Tuesday; Cory arrived with Presley in tow. First job on his list is removing the rotten kitchen floor. I was completely astonished to see hard wood flooring underneath it all. We got him to remove all the damaged bits so we can strengthen and replace it. From there he got stuck into the garden. It was a very interrupted day so I felt like I didn’t achieve much. I stopped and started the same job all day, getting the rest of the plants into the bank. We had a lady come get a table and chairs off us, the modern one we got for staging last year thinking we will use it in Palmy. I thought it may be too big, well it is. He has been getting rid of all the extra stuff so we don’t clutter up the space. I can’t remember exactly what Rowan did today apart from removal of tree stumps. We are both slowing down and need a day off, but we have help and there is too much to do.

When we saw the council yesterday we mentioned we had a leaking water toby and South Roads turned up and fixed it in no time. The water was just pouring out, no wonder we had a wet garage.

I find an old fireplace hearth in the garden!

Wednesday; A busy start to the day, our neighbour Ian came over to putty our windows. He is retired now but was a painter. Not long after we arrived we headed out to a meeting with South Roads. They are council approved contractors to do the driveways and all the services for Palmerston. While there we ran into Shane the contractor who fixed our water toby. He told us to tell Luke to give us a good price, say Shane said so. We got back to the house and then Cory arrived with Presley. They were sorting out the backyard and came across a blanket and a fairly shallow hole. I told them to cover it back up as I am sure it is a fairly recent pet grave. I think I will plant a tree on top of it so I know not to dig there again. Ian did 4 hours of putty and he will be back tomorrow to do more. Presley and Cory began deconstruction of the weird lean to, storage thing on the garage. Rowan worked on the bathroom floor and added sister joists to strengthen and worked on the replacing it with plywood. I will seal the edges of ply before he screws it down tomorrow. I uncovered more paths and planted a free grass plant that a lady gave me on Facebook. It is a lot bigger than I expected, but I love it. Hopefully it lives!

We have an epic sunset, see the photos! The sun is actually setting directly behind us, but the clouds are making incredible patterns.

Thursday; Today we get better indoor outdoor flow, Rowan pulls off the rotten wall to the toilet. He starts muddling his way through framing it and gets thoroughly stuck. I call Tama and beg him to come give us some guidance. He turns up after work and gives Rowan a run down on how to do it. Thank you Tama! A box of beer later we have him coming back to put in a door lock for the front door on Monday. We have been bolting the front door lock and keeping the key in the back door and reaching through the broken window pane to lock and unlock the house.

Friday; Cory gets the fun job of getting the cladding off the garage. As you can see most of the weird lean thing is now gone, the pretty sure it’s illegal and quite dangerous. The roof hasn’t come up yet, it may be able to be replaced or added to. I spent most of Thursday continuing the putty on the windows that Ian started. I finally finished the job today. Over 1kg of putty and I am sure I will use the second kilo or more doing the studio/shed and the garage. Now that Rowan has guidance he works on the toilet wall, I have had to tell everyone every time I want to mimi (urinate), so I am looking forward to a wall and door going back on. However when I don’t have to announce my business it is quite nice peeing so freely. I hope none of the neighbours mind.

Saturday; With a plan of attack today nothing can go wrong. Well by the time we got rid of our metal at the Hampden Dump and got back to Herbert loaded the trailer with corrugated iron and got into Till Street it was already 10.30am. We unpacked the car and headed off to Mitre10 for supplies. We need more 2×4 and building paper among other things. Just after 12pm we were finally ready to do some work. I sprayed all around the house with that stuff for bugs. The flies here are ridiculous, we have either disturbed them or it is just because this house has had a feast in its yard for so many years. Those little automatic sprayers is not keeping up. I feel like we have achieved nothing today. Exhausted and needing a break. However we will push through, tomorrow is a new day and we have a list to get through.

Sunday; The list is really working, we are getting lots of little jobs off the list. The most important on the list is doing a bit more of a tidy, the place has stuff everywhere. There is more rubbish and lots of bones to pick up. I start by giving Camele a vacuum or should I say luxing this far south? We have some candelabras to pick up and we need Camele to do it in so I can easily hold them all the way to Till St. I work on bog and filler any bits Rowan used the epoxy in the other day. Rowan got lots of annoying small jobs completed, the barge board replaced, fixing exterior window frames, finishing off the toilet wall. We hung the toilet door. I put out the garden sprinklers and put them on a timer. Now I don’t need to worry about them. Lots of annoying jobs that just needed to be done.

Monday; Today we head to Christchurch. First we pick up trailer locally, we are on the road by 7am. We are meeting Marty, a guy we got half round 2.4m posts off trademe. They are $4 each and for the extra $1 he will deliver them from Blenheim. We got 300! However this trip is just for 150, we will need to come up again. The furniture trailer we hired so we can load up with extras from our storage. We get the posts first, who knows how much room we will have until we load up first. It takes the two of us 45min to load them. We then head to Rick and Liz’s place to pick up a couple of wire baskets. Finally off to our storage, as we pull in Rowan realised we don’t have the key. It is in Camele at Herbert. Shit, we borrow some bolt cutters and consider using them. We come to the conclusion we don’t want in that bad, let’s go back and load more baskets. On Facebook marketplace there are $1 sinks and they are just down the road. We end up with 13 sinks for $12. What a bargain! We load up with them and finally leave Christchurch after 5pm. A slow trip back to Herbert. The baskets come off quickly. Once in a rhythm it takes us 30min to unload the posts. It is nearly full dark when we finish. Absolutely shattered we go home for a beer. A late night and an early start to drop the trailer off tomorrow.