Tuesday; After our early morning routine we headed up to the cemetery to watch the sunrise. We are getting amazing sunrises at the moment. At Till Tony did the door frame and now we have an awesome lead light door to the bathroom. Well let’s hope no one is shy, you can see right in! I find it freeing and love the door like that. I carried on with filling any necessary bits on the weatherboards. Few borer holes and quite a lot of damage from the paint scraper tool we used where Cory used it too heavily in one spot. Rowan got on with the windows in the studio and workshop. I had to show the layout for the kitchen now the plumber is here.

Wednesday; Our plumber Dave came in to start working on the place. He got Rowan to dig down to the sewer pipe. Rowan costs a lot less than a plumber, so he can do the lackie work. Dave notices our drainage at the moment is not right, it goes uphill. So he needs to add a gully trap to rectify it. Fred points out to us that our new shower we got from our neighbour won’t fit. It is too tall! We need 2100mm and we only have 2050mm. Rowan played labourer all day and ran between Dave and Fred being their assistant. I stayed well out of the way prepping the exterior. I ended up doing some more painting as Ian next door is just not available to help. We found out today that we can go for building consent as soon as a truss design is back for our designer Brenda. Great news! Another conundrum we cannot fit the bath where I wanted it. I make a quick decision to move it outside. This is rather annoying I would have laid the bathroom out differently. Oh well, no point worrying about it now.

Thursday; Today Cory is here and Rowan gets him clearing the tool shed more so he can fix a wall and fix the windows. Then he moves onto getting the exterior wall clad with iron for the garage. Fred gets the walls plumb for the shower. This takes a while but he gets it done. He then works on a list of small annoying jobs we want done while we make sure our shower ordeal is fixed. Mico plumbing to the rescue, we have a shower coming and it will fit the area. We had a lot of running around to do this morning catching tradies and getting our application for the bathroom consent done. Because we are only adding a toilet and a gully trap we can get a discretionary consent which is much faster and easier to do. But they still need a lot of detail. Rowan and I spend the day running around like headless chicken, in and out getting things moving in the background. Or picking up materials for the workers.

Friday; Another morning of getting shit together before the workers arrive. We start organising for our trip north to get the kitchen. Camele needs a WOF and rowan needs to see his doctor, it has been three months already! I am due my 6 monthly blood tests. Talk about all go. Hopefully the rust repairs on our truck are done today. It was a pain picking up wood in our camper yesterday. Rowan’s big job is working out how to fix the leadlight door. It has a bow in it and we have been told to weigh it down to fix it! Fred has a list of jobs to do like… putting architraves in the dining room window, toilet window, main bedroom window. Lots of small jobs like that. I am back outside preparing the exterior. Rowan is on windows in the shed. By the end of the day I feel like we got a lot accomplished. Noodly is not ready. The ute still needs more rust work. I hear the dollar signs moving. The rust guy will be at work next week Wednesday to finish it off. We can’t drive it as he had to pull out some electrics to fix it.

Saturday; Happy Birthday Rowan! Ah yes my Rowan is a young age of 38! In Orari there is a Swapmeet, talk about good timing. The south Canterbury Swapmeet is always are around the time of Rowan’s birthday. I don’t think he would rather do anything else. It started at 8am and we wrote a list of building materials we needed. We ended up there for 6 hours. About 300 stalls and it was done in a way that really made it too long for most people. Two long rows which meant a lot of stall holders didn’t see the same numbers of people as it was too far. Well we went around and around a few times. It was great because we bumped into so many people we haven’t seen in a long time. The lovely Jase from Blenheim was there, who we promised to visit when we head north. Gerry and Margaret, our friends in Ōamaru had a stall. John and Maree who we had a stall next to in Ōamaru and we know through Leona also had a stall. We got to see a lot of dealers we haven’t seen in a long time from Christchurch. It was like a social gathering. I really wanted another clawfoot but no luck. Hopefully Jase has one for us. We did find some tapware and this amazing vintage wallpaper. What do you think? That for the bathroom?

