31 July 2011

Well, this has been a long month, with five weekends. I cannot claim that we have achieved that much,  but we have made some progress.

We were given some roofing iron, and that fitted nicely to cover the lower end of the western wall of the cookhouse. The place is nearly secure now. I also put some of the cladding that has survived the borer back on the inner walls. We also repaired the door, and it is secured with a screw now. We even spent time to move most of the machines into the place.

The chimney has decided to separate, the outer wall and the inner wall decided to part. I spent nearly all of Saturday morning to decide if I could save it and what way would be best. In the end I put planks on both sides and clamped it together with sash clamps.

 This is the area where the plants were growing inside the wall. Now I started building back the outer layer of the chimney stack. It has been about 15 years since I  handled a trowel, and my courses are not too straight, but it will keep the chimney together. The upper part that does not show in the picture leans over too much and will have to be demolished and rebuilt.

On Saturday afternoon Elna decided she has had enough of my rubbish cluttering the lawn in front of the door, so we moved some of the stuff and had a sort of general cleanup. I must admit it looks much better now. (Has anybody been to and seen our "plot" at Rayton?) I am not going to embarrass myself with putting up before and after photos.

Our Heavenly father still provides. IRD sent me a cheque for"over payment of tax", just when we needed it most. Miracles, small and large keep on happening all the time.

24 July 2011

Sorry, we have been busy, and the blog got delayed.

We were offered two sheep as lawnmowers, and I thought of doing a fence, but we really have not got the time, so that will have to wait.

Elna requested the deck on the northern side to be improved, so I spent some time on that. It looks better now, but it still is "Band Aid" and not even  "First Aid". I wonder when we will reach the stage where we can go out and buy the right material and do the job properly.

We also put some time into the cookhouse.

 It is looking much better now. The whole building is standing on  paving blocks, because we cannot dig a hole to put proper piles in. The other end has received no attention yet, maybe next week. Another big problem is that the chimney is at risk of falling in. We cut the plant that was growing inside the wall, but now everything is wobbly. The old lime mortar has been reduced to sand. I have put some braces up, but it can fall at any time. Problem is, I do not want to rebuild the whole structure, because of the time involved.

We found that the Ivy on the roof is still going strong. That is because everything up there is growing in compost generated over the years.

We have also spent time on repairing the floor. All the floor joists are completely eaten by the borer. The inside wall is resting on  the floor, so it needs to be lifted up, and I am not allowed to work in the ground. Now I put a plank on the ground and pack the joists to the required height.

I wish I had the time to tidy up the section, because, when we moved the stuff over, we just dumped it anywhere, and it is bothering me now. Will see where the spirit leads me in the next week.

10 July 2011

Finally, we have moved everything from Cambridge and the tenant has moved in. Now, you might ask, where has everything gone? The answer lies in the next picture. What you see is only part of it. We must have moved between 40 and 50 trailer loads. I stopped counting at 20. Keep in mind it is a small trailer. But it is done now. The right hand tarp covers some of the timber, and the higher pile contains some of my machines. Thankfully, we live in New Zealand. Nothing has been touched.

Now you understand why it is so important to complete the repairs on the shed. Until I can use my machines, there is not much other work I can do. We had some serious rain this last week, and everything is soggy. Let's hope we get a break this next week. The framing of the eastern wall is up, and I started a temporary cladding with corrugated steel.

Once this side is done, the western wall will get some attention. The door you see in the right hand side of the picture could not be moved for many years, the roof and ceiling crushed down on it. Now it can be moved! A small step for man. I believe that no maintenance has been done on this building for at least fifty years.The borer had a feast.

I could not understand why the ivy on the roof remained green, in spite of me cutting all the vines down. Yesterday I discovered why. Intertwined with the other branches growing in the chimney, was the stem if the ivy, about 65 mm thick. I cut that off. I dare not get on the roof in fear the whole thing might collapse. Will leave it to die a natural death.

Apart from the leak in the small bathroom, our house is not taking in any rain. Thank you for small mercies. I have not put up my rain gauge yet, but I estimate about 100 mm over the last three days. More to come.

See ya!

3 July 2011
This last week we tried moving the last stuff over from Cambridge. I thought there was about 6 trailer loads to go. After moving the 6 loads, I find there is only about 6 loads to go. Keep in mind, our trailer is only 1.2 by 1.6 m. We need to finish this week, because the tenant will be moving in next week.

I started work on the cookhouse. This picture was taken after I cleared all the rubbish next to it. Note that there is hardboard under the remnants of the cladding. All of that was loose. I found that only two posts were holding the whole thing up. I started cutting the rotten studs out, to put a new top plate under the old one. After half a day's work, the whole thing came crashing down. Now I removed the old top plate and put a new one all the way. It works better now. The roof has a bow of about 100 mm, but I will build a straight wall. My biggest problem now is that I  still need to lift the roof by another 200 mm to achieve my target height of 2 m. Problem is that if I jack one point, the studs on the other end falls out. Maybe I should be using more than one jack! The floor joists are also rotted out. The floor will get a similar treatment, with paver blocks to lift it to a more even height.

I have not got the all important Archaeological permit yet, but I haven't touched the ground yet, except for putting paver blocks on the surface. Any possible artifacts get dutifully collected.  Hope that keeps them happy. Shaun, the grandson came to help me on Saturday. Being seven, he is stating to become useful.
I am looking forward to putting some of my machines inside.

We also fitted replacement glass panes to the internal glass door. There were two panels missing. We had clear glass cut, and put frosting film over it before we installed it. Obviously, the original glass is irreplaceable.
Looks quite good, even if I have to say so myself.

Today I noticed that one of the weatherboards on the western side has come adrift. Funny, these were replaced in 2005. So much for workmanship. I will have to fix it before we get any rain.