Danni Fowler visits for the Cygnet Folk Festival and, guess what?  ...there is a Storm

We'd only moved in three weeks ago and, while the house was not finished and had no heating (well, it was summer) everything was pretty good - well, brilliant actually.  Note the roofline in this older photo: 

 we also had our first guest - Danni Fowler from Baltimore.  Those of you who know Danni, might have some idea what to expect.

A gale blew up on the first day of the Festival and, sadly, our verandah roof blew off:  It really was pretty scary - Danni and I were sitting in my study, when, through the western window we say this large "raft" of roof (about 4m  * 8m) fly through the air over the top of the Western house block and land with a huge crash right outside my window ... missed the car by about 8 inches.  The other half of the verandah roof sailed right over both house blocks and landed over 25m away from where it started, outside the laundry.

Paula was in the shower, and she just heard a mightly tearing and a crash, followed by the sounds of the sheets of roofing steel on the western edge of the house itself flapping in the gale.

Dean, the builder, came straight round and made some emergency repairs, but we were pretty shaken up.  As you can probably see, the storm had torn 10inch gluelam beams as if they were tissue paper, the two "rafts" of the verandah roof which each weighed tons, had flown through the air as if they were made of balsa wood.

Although everyone, including the insurance assessor, said that the design was fine and this was just a freak accident, we decided to redesign the roof - with the help fo Phil Cuthbertson to stand up to typhoons (we hope).
 

It took a while to rebuild the verandah - but finally it was done: