Progress for the sake of progress

Weekend two of the deck build has come along brilliantly. We set ourselves the goal of finishing all the structural work by the end of Sunday and .... success! It was a team effort with Mum, David, Steve and myself. But as with all renovation work- I am quickly learning - there are many speed bumps along the way.

Steve managed to finish all the steel bearers, and I had them painted and ready to go. What we hadn't planned on was the freak storm that ruined the fresh paint job, and left lovely rain drop marks for me.  I was so disappointed! But Steve assured me that we could still install them and re-paint after the fact.

And speaking of water- when drilling in the holes into the steel poles to install the steel,  we were quickly reminded that Mum's home was inundated with water during the 2011 floods. When we pierced through them spouts of water came flooding out, lovely stagnant 2 year old flood water - mmhmmm!

And due to the floods we came across more problems with uneven ground. The rush of water had pushed so much soil and rocks which had settled in the strangest place. It caused endless problems when trying to place the hardwood bearers level. We ended up having to dig out massive trenches - complete with rocks, concrete and solidified clay.

So with all of that we were pretty pleased to see the hardwood bearers finally installed by Saturday afternoon. Steve and I stole away to meet some friends on Saturday night to watch the Bledisloe Cup. A great game for Steve who barracks for the All Blacks, not such a great night for me as the lone Wallabies supporter!

With a couple of sore heads on Sunday morning we pushed on to complete the installation of the trimmers which went between the bearers. I was lucky enough to use tools to drill, screw and tightened the bolts into place. It was my first real time at using tools on my own- a very proud moment.

We hit a snag at the end of Sunday afternoon. There are currently stairs in place that we want to keep but we need to shorten in order to put the decking planks in. Needless to say it involved a fair bit of work and welding to get the staircase back together, especially as it wasn't properly installed in the first place. Steve spent a lot of time and effort working them into submission and I think we just might be finished.

We're heading to Sydney next weekend and Mum and Dave are away competing in a half marathon so we won't be progressing much further for a couple of weekends. It's bittersweet as we would love to finally finish the deck and start decorating but it may be good for sore joints to rest up and start a fresh in a couple of weekends.