After a few days of wild weather and diluvial rain, today turned out fine like a Summer's day. It was warm and sunny with blue skies. Magic! Which was just as well as my sister and her tribe are up here working on the additional build project for their holiday house.
The tribe consists of my sister, her husband, her three daughters and their husbands and partners and, for good measure two builders. 10 in total plus two dogs and three children.
The additional build is putting up a separate building to be connected by a covered courtyard to the existing two story house they built back in about 1999. It was through visiting and staying in this when we lived in Christchurch that we discovered Whangarei Heads which later led to us buying and living here in 2009.
Today it was putting on the roof time. The concrete work is all done on this two story long extension and the framework for the walls is all in place. Today we had to build internal framework for walls, windows etc and attach wooden beams to the steel girders that will support the roof and then to lay out the struts to support the roofing material.
The more observant reader will have noticed that I used the word 'we' there. Yes, yours truly turned up for duty before 9AM and donned 'tradie' gear to assist thus making it 11 adults plus two dogs and three children.
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| Essential 'tradie' headwear no matter what the weather. |
I did my bit for a few hours, forgetting that I'm nearly 70 and clambered up scaffolding, walked across narrow planks, held up beams, screwed in bolts and fired off nail guns. All good but to be honest, after that I was knackered. I called it quits at midday mostly because, with 11 people all on the same site, after the major bits were done it was more a matter of scrabbling around to find things to do. I told my sister that there were too many bodies and I buggered off.
At home, after lunch of bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon (typical Northland 'tradie' lunch) I had a kip and slept for a couple of hours.
Next week I must check out buying a 'tradie' wagon to go with my hat.
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7 comments:
The Old Girl didn't like the hat, said no to the wagon and scoffed when I said I might become a 'tradie'.
What the hell - she's going away for a couple of years ......
Good song.
I loved this post. It'll be nice for you to have some company.
I loved this comment even though I didn't quite understand it.
He means you'll have tradies to talk to.
Personally, I'd rather talk to an imbecile and we know what Italians say about them.
In the post I forgot to mention the 'shorthand' that the builders use.
With two of my nieces' partners being builders and two other builders there - one a woman which was good to see ( sorry Robert) there was a fair bit of that going on.
"Take that forbie and kerplunkisize it to about a blombuie"
"About a halva?"
"Yeah, she'll do."
I'd just nod, pretend to know what was going on and grab a nail gun or a hammer and go about nailing things, out of the way.
No post for a while.
Not necessarily a bad thing.
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