"Nice Bolt Ons"

So said our neighbour from over the road as he watched Tom bolt on little bitty steel posts to fill the 300mm gap between our old steel posts and the now-raised steel beams under the house.


We had decided to bite the bullet, and paid the extra few hundred dollars to get the professionals to come and slide the house an inch or so back into its correct position (after it moved a bit during our house raising extravaganza so none of the posts lined up with the holes in the steel beams above).


To try to save wastage (and cash of course), we decided to salvage the leftover steel posts that had been too long previously and had to be cut down (oh the irony). Tom cut them all into the smaller 300mm lengths required for take two of the house raising, and then all they needed was for little steel plates (with holes punched in them for the bolts to fit through) to be welded onto the top and bottom, so they could then act as an extension of the existing steel poles.

Unfortunately because of Daniel's previous tar painting efforts on some of them they were coated in hardened black goo, and welding that (and therefore inhaling burning tar fumes) is really not healthy. So, we gave our wonderfully obliging ex-homestay-student Leandro the job of grinding off the tar on each end in preparation for welding.


I helped by cutting off some of the bigger clumps of tar with a stanley knife.


And then the boys toddled off to a friend who conveniently had some steel-manipulating machinery to cut the little end plates.



They look pretty professional, huh?


And then it was time for welding. Here's Tom with the hardcore welding mask on.


And the finished result, with all of the little steel plates attached to the poles. He did pretty well, didn't he?


Then it was a comparatively simple task to slot each one on top of the steel posts and bolt it in top and bottom - which of course was what prompted our neighbour's wit.


The posts at the front of the house have to connect to the bearers, not steel beams.


Meanwhile, Allie focused her attention on developing a new strategy for sitting on the now extremely angled back stairs, all the better for surveying the backyard.


So there you have it. The house has gone from this (wasn't it a lovely sunny day?):

to this...

to this:


Hooray for progress! Now if only we could get power reconnected!!!