Tuesday; 4am, now to conquer Herbert Hill. It takes 20min, google said 24min. We took two breaks to catch our breath. I feel unfit but I also am glad I haven’t lost all our fitness from the past year. Cory starts on the framing of the garage. Once he has completed that he can replace the roof iron. More paperwork, I won’t bore you with the details. Finally the Otago Regional Council has acknowledged our consent and will send us an invoice soon. I got a few house plants on clearance at Mitre10 for $5 each which I am stoked about. Leona has an early dinner with us as we finish of paperwork. We get her attention to ask about plywood kitchens, gas heating/cooking and polished concrete. It is a no to all three, plywood is not cool, people don’t like it. They want a shitty MDF kitchen that blows out if it gets wet. Looks like the people of Waitaki hate gas too. polished concrete, no, way to futuristic. I think we are too modern for the area. The buyers hate the idea of all the cool things we want to do. Oh but not the rainfall shower head, that is a feature they can get behind haha

Wednesday; No Cory today, we make the most of it by tracking down window companies and making them explain a better understanding of glazing. Vantage Oamaru has been the most helpful and they have also come in the cheapest. We have made all our bedroom windows bigger and we have gone for a great long feature window in the kitchen. Mmm I think I better show you some preliminary plans soon. Finally window shape and sizes and confirmed. Council sends us a bill which we pay straight away. Our morning walk was missed but we made up for it by heading down to the beach for a walk. A stunning day, heaps of seals around. Back at Herbert with a list of jobs to do. I completed painting the container and I did some more rust work on the trailer. Rowan sorted out the water container that Doug (neighbour) gave us. He water blasted it and tanked it. We end up at Jim & Sylvias for a few drinks in the late afternoon. This makes it a bit later than I want for dinner and bed time. Oh well, it is hard to be social and have a 7pm bedtime.

Thursday; A really full on day. Cory finished framing the garage, yay! I worked on the exterior prep work. Rowan helped me remove a few of the windows so I can fix them up. We didn’t notice damage on the inside of the frame and all the hinges had horrible screws. Which is annoying as the hinges themselves are brass and in good condition but the screws have failed. Rowan got onto some framing work. The jobs don’t seem to end. The light at the end of the tunnel cannot be seen. Rowan did a major overhaul inside, there was so much mess and stuff dumped in various spots. He did well putting it all back. Leona calls me to ask if I can help a client of hers with a laundry tub. Turns out the two we have are not quite right. Which is very unfortunate as she has been hunting for 18 months. I will keep an eye out for her while we are out at various tip shops. Talking of tip shops, the lovely Danny (works at Oamaru dump) eyed up a hay feeder, we want one and he wanted the other. So we made a deal, delivery for dinner. Tonight we pick them up and we take one to Danny’s place. He has a container home, fully off grid in Deborah, not far out of Oamaru. A late night, asleep by 11.30pm.

Friday; Oh, we feel that. Lack of sleep not so good. I drag myself out of bed, Herbert hill is very daunting. Not as bad as I thought it was going to be. We planned to get into town to do some paperwork. Leona’s office is a lifesaver. We do a bunch of work then decide to hunt down some help at Placemakers. Well, this incredible sunrise distracts us and we head down to Holmes Wharf to watch. At pacemakers we are after weatherboards, not enough there. Off to Mitre10 and we ask if they are open on Monday (Otago Anniversary), yes they are. Perfect we will get them Monday. The young guns we are wanting to use for the bathroom reno are coming to help on Monday to do the weatherboards. Which I am very happy about. Cory is on the roof today, he is replacing all the iron. It is with second hand iron, the garage just needs to not leak. It really isn’t a long term solution. We would have yanked it down but if you wanted to build it again the council wouldn’t allow you to be that close to the boundary. After midday Fred arrives on our doorstep. Fred is a local handyman who said he was too busy to help us. A complete shame as he does all the renovation work for Sam and Luke who was bidding against us for this house. He is a carpenter and is very experienced in older homes. He was visiting Leona and asking if we still wanted help and she sent him to us. “I have two weeks available, do you still want help?” I tell him annoyingly we have asked for help with the weatherboards and they are coming Monday. However there are still heaps of jobs we want done. Rowan was a bit hesitant and I said wouldn’t you pay a few thousand right now to get some jobs off our plate? Once Fred left I started making a list for him to tackle. Not long after I get a message from the boys saying a friend has passed away so can the reschedule to Wednesday. I put them on hold because I would like to see how Fred gets on, on Monday.

Saturday; A Herbie day. Rowan attacks the water tank Doug (neighbour) gave us. It needs water blasting and tanking. I finish off painting the container and do the last bit of rust repairs to the trailer. I also give Camele a good clean. By 3pm I had had enough. We ended up over at Jimmy & Sylvia’s place and Rowan had quite a few drinks. I was adamant that I didn’t want to stay in Herbert and we talked about going away. So after I worked out where all the column shift gears are on Camele we were off! It was a stupid idea, but I am pig headed and I wanted to get away. We ended up getting pizza in town for dinner and ended up in Duntroon down on the Waitaki river side for the night. It was really late and the rain finally eased. Rowan wasn’t impressed by my late night push to go away haha

Sunday; Up for our morning walk as usual. We had a cuppa and got driving. We ended up watching the sunrise as we came through Omarama. We are heading past the turn off to Lake Oahu and going to get Salmon and dinner supplies. We go to the supermarket first in Twizel, then we go to both salmon shops. On the way Rowan notices a deer on the side of the road. We turn around to take a look. It has obviously been hit, must has been a truck as any normal car would be in a ditch. It is pretty fresh, so it can’t have happened long ago. Rowan took photos pretending he shot it with an air gun and sent it to his hunting friends to stir the pot. We ended up taking the antlers by sawing them off. When we arrived at Ohau we found a spot on the lakeside to camp up. We both ended up for a cold swim in the lake and then had a good hot shower to warm up. The lake was freezing, it took me ages to get in and I didn’t stay long. The wind picked up and it got quite nasty in the late afternoon and evening. I am glad we got in when we did. We both really enjoyed being away.

Monday; Up at 4am, the weather rocked us all night. We took a short walk and got ready to leave. our coffee to go this morning, we will drink as we drive. We have plenty of time to get to Till but we are actually heading to Herbert so we can swap cars and take the trailer in. Fred is working today, which is actually a public holiday for Otago. We get him onto the windows first. The hardware needs moving around and he is better off with the fiddly jobs. After that we get him to do the trim in the living area. There are several bits missing, which he easily fixes up and does a bloody good job of it. Then onto weatherboards. Rowan starts the demo in the bathroom area. Looks like when the roof was replaced they insulated the ceiling. Awesome, that is great! I am on more exterior prep. The day goes quick and I feel we have achieved a good amount of work. I am really happy to have the weatherboards done.