9 March 2014

The week started with a forecast for rain, so I decided to prepare for it.

Firstly, I put flashing on the storeroom and car port behind the "hoarding wall". Last season, every thing stored against that wall got wet. I was given some capping for such a wall, and with flashing salvaged from the veranda job, I managed to complete that job.

The next one was a leak in he "cookhouse" roof, just by the wall. In the past I have tried sealing leaks, to no avail. Together with the veranda job, we were given some iron sheets by the roofer. I cut three to size, Elna painted them, and i replaced some of the old sheets. It turns out that, if I ever want to repair that roof properly, I will have to add extra beams. The existing one where I opened up was half eaten by rats, and has snapped. Must admit, they were only 50 * 50 mm .

The next "rain job" was to provide for proper runoff from the down pipes from the new veranda. When the previous people cleared the land, they changed the contour as well. If I had left the water to run freely, all would run under the house. (I must admit it has been doing exactly that since the roof was replaced, before our time.) Because the veranda and decks had to be rebuilt, I could not really do anything about it before. Now the water drains into a flower bed on the northern side.

Next job was to put fibre board to close off the end of the new deck. Looks very nice now.

Part of Friday and part of Saturday was spent to repair the fretwork for the eastern side. Some pieces were missing, and some were in pieces. Still some work to do on that.

We also noticed that the old doors we have used to block of the opening where the chimney fell down were falling apart. We took some plywood and not only covered the opening, but also put a cover over the remaining brickwork. Now rain won't leak into the cookhouse any more.

We had a pleasant surprise on Saturday. About six o'clock we had a knock on the door. It was another "Jackson". His grandfather was a brother of William Jackson, who built our house. Turns out he has got a lot of information about William and the rest of the family. He also has a sword that belonged to Jackson, and a pocket watch. He has never been in the house before, and was very interested. His son plays polo in Kihikihi and he promised to pay us another visit and to show us the artifacts.

Needless to say, we haven't had any rain. Farmers are struggling,