Just as the cold weather has ended I have nearly finished the front of the building.  Hanging two pairs of doors 14' high wasn't easy, particularly as we were working with frozen timber and temperatures as low as minus 7!  Mind you, I like a challenge like that and it took nearly two weeks of working in the cold for it to start to wear thin; (the frozen timber / cold fingers combination gets to you in the end)   However we escaped the heavy snow, despite a couple of warnings of a 'severe weather event' over Dorset!  How we wished for some decent snow, which never came.  Oh well.  The severe weather across the rest of the country did mean we couldnt deliver a hut to East Grinstead, a delivery which had to be called off 3 times due to heavy snow in that area.  Now that the front of the workshop is on we look forward to settling down in a dry, warm environment in which to build the huts after many years of coping with the elements.  I was also reflecting today on the improvements we have made to the hut build over the last year, not least of which is the traditional lead flashing we now use to fit the windows into the corrugated cladding.  By dressing the lead over the corrugated a really good seal is created against the weather.  Another development is the powder coating of the chassis, which is a much more durable finish than hand painting with red oxide and a black paint top coat.  Our all steel chassis (based on the Victorian Reeves design and made by Andrew, our resident blacksmith) plus the powder coated finish creates what we believe to be the most authentic and durable shepherd's hut chassis on the market.  It avoids that timber axle beam to metal stub axle join which always seems to fail on the old huts we have had in for restoration, as the end of the timber beam must take the onslaught of weather over the years.