Relatively mild ambition for the day (compared to the weekend!) was to finish the rear wall of the shed – to the intermediate plate at least. Only had three courses of bales to go, but since the wall is ~10m long it was still a fair bit of baling and all above head height.
Left dad baling while I put together the intermediate top plate in two halves. Then my interior designer Neve dropped past to admire the giant pile of straw, so there was some chatting time. Then this extremely small-Perth moment as my sparkie rang Neve to ask her about doing a job, she mentioned that she was at a strawbale build in Swan View and he said “oh, I’m the sparkie for that job I’ll meet you there.”
So my site became a bit of a function centre for multiple meetings (as someone else rocked up to talk to the sparkie as well) for a while, then everyone left and we could get back to work. 🙂
Got the last bales into the wall, combined the two halves of the top plate into one, realised the whole thing was the wrong size, worked out a workaround for that, hauled the plate up to the top of the wall (no small task with a 10m long ladder frame) and strapped it down.
Aaaand then there was a small section at the end of the front wall that didn’t have a top plate (because it was a loooong weekend and I didn’t want to get my saw out at the end of the day), so I scooted up the ladder to measure it. And found that the straps had pulled the intermediate plate down on a very strange angle due to a soft bale, and it wasn’t attached to the top plate of the front wall to hold it straight, and….ugh. Cut the last 5 straps on the back wall, cut the pieces for the last bit of the front wall top plate and attached it all together:
so that it couldn’t twist any more, then reattached all the straps.
Somewhere in this my earthworks guy (who lives around the corner) dropped in for a look – I think I’ve been steadily rising in his estimation, from my early days when I was firmly in his “knows nothing about building (or earthworks)* and will inevitably fail” bucket, and now he not only says nice things about my progress but he brought a mate around to have a look as well.
* – I mean, he wasn’t wrong…. 🙂
