Working Weekend | Warren
On the weekend of the Queen’s Birthday, I was lucky (or unlucky some might say) enough to spend the time repairing the fences around my family home. Kristyn and I had a few helping hands with my mum and dad coming down from Shepparton to help; my brother and sister in law were roped in too.
After much debate and discussion about design and strategy we began to dig the holes to lay the foundations. 17 holes in all were dug over 45 metres, all having to be evenly spread and of equal depth to ensure that everything lined up. The posts were finally cemented into position using a combination of a string line and the naked eye, mainly due to the windy conditions. This was a very slow process that seemed to take forever, but we needed to make sure that it was done correctly, otherwise any imperfections would only be magnified once it was complete. We worked together closely as a team, each performing our roles to ensure that we succeeded together.
Monday morning was the moment of truth and it was time to hang all the rails. Once again, there was a lot of work involved with ensuring that they were hung straight, with the plinth board along the bottom being used as our guide to ensure that the height of the fence was consistent. After 2 solid days of not really seeing any significant improvement, by lunch time of day three we could really see things coming together. Then it was time to nail the paillings. Dad was on measuring and I was on nailing. 480 paiings, 2 nails at 3 heights, meant that I essentially did 480 squats, but the job was finally done. We finished up on Monday afternoon and although my knees were a little sore, I’m pretty proud of our achievement. Clearing and building 45 meters of fencing over 3 days was a monumental achievement that couldn’t have been done without the support of my family. The effort really shows how much can be achieve in such a short period of time when you work together as a team.
The other thing that really stood out throughout this experience was that although building the foundations can often seem to take a long time and can often be the less exciting part of any process, it is critical to ensure that it is done correctly otherwise you will have to deal with imperfections for a very long time.