On the way back we visited a few second hand shops and made our way back to Ōamaru. Rowan wanted burgerfuel for lunch so we had a very late lunch and just a small burger each. When we got to Herbert we had Thai curry for dinner. It took 3 supermarkets to find the right curry haha.

Sunday; Today is the day. I am nervous and a bit out of sorts. I have to go around a course a few times to show I can be a learner rider. Now this is what confuses me the most about getting a motorbike license. You can’t legally ride one (moped yes) but you have to be able to ride one to get your learners. I feel like we are missing a step here. I get you got to know because now you can legally ride on the road on your own. They expect you to know someone who is. A, willing to teach you. B, is willing to let you use their bike or let you bring a bike. C, willing to use their land to practice on. Anyway, it was an hour long. I thought there is no way I can pass this. He ran us through the 4 tracks we had to do. Indicate check mirrors etc. The corners are pretty tight and small. I am good at low speed riding so that doesn’t worry me. But the young guy Jayden is not. He is used to dirt bikes. So I can do the corners and Jayden can change gears more smoothly than me. So can we just mix together haha. I happened to be the first to try. Argh! Trevor said he was surprised I did so well on the first track. Well what a vote of confidence that is! Rowan and Jayden grandpa thought we both wouldn’t pass haha. I remember the pure shock I had when the instructor Trevor told us we have 13min left to practice before the test. I was terrified, Rowan said it was hilarious seeing my face. Rowan also worried as he knows my learning style and thought I might tell the instructor to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine!

Now the big test! I do the first one in first gear, that was easy the second one I forgot to indicate on the first corner. I yelled out to Trevor I forgot to indicate. He yelled, yes I know you don’t need to point out what you are doing wrong lol. On the third course I almost forgot to put my kickstand up. Thanks to Rowan who did a hand signal haha. On the last one I had to come to an emergency stop doing at least 20km. Well my back wheels skidded didn’t they. That is a big no no. Well my current bike has really bad rear brakes that mean I have to push quite far before they start to work. Well this bike has good brakes haha. I was allowed to get 16 things wrong with 2 major no nos. I got 10 so plenty of room for me to make more of a mess. I was sure I failed and was so surprised to hear I had passed haha. Jayden passed too, with 7 fails. Wahoo we did it. Definitely off for some gelato to celebrate! It took me hours to come down after all that anxiety. The gelato did help haha. We went into Till St to pick up stuff and then headed out to Herbert for the afternoon.

Monday; Into Leona’s office early we started working on our consent again. Looks like we need all the data sheets for the glues and pipes. That is a lot of paperwork! When we got to Till I found a small fella in our hole. So I got him out and put him down the road. Today we have Fred for the day which we were not expecting. So we got him onto a few jobs that we never got a chance to do. He finished off the framing for the bathroom door. Fixed the ceiling in the studio. Framed up the old window between the kitchen and bathroom for GIB. Lots of small jobs which we are thankful we don’t need to do. I get a message towards the end of the day, we have replaced the exhaust in Noodly. Awesome the exhaust repair place took the ute from the rust repair guys, fixed the exhaust and returned it for no extra cost. Bloody awesome. Laura came over and gave us a hand, I got her onto sanding. She works quickly and we need as much help as possible. I have loads of paint tins half full. So I mixed them together to minimise the paint tins. I still have too many. When we went to the dump shop I noticed a very yellow ring, which I thought was dress jewellery. I love yellow! I took a closer look and it is actually 9ct gold. $8 what a bargain. I have no idea if the stone is citrine, topaz or sapphire but it is gorgeous. I have added it to my collection. Back at Till, Fred got our job list complete, it has been great having the help. There is so much more done now but a daunting amount left to do! I have listed the shower for $500 on Facebook. I expect someone will haggle me down and we paid a little over $200 in beer for it.