A satisfactory outcome and a pleasant surprise

Anyone following my last few posts will probably have guessed that the ‘satisfactory outcome’ refers to my ‘tonnelle’ repairs. Just stretching the roof covering onto the roof framework puts the framework under quite a lot of stress and I had no idea until I arrived at that stage whether my repairs would work or not. But first I had to take all of the sharp edges and corners off them to protect the roof fabric and give them a flash of matte black paint.

Then it was time to assemble the complete roof frame and to help things along I gave each joint a quick spray of WD40 to overcome the rust that had formed.

Then I fitted all of the wall curtains. They were all undamaged except for a couple of tapes that tie them to the uprights that had been torn off and which I stitched back on again at the very end.

It was then just a matter of stretching the roof covering onto the roof framework, manoeuvring the whole roof onto the tonnelle framework, aligning all of the roof struts with their securing holes and bolting everything together. And voilà! One almost complete repaired ‘tonnelle’.

Amazingly, considering what it’s been through, the whole thing is still in remarkably good shape, standing upright and fairly square on the ground. I patched some small areas of damage in the roof covering before I fitted it but it was only after I’d mounted the roof that I found several more areas that needed patching. That won’t be too important for the amount of time that the ‘tonnelle’ is likely to be in service and I’ve still got the roof covering from the other damaged ‘tonnelle’ that only has one rip in it that I could always switch over to.

But the main thing is that my repairs seem to be OK. They were tested earlier because earlier this evening some large wind gusts were forecast and I took the precaution of adding some hefty tie-downs just in case. The gusts duly arrived in the form of a storm-like squall. I was quite surprised by their severity but I’m glad to say that no harm was done.

So what was the pleasant surprise, you might ask? While I was up to my neck in the ‘tonnelle’ work I had a couple of missed calls on my mobile. Later, when I went up to take some stuff back to my tool store, this is what I found.

They’re wrapped in plastic but they appear to be the six large shutters for the full height double doors. Does this mean that someone will shortly be along to fit them together with the twelve smaller ones for the windows? I hope so. It would be nice if it does… and not before time 😐