Banisters? We don't need no stinking banisters!

This weekend I drove up to Umina to give Norm a hand with the maintenance on the house. I just checked, and we were last all there to do a bit of work in April 2007. One of the nice things about keeping an accurate vehicle diary is that I can tell when my car has been somewhere, even if my own memory is hopeless.

The first four pictures are from the first trip, where we painted and then replaced a few of the main bearers with new ones. We also did a bit of other painting and general shuffling around of timber.

This is a view showing two of the main bearers from underneath. The balcony is on the right side of the picture. The bearers are the two large timbers running more or less left to right through the middle of the picture.


This is one of the outside posts on the entry side, with one of the main bearers removed. Essentially we just knocked out the old ones and gently persuaded (with hammers, bits of timber, and the occasional bit of vocal encouragement) the new ones into place, one at a time. Obviously, the second bearer took the load while we were replacing the first.


The working scaffolding was partially built from timber we needed as we worked, so we started at the extremities and worked back. The scaffolding was perfect for holding us all safely, and also at the perfect height for me to smack my head against the beams once in a while, just to keep me on my toes. I think Derrick and Alan felt the same way. There are times when it probably doesn't pay to be slightly taller than the master engineer.


This is the scaffolding we used for replacing the bearers under the balcony on the stair side. While I think we worked quite sensibly, it's probably safe to say that workcover may not have given us their seal of approval.

Enough of the background, now we're on to this weekends festivities.

This is Norm while when we were about two thirds of the way through removing the handrails and supports.


I had to do most of the work, as Norm and Derrick were always sleeping on the job.*


This is the unobstructed view from the balcony. The lines are nice and clean here, but it was about to get uglier.


We wanted to remove the outermost timbers, as these were going to be replaced, and would be the mount points for the new railing. In order to get to them, we had to cut some of the floorboards, and pry the ends of them out.

Norm was working near the top of the picture to the right. Derrick and I were removing the timber which was originally nailed to the exposed timbers shown in the lower right, I was just commenting to Derrick that we should probably secure the timber before going much further with the floorboard removal, as it was getting rather "wobbly" (that's the correct engineering term). One floorboard later, and gravity took over and removed the rope option from our list of choices. Fortunately, it wasn't the timber above the power and phone lines, and no one was underneath. Needless to say, we secured the timbers earlier on during the procedure from this point on.


Here is a view with all the new exterior timbers in place. These will be where the new handrail supports are mounted.


This is a similar view from the entry side, showing the new exterior timber. We also removed the entry ramp, so that, once the final plank was removed, no one could accidentally wander onto the balcony in it's less-than-general-public-friendly state.

All in all, we got more done in a weekend than I originally expected.


More pictures:

All the pictures I took from April 2007 are here.

All the pictures I took from February 2008 are here.

All are from my phone, so the resolution is mediocre.

Footnotes:

* Yes, I'm kidding.

For more info on the inspiration for this post's title, read this. The version in my head sounds like this (found on this website). It originally got in my head, somewhere in the 80's, by virtue of being sampled on the track "Medicine Show" by Big Audio Dynamite, an album I really should get out again. Aint the Internet grand?