Suped up scaffolding...

I was a little unhappy with my scafffolding as the platform only reached 3m and had no railing at that height and I needed to work up to 6m off the ground, well this is what I did.....

How it works..... 

Friends and Ties

Hello everyone! I had a terrific week. One of my best mates flew in from Melbourne just to help me build for 3 days, what a champion! Well with a lot of laughter and pastry we managed to get a lot done.... 

Ryan!

Needed to string line the collar ties so they look straight... if anyone bothers to look that is.. 

 Me installing the new collar ties

Strapping the eave ties

A tense moment, Ryan removing the first collar tie... a bit of an anti climax, nothing happened

The final product. 6 ties removed and 3 raised and put on every second rafter. 

Opens up the view for when the future window is put in... 

Is that me vacuuming the roof! Hated that job.... After the shingles were removed it left the roof covered in dust, and rats and bat nests so on heathers request we cleaned all the insulation up and vacuumed.

You probably cannot see it but Ryan and I also raised the house and put some aluminium damp course under the bottom sill all ready for tie downs! Was a lot harder than I thought it would be. 

Plastering the hallway and balcony flooring

This one was fun... we had to jack the plasterboards 3.3m off the ground and shimmy them 11m over the eaves ties to plaster the top part of the hallway. We covered the eave ties with old cloth to protect the plasterboard. Big thanks to Ian and Rory for their help and Stan for his sheet lifter. 

This one was a right old sticky mess. The boards went down well and easy however my legs are very very sore from walking up the stairs a thousand times! Another big thanks to Stan for his secret nailing gun. Once sanded and painted it came up a treat. One complaint however, i used plantation timber flooring from Mitre 10, I would next time not use this product as it is soft and will easily get damaged. Now with the balustrade up it looks safe and very nice. 

The most exciting thing i have built for a while....

Introducing the most exciting thing i have built in a while..... scaffolding. You might ask why? Well it is simple:

1) Cost $5 to build, as i used recycled timber from the demolition of the front,  instead of $250 per day to hire scaffolding....  and thousands of dollars that I would have needed to hire it for an extended time. 

2) I now have a safe play to work 1m, 2m and 3m off the ground instead of a rickety ladder. 

3) It has solved a lot of my "how the heck am I to get that high up to fix that with out killing myself?" questions... 

4) I have also found other uses for it beside that for which i initially built it for... 

5) The platform has three positions 1m, 2m and 3m which is a simple slide it out and slide it in system, no pulling it apart. 

6) It only needs 6 bolts to pull it down and move it. 

All in all I am pretty stoked. 

Balustrades are all up

Well the balustrades are finally up... a pretty nice Christmas present i would say. I only want to add a blackwood handrail (100x20mm) on the top and that should be nice and quick... when i eventually buy it.  

Above is the gig i created so i could drill the holes in the rail. the pieces of wood were 4m long so i used an acroprop to support one end whilst i drilled the other. I firstly used the stairs however ran out of  roof space so had to finish it in the shed. 

Ha ha very funny Angus... he and Erin have turned out to be such little pranksters. 

The first post on the stairs i didn't sand it. I used a wire brush attached to my big angle grinder and it cleaned the dirt and grime off but left all the saw marks, i thought it turned out pretty nice. 

Balustrade

Second last bit done now for the tricky one on the stringer.... Yipee holidays have arrived.

Plans for front of the house

These are the plans I sent to my building designer regarding the north facing wall of the shed.... now just to build it

(click on image to enlarge it and see full plans)