what have chris and andy been up to? » 2007 » august

.dave comes out to play - wellington, new zealand

Mr. David Curtis came all the way from Australia to help me build a floor under our house.

The boy arrived on Friday afternoon and we were very sensible on Friday evening, with little beer consumed in order to get off to a good start the next morning.

First up today was a mission to collect the two-person post hole borer from HirePool. Upon getting it home and gunning it up, however, we found that the tool and the ground we were going into were not compatible - the results were more like trenches than holes. We returned the borer to the hire place and went off in search of a more manual option. After a lengthy mission we returned home to begin work - unfortunately half the day had been lost. We dug half the holes required for the floor and erected the retaining wall. We got two bearers in before knocking-off time. That night was spent in the Belgian Beer Café - sweet.

We were up at a reasonable time on Sunday despite the excesses of the night before. Today was all about getting the rest of the bearers in (which we completed mid-afternoon) and then the cutting of all the joists. The latter required much jiggery-pokery to get all the required lengths out of the random selection of timber that had been delivered for the job (not sure I'll let the boys at Placemakers select the timber next time). Jobs done and Andy cooked us a fine dinner.

Monday was a designated day off. We ran a few errands first thing and then headed out to north-west Wellington for a walk. We selected a track up to Mt. Kau Kau and had a very pleasant stroll. We were nattering so much we actually got lost on the return. A couple of dirty burgers from KFC completed our afternoon excursion. Andy cooked us another cracker of a dinner and Dave and I stayed up late watching Green Wing on DVD. Excellent.

After too little sleep, we were up again at 04:30 to get Dave out to the airport for his 06:30 flight home. ;-(