Best laid plans...

Happy Australia Day long weekend!! I hope beaches, beers and seafood were part of your day!

We had big plans for the weekend. They didn't include any of the above. 

We have 100 square meters of verandah on our place. 1 at the front, 2 on the back side. Our place had been a rental for the last 7-8 years, and when th owners sold it, they sold it 'as is'. There were lots of maintenance things that needed doing. Including sanding the wooden decks. 

Some of them were ok, but some were pretty exposed, and had no, or flaking varnish, and quite faded greying boards. The wood wasn't damaged, but needed coating and protection so that it didn't start cracking and need replacing. 

Bottom verandah-west facing, no protection. 

Bottom back verandah

 So that was our plan for the weekend. We were hiring a sander to sand back at least the bottom back verandah, and part of the front verandah that is uncovered, and actually looks worse than the one pictured above. Sand, clean (to get rid of the grey), and then oil. L had already done the edges with a little disk sander. 

Didn't happen. 

As an aside-we've been in drought up here. It hasn't rained in months-it is so dry. We had even started watering part of our front lawn so it didn't die. This is what the part of our lawn we hadn't been watering looked like.

Dead lawn... 

So, it hasn't rained in months, we plan to sand this weekend. 

We have had almost 200 mm of rain over the last few days, with Ex Tropical Cyclone Oswald hitting us. Huge rain, and howling winds have battered us the last few days. And it's meant to get worse. I told L we should have planned to do the verandahs months ago so it rained earlier!!

We've been lucky-it's been much worse further north, with tornados and flooding. Hope everyone is safe and dry!