Short holiday at the beach - and a surprise for you

How long will it take you to guess what it is, I wonder?

I brought a mini project away with me (naturally!). It is a new project, and I'm starting it entirely from scratch. I'm not going to tell you what it is, but I don't think it will take some of you very long to work it out :)

Monday

Really Day 1 of our holiday, we woke to sunshine and blue skies. We can see the water from our caravan, though we are not right on it. There is a constant procession of people down to the water and along to the bridge, carrying their fishing gear or their surfboards, and apparently the fishing is pretty good.

Peter and Richard needed to find a shop that sold caravan bits and pieces, so they and Nathan went off together and Marilyn and I stayed at the caravan park. It was really funny because Rick took the GPS to try to get used to using it, and became all confused. Good job both he and Pete knew exactly where they were anyway! They were gone for hours, and while they were away I started on my mini kit.

I set out all the bags and bits as I always do. There are a lot of them, aren't there?

After sanding the foundation pieces and the three floors, using 250 grit then 400 grit sandpaper, the individual floorboards (1/32" x 1/8" timber strips) had to be laid on the three floors of the house. It took me 3 hours to do the first one, 1 1/2 hrs for the second one and only 1 hr for the 3rd one.

I left them to dry with our hydraulic jack sitting on top of them (it's nice and heavy) to weigh them down and ensure that the boards all had good contact with the floor.

After the ground floor was totally dry, I trimmed it and sanded it thoroughly with the two grades of sandpaper as before, to make sure all the boards were even. Then I did the foundation and glued this to the ground floor.

Does that help at all? After that the next step was to attach the porch pieces and its foundation, and do the flooring for the porch.

Maybe the shape of the porch will give you an idea? It's definitely a house I've told you that I've bought. After trial fitting all the walls (so very exciting!) the height of the porch is marked on them and the siding glued on above that mark.

Now that wasn't bad for one day's work, was it? I spent about 10 1/2 hours all together. I don't expect to be spending that length of time every day, that's for sure. We went to bed around 11.30, leaving all the pieces again under the cutting mat to protect them, with my magnetic jig on top to spread the weight evenly and the heavy jack sitting on top of that.

Any idea yet? Next post will show a bit more........