Not something often seen in Caithness but there was a nice funnel cloud off to the south west of my house site this morning, just after 11 o'clock.

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Well, the digger arranged for Monday indeed wasn't available. It's a brand new one which went to the Black Isle show last Thursday and was supposed to be delivered to the builder on Friday but didn't actually arrive until Monday evening.

The forecast wind seemed to slip back through the week and reduce so I arranged for it to come, for its first outing, today (Thursday).

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After Wednesday's attempt to get a rafter for the south side up the weather hasn't been great. I did a bit on Thursday and a very short session on Saturday afternoon but that's it.

The digger arranged for tomorrow (Monday) looks like not happening for at least a day or two. Wednesday and Thursday are forecast as too windy for dangling rafters on exposed hilltops.

Today was nice, though. A bit breezy and getting breezier as the day went on but at least the late-afternoon rain didn't show up, so I had another go at fitting that south-side rafter.

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After last Sunday's lovely weather Monday and Tuesday weren't so nice and all I got done on site was preparing two more rafters to go on the north side.

However, I have got a digger organised (probably) for next Monday. Hire is quite a reasonable hourly rate but having to pay for a whole day (but that does, at least, include transport) means it's worth getting as much done in one go as possible.

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With the scaffolding up it should have been fairly straightforward to get on with putting the ridge board up. Unfortunately, nobody told the weather gods; it's been breezy pretty much all week with not a small amount of rain, on and off.

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I ended last month using photography to work out where to cut the tops of the first two opposing rafters. A couple of days later I got the first four of the rafters up on the north side.

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As mentioned in the last blog post I had the idea of using photography to mark up where to cut the top end of the rafters. It seems to have worked, so far.

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As forecast the weekend was pretty breezy. Today started much less so but the morning was wet. It dried up at lunch time so this afternoon I put up two rafters with the intention of marking the tops to cut for the ridge beam.

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The first batch of 33 I-beams for the rafters were delivered last week (2017-06-07 Wednesday).

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Having mostly sorted out the temporary decking for the loft area I then rather sank into depression for a fortnight or so. The next step was to order the I-beams for the rafters. I knew I was going to do it eventually but in my state of mind I couldn't bring myself to pay out the significant sum of money involved.

That's now done (last Friday) and I've also sorted out a small issue with the connectors from the rafters to the purlins with the structural engineer. I need to order those connectors and the timber for the blocking between the I-beams and for the ridge beam.

Meanwhile, today was a lovely day so I thought I'd sort out the one remaining item on the house itself which needs doing before the roof can go on.

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