Who ya gonna call? Deckbusters!

Yes, I am actually using wrenches, impact drivers, jemmy bars, sanders, banders, saws and power files. The only thing I am not using is a cordless lithium-iron impulse power vent nail gun. That’s mainly because I don’t know if it’s legal and whether the CIA has approved its use for civilians or whether it is in fact part of an illegal arms trade deal run by Abramovich because his super yacht has been impounded.

Anyway, there comes a time when an old verandah needs some love and attention, so who you gonna call?

I called Ken from Ky who is about as tall as my verandah and looks like he’s built from RHS steel, which I’ve just discovered is very tough stuff.

When Ken walked out on my verandah to inspect it I thought the whole shebang would collapse like the deck of a Mekong fishing trawler left to rot on the shoreline.

He stood barefoot on the decking, pressed a few boards with his toes and said: “Yep, needs a bit of work.”

Ken is a man of few, carefully chosen, words. However, no matter the challenge, there’s always a solution and he declared my verandah salvageable if I joined his team and worked as an apprentice tools man.

I said I would much rather write him a nice poem that he could take home to his wife as a framed reminder of his strength and skills.

But he insisted, and so this week I have been using an electric sander to begin the process of scraping, staining and oiling 10,000 decking boards. This is just a guesstimate because I haven’t actually counted them, but when I removed the outdoor table and chairs, the pot plants, the flower barrel and Prince Finski’s water and food bowls — the deck looked enormous. Standing at the southern end, it looked like the endless deck of the Titanic.

So, as Ken jemmied up the boards I began sanding them. When I first switched on the sander I thought there must be an electrical fault because my whole body went into spasm as a thousand volts surged through my hand and up my arm into my shoulder, making my head shudder and my teeth clatter like Lego pieces. At the same time, I thought a helicopter was landing nearby because my ears were screaming in aural pain.

Then I realised this was normal, and that to be a professional sander I just had to get a grip and grit my teeth.

After a few hours of this, my senses were blunted to the point of monosyllabic response. I can see now why people who use power tools every day never hold long conversations.

I remembered the same sound screaming across backyard fences in our neighbourhood just before Christmas. It sounded like a jet engine and was incredibly irritating, but now I realise this was just a fellow sander going about his daily work. I now apologise for the curses I yelled in his direction.

On my 500th board I began to daydream. If I was going to be a proper sandman I needed a real ute to carry my tools. The Toyota HiLux Dual Cab was looking good until I thought why not go all out and get a Humvee? Plenty of room for tools, sandpaper and an M19 grenade machine gun for those stubborn corners.

In between boards I heard another power tool being used across the street. It sounded like a pathetic Bosch cordless hedge trimmer. It was absolutely no match for my Ozito 18v sheet sander when it came to aural annoyance level — but I did look for a volume button. Sadly, there was just the one screaming pain level 10 — no number 11.

Ken and I are halfway through the verandah job, and it now looks like the wreck of a ghost ship.

Launch date is about two weeks away — then it’s champagne time and on to the next job. Those wooden ceiling joists look incredibly rough.