We started building on the second day that Dad was here, digging in the foundations and starting to turn the pile of timber into a solid framework for the floor. We had never seen such a strong base for a simple Gazebo - still, it will certainly last!

 We had sawn so many angles we were becoming pretty expert at wielding the circular saw - it took us two days to get to this point, and we thought we were well on the way to completion - little did we know what was still to come!

The next step was to start to build the floor. We had decided to splash out on a very smooth hardwood floor in a hexagon pattern - building out from the centre. The wood - known as Ironwood - is a tropical hardwood - very hard and heavy, and every piece had to be sawn to length with a 60 degree angle, then drilled and countersunk for the screws, as it was too hard for nailing. It took Dad two full days to saw and drill the floor!

From that point, it only took us another day to line up and screw each piece into place, and build the step in front of the gazebo. There was no doubt that the effort was worthwhile - we now had a very impressive and well engineered floor that would have done justice to the entrance hall to a mansion!

The next step was to build the roof. The design called for each of the rafters to meet at a six sided key block in the centre of the roof, and that had to be constructed from smaller pieces of wood, as we had no 6x6 inch timber. However, it worked well, and we rapidly got all the rafters in place and nailed to the key block. The design included covering the roof with 3/4 inch plywood, but we thought that would be a bit boring from inside, so we decided to use 4x1 timber instead. That was a good plan - except that it required something like 350 feet of the board, with each section individually cut and mitred to length and also to provide a complex mitre where the boards met over each rafter - at bit like a three dimensional picture frame.

Here is a lovely picture of Georgina through the top of the roof as she was nailing each piece in place - we only had to repeat this six times as we went round the roof! Then a quick layer of felt and we could begin nailing the roof tiles into place.

Again almost each one needed cutting so we rapidly set up a production line with Dad constantly measuring and cutting the tiles and I nailed them into position - first on the flat part of the roof, and then on the ridges. Finally, with the ladder laying flat against the roof surface and me laying flat against the ladder, we managed to complete the roof right to the top.

The very top gave us quite a problem - should we build a wooden tower to cover the peak, or perhaps a large frying pan lid? Although we built and tried both, neither looked very professional, and so I tried my hand a metal bashing and created a six sided aluminium cap - just the job!

All we needed now was to construct the sides - an easy task after all our measuring, mitering and sawing - and within a day we had all sides in place - just 14 days after the site was cleared. We were happy but tired - as this picture shows!