Big Slates & Tin Sheets.
Big Slates & Tin Sheets
So, the day has come. Those huge slates which ripped at my back muscles as we slowly lowered them to the ground need to go back on. The wall is repaired, the lintels are in and the wall-plate is level. So, there’s no getting away from it now.
For the first one, me and Donald are standing to the left and seem to be doing a lot of talking. Neither of us seems that keen to try and lift this bugger up and we’re clearly stalling! We need to do it though so after psyching ourselves up for a few more minutes we quickly talk through the process and what to do should the worst happen and one of us loses their grip, slips a disc or quite possibly looking at the size of them dislocates their shoulder! I’m feeling positive though and as we get into position, lifting with the legs, it takes about thirty seconds to lift, rest, lift, rest and wiggle the first beast into place.
Not wanting to lose the momentum, we get straight over to the next one and again lift, rest, wiggle that one into place too. Repeating this for the whole row before we stop for a well-deserved brew. All-in-all, we must have only been at it for twenty minutes and the slates which I’d been dreading lifting were done.
With that, we can continue with walling-up the gables and cut the steel sheets which I picked up from Nelson after work last week. That in itself was entertaining. It took a while to find the business tucked away on an industrial estate and when he saw my little white van, he didn’t seem impressed! We managed to carefully load the panels into the van though despite the rain and, with a third of the panels resting outside of the vans open rear doors and with more cargo straps than you can shake a stick at holding everything in place, I slowly made my way up to the hall somehow getting a wet head (as hailstones bounced off the panels and into the van) in the process, to drop them off at the hall, which was by now, in the dark! Such fun!