Motorhome Travels - March 2012
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03/03/2012
Shouse progress!
Our friends John and Glenda arrived from NZ for their "holiday". The holiday lasted until the following morning when we took a load of tools and cold drinks up the hill and got started on the task of putting together the shed.
![Day 4 and the middle section frame is up - [Click for a Larger Image]](20120227_GJM_0023.jpg)
Day 4 and the middle section frame
is up
If you have read my previous posts on the shed, you will know that we are not too impressed with the supplier Widespan so far. I can say that they were very good at getting the few missing components to us without any drama at all. One of the reasons we decided on Widespan was that we had been told that Widespan produced the very best instructions and were the easiest to assemble (for the novices like us). They also claim to stamp each and every component (the bill of materials even has the component stamp listed) - Well about 10% of our components are stamped, the other 90% were left for us to figure out. Some parts of the instructions are very clear - the vast majority are inadequate and many parts are just completely missing. If this is the best shed for inexperienced people I would hate to have anything to do with the others. We are often stopping for an hour or two to try and figure out how some parts should be fitted and indeed what parts should be fitted. On the positive side I do feel that the shed will be very very strong once completed - the bracing is extensive.
![The A Team (minus one - wearing t-shirts printed to commemorate the shouse construction project) - [Click for a Larger Image]](20120302_GJM_0007.jpg)
The A Team (minus one - wearing
t-shirts printed to commemorate the
shouse construction project)
Having two extra pairs of hands has been fantastic - so good in fact we have hidden John and Glenda's passports and will not be releasing them until the shouse is complete! OK not quite true - they have actually voluntarily decide to stay an additional week which is awesome.
After the frame was all up it was time to install all of the bracing. This has been a bit of a depressing time as we come away from a structure each evening that looks no different from the one we arrived at that morning - still, we are almost done with the bracing.
The weather has played a major part in the progress - we had about a week of very wet days followed by just three days of fine and now the weather man is telling us to prepare for another week of rain.
I initially planned to hire a scissor lift for a couple of weeks - this turned out to be just too expensive (mainly due to the $600 delivery fee quoted). We then looked at getting a cherry picker but felt that many tasks would require two people high in different locations. We finally settled on two sets of large trestles and 5m planks - while it takes a while to setup, it has been very good and makes working at heights up to 6m quite comfortable. We are almost finished the high work and hope to return one of the sets of trestles before we incur another $125/week.
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