..pulley, at the top of the building and hoisted up a couple of barrels of bricks. When I had fixed the building, there was a lot of bricks left over.
I hoisted the barrel back up again and secured the line at the bottom and then went up and filled the barrel with the extra bricks. Then, I went to the bottom and cast off the rope. Unfortunately, the barrel of bricks was heavier than I was……..”
This is possibly the best delivered funny story of all time, but fortunately I managed to avoid gravity and so there are only niggling frustrations …..and no bricks.
Well, it was close to the end of a full month spent building, or rather rebuilding, one of the house’s decks. Performed largely by myself and without injury. Given my normal accident prone nature, the height above the ground and my being on my lonesome, this was gratifying. One of the lessons of being alone is never step back to admire your handiwork – especially whilst on a ladder.
Building one one’s own is an interesting exercise. There is no problem picking up a three and a half metre beam. Stand in the middle and lift. You can even ascend steps carrying a beam of this size. There is a problem when you have to attach one end to a wall. Your arms are not two metres long. Thought and ingenuity is required which leads to long periods of time in either deep in thought or wandering in Bunnings.
Fortunately I did have help at the crucial time of erecting the replacement posts where Doug, another OMIL (old man in Lycra) can to my rescue – standing and fixing five metres of 100x100 Cyprus pine cannot be done by one person. It can scarcely be done by two. We looked like two elderly Scots attempting a caber tossing duet.
So to universal acclaim all six and a half by three and a half metres of merbau decking and stainless steel wire balustrades are now in use. By the cats. One of whom is now blind and cannot appreciate the craftsmanship around him.
There was some necessity to do the repairs as after thirty years of neglect the weather and ravenous ant colony had done their best and square dancing was forbidden and gatherings of more than two people were forbidden. In fact even walking on tip toe with helium balloons to minimise weight was regarded as a risky proposition.
My good wife Mary said that we should employ a professional builder which like the proverbial red rag to a bull increased my determination to do it myself. Also being a retired person means there are limits to the amount of money that I am prepared to disperse to others for what I might be able to do myself despite of a lack of qualifications or ability.
I actually never did woodwork at school having taken a deep dislike to the smell of boiling glue and the appearance of my first project which was apparently a magazine rack. Mine was accepted with all the good grace of parents looking at their infant child’s first effort at pottery where the result always looks like a petrified dinosaur’s turd from the Cretaceous era. It was burnt when the weather turned cold.
For some reason every woodwork teacher and I started off with a feeling of reciprocated animosity. I didn’t appreciate their bluff practicality and stories about limbs being lost in band saws. Which is one reason I did Art, where I found Art teachers the soul of generosity, wit and kindness. Pencils do have to be sharpened but not at the different bevel angles that chisels need for different tasks: 25° or lower for paring, 30° or more for chopping. Paintbrushes don’t take bits out of your fingers; paper falling on your head doesn’t cause concussion. Conversely, there are no stories about carpenters and their naked models.
Nevertheless over the years I have persisted in a New Zealander’s belief that if a job’s worth doing it must be cheaper to do it yourself. Given the success of Bunnings there must be a lot of New Zealanders in Australia.
I am not one to normally recommend anything to anybody but in this case I was lucky to find a couple of suppliers that made everything much easier. Outstanding were All Things Stainless for the wire balustrading which is of impeccable workmanship – send them the accurate dimensions for your DIY balustrading kit and a couple of days later it is delivered and it fits perfectly. As good as a millionaire’s ocean going yacht.
And the decking timber from NONAILDECKING works a treat though there was a little bit more movement in the plantation grown merbau than I would have liked. But if you use it properly it is very damned schmick.
Enough of the unpaid advertisements – it’s time to build the next deck