Tuesday; We have some paperwork to get underway. A quick stop at Till St so we know what plumbing we have and can look up the data sheets. Thanks to the lovely Leona we can come in and out of her office as much as we please. We get all our consent in order and I see Dave has messaged to tell us he will be at the house today. Perfect, we will get him to check what we have done before sending it off. Dave checks it through. We wait for Cory and Laura to arrive and get their tasks underway. Laura is painting up high and Cory is pulling down linings so the electrician can access it. They are multiplying! Two hedgehogs in my hole now. Well we will save these two and hopefully have no more. I later find out they are looking for water, if I put a bowl out they won’t go down the hole.

At the office we put in our consent and come back to work. I am outside with Laura doing prep and Rowan is inside helping Dave. The day goes pretty quick and we have a sense of accomplishment!

Wednesday; We remove the bikes of Camele hoping to bring in the trailer from the mechanic but the tow ball is the wrong size and the correct size is in Noodly! First we couldn’t remove the bikes because the key was in Noodly, which we now have, now this. Hopefully we get the ute back today. Paperwork to do, we get a new exterior interior to do list made. I also have a lot of bills to pay, there goes $7k. I feel like we are bleeding money. Before Dave comes back he has given us jobs to do. First is to use leveling compound for the toilet and shower. We try a bit of the bag to see how it goes and just start with the smaller of the two, the toilet. Rowan uses no more gaps to create a barrier, it works really well. We thought we may get Cory today if the weather packed it in and he couldn’t work. Well the Wild West Coast weather hasn’t got to us yet! I take the opportunity to clean and vacuum in Camele after all the building materials we put in her. Especially when we should get our ute back today. I also do a tidy up inside, the place is getting out of control again. Noodly is finally ready $2400 ouch. Today has become very expensive. I think this mirror will work for above the vanity, what do you think?

Thursday; With the ute back we bring in the trailer to get rid of some garbage! Cory fills up the ute and trailer and we take it out to the dump. Rowan and I almost climb to the top of the pile (about 7m) to rescue some carpet. Oh how the heart bleeds. There goes a few thousand dollars of Axminster carpet. We drop off the trailer to get some tyres as the ones on there are stuffed. When I get back I finally get to rescue these old nails that were at the bottom of the pile. Look at them! Handmade, blacksmith forged nails. A thing of beauty. I couldn’t let them be put in the bin, most of them broke but I saved 6! These make me really happy. The rain is coming tonight. I take the opportunity while it is dry to get rid of the dirt that is building up on the paths and the patio area.

Friday; Definitely a yucky day today. Pretty cold and we have jobs to do. Dave needs AP20 so we shall find some. It takes us hours. We get sent from one business to another and no one knows where we can get small amount. Finally we find the only place in Ōamaru that does. It is a total rip, you have to pay for a whole lot even though you can only take a little, but we need it. If you are wanting to start a business in Ōamaru, I can highly suggest a proper landscape supplier is a huge gap in the market. Once we got Cory on some jobs Rowan dropped me at AA to do my learners test and he went to pick up the trailer. It has been 20 years since I did my test. I practiced which I am glad I did as there are extra stupid questions in there now. The weirdest ones are mechanical questions like what causes your engine to seize? Also quite a few about what fines and demerits you get when you brake certain laws. Stupid! Any way I got one wrong and that was because I did it too fast and didn’t look at the question properly. With the yucky weather we got Cory to put up these doors we got for free along the wall in the garage. It continues the random theme of the studio room. The no more gaps was dry now so we could pour the concrete for the shower base. It turned out well, we did it in two pours.

Saturday; Today we have Cory and Presley. Up on the roof! There is a hole from where the old vent pipe was, that got fixed up. There was also a leak from a nail so Cory spent the morning making sure it was all good up there and then he did some exterior sanding. So close to painting, it takes a long time to prep and I want it done properly.

Sunday; A breezy morning, I applied my down time into writing last week’s blog. I was getting far behind. After a goodbye to Danny and a clean up we headed into Till St. It is a perfect day for painting but it really needs more work before we can carry on. Rowan wanted to check out a yacht to use as “garden art.” Really it would be more of another room at Herbert. It didn’t tickle my fancy but it is his project. Our problem is when would we have time to do anything with it! Well after lunch we got back to Herbert and I got some small things done. I organised the boxes of stuff at the front of the container and I finally planted some oregano and coriander. My potatoes are doing really well. We ended up watching a movie with our neighbours and I went straight to bed. Rowan made dinner, but I was happy to just get some sleep.

Monday; Strange day, everything was just tough. It is like someone drugged us. It was a struggle to get some work completed at Till St but we trucked along. Cory worked on the exterior prep and I played with levelling out the floor in the bathroom. I really enjoyed the process. All those years of watching my dad plaster really helped. Finally a few questions from the Otago Regional Council to answer. The reply from that is we will have a draft tomorrow. I hope that is good news! I think they will give us a bunch of conditions to work with, which is absolutely fine. When we got back to Herbert we went for our ride. It was pretty cold and I got up to 80km. The fastest I have gone so far. I am surprised my little moped could reach that high haha.