November 12th - cladding

Freezing morning, with a thick frost at the plot and iced-over puddles. Spent a couple of hours installing insect mesh to the west and north walls in preparation for cladding. Had terrible trouble with painfully cold fingertips, which were completely numb and unable to hold onto nails or to operate the stapler. Mal phoned from Australia to report that the kids were all in the paddling pool, and that it had reached 39.8 degrees - which strangely didn't help with my predicament.
Warmed up a bit when I started cutting and fitting cladding to the west end of the house, which was in bright sunshine. I had to haul the scaffold out of the way first, but decided not to dismantle it, in the hope that Melvin and I will be able to manoeuvre it back into position tomorrow when we need it to access the higher cladding.
There are only two small windows in the whole gable-end, so the first ten rows of cladding were very straight-forward, simply straight runs of three planks per row. Here I encountered the first window - the utility room, and work slowed down a little when I had to do some accurate measuring and cutting to ensure a good weatherproof finish. I used the last dregs of Woodstain & Protect from the matchpot to treat the end-grains that were butting up to the window-frame.
Light started to fade around 4 p.m. and I finally knocked off at 4:45. Had a visit from a very friendly Scottish Power engineer, just checking that everything was set for the running of power as far as the plot-side tomorrow.

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