 18, which felt too warm. Today, 16-17, was about right.

We replaced the panels which have the electrical cords behind, I’m now covering up for the shack warming. I’ll come back and finish the electricals some other time.

Started panelling the skylight. This was fun and looked good. Won’t take too much more work to finish this off.

I hammered my fingers. Couple of times. They don’t feel the way they should right now.

Gave some consideration to curtains. Had difficulty working out where the lighting will go.

The roof. That punk shouldn’t leak anymore. Justin’s roof thing was by far the best. The lead molded nicely. Deidre beat the corrugs out of some iron in order to use it as flashing. I attached that all eventually. It was difficult because I was beating through multiple layers and I didn’t always know where the wood was. Looks really good up there now.

There’s a bit to do before Saturday night but I think it’s going to be looking semi finished.

I had errands to run from about 1 pm onwards, and I knew it. That being the case, I had to scramble in a day’s worth of work in a morning and a bit. Did pretty well.

The door closes now which is good times. ‘Closes’ is an interesting term, it kind of jambs shut. I tidied that up a bit, and it does a better job of keeping the air out now.

Some more work on the ceiling. I put some batts in as my final act of the day. Tomorrow Wednesday is pretty much my last full day before the shack warming. Needs to be a big one.

In recent days I’ve been trying to work out whether I have a common cold / flu or Batts Disease. Still undecided.

$45.10 on electrical fittings and smoke alarm.

What a good day. I didn’t like it much earlier on when I was working on getting the wiring in place but it came good.

I prepared the ends to hold the ceiling panels, then Deidre came out and helped me with getting some paper on the ceiling. This justified the decision of the flat ceiling – it started looking great from that moment.

Got some of the ceiling up, then it got too cold so I didn’t want to go outside and cut and get the panels. I had much fun blocking off the draughts which were coming in, holding my hand up and feeling where they were coming from. Sealed up both ends completely from inside, good times.

It was awesome how the temperature didn’t decay. The fire had kind of petered out but the temperature was still holding. This gave me a lot of encouragement that I’m not going to suffer an awful winter in there. Maybe the plan will be to get it up to 30 degrees before I go to bed then if it loses 2 degrees an hour it’ll still be nice in the morning. Is 30 degrees possible? What a challenge.

I finished lining the walls. Spent much time fluffing round with the three bottle bricks shelf. A further $8.90 for nails. Arranged some batts in the overhanging ends and did a hack job sealing up that section from the interior. In a move that is sure to earn me many questions, I’m going to go with a flat ceiling. I don’t care. I DON’T HAVE TO EXPLAIN MYSELF TO YOU. It’s going to be easier to put up, and hopefully warmer. It’s going to make the shack appear smaller, but it’s a small shack anyway.

Oh yeah, I ran in a panicked state to Justin’s place. This morning there was a real heavy frost. The insulative properties of the shack were once again excellent – it was -0.1 when I went in there just before 10 am. There was visible frost inside on the black paper where it was touching the corrugated iron. This proceeded to melt and drip. Not good times if that kind of thing keeps up. But, once I’ve fixed the roof up, water shouldn’t be getting there.

Simon came out and we were in a good rhythm cutting and nailing lining pieces. In my afternoon session I basically finished the lining. The shelf around the brown bottles is looking really good. I haven’t quite finished the other shelf. I reckon I must have cut out some of the draughts, I had the fire going and it only registered 10 degrees, but didn’t feel cold in there.

Bought some ceiling batts for $100.45 – to put on cost table.

I discovered that the electric planer will work as a bellows device. The downside is that it fills the air with mad ash.

Lined the bit on the left of the door as you go in. Started building the shelf area around the bottles. Fiddly.

This is out of sequence but I like it

I put up a few more pieces of lining and tried to plug one of the outside air holes.

Paul and Simon came out, and we managed to break the 20 degree barrier, this was good as it was about 4 degrees outside. That being said, there was an overall feeling that it wasn’t warm in there, draughts were still flying around, away from the fire.

I only had about a half hour at it but I really enjoyed knocking up three pieces of lining.