Tuesday; Take two! We have mentally prepared for not being able to go today. But I am hopeful we will be on the road in the afternoon. I have a few jobs I want to do today. Trade depot is first on the list. For Till we need a rangehood and a mirror. It takes a while to make a decision. There is a cheap damaged black oven I eyed up. Because the ceiling doesn’t have enough space we need to vent through the wall of the house. This means the rangehood is sitting on the wall next to the oven. We end up with an angular rangehood so that it hopefully fits in a bit better. I have my 6 monthly blood test, then go to get Rowan more hair stuff. He isn’t running out yet but I don’t want to worry about when he does. We throw in some op shops to fill some time. We get to catch up with Jo and Paul for lunch today. I am glad we get to see them, if it all went perfectly yesterday we wouldn’t have. Lunch was fantastic, it was really good to catch up. I got a call at 2.30pm to say the car is ready. We were having too much of a good time to leave. Jo has just moved in her mother so she can look after her. The picture is with Zack, such a cute dog, and now the leader of the pack of Jo and Paul’s two dogs. The three of them must get some attention on their walks. All of a sudden I realised the time and we had to hop foot it to the mechanic to get Camele. Luckily I checked the time because they close soon. We made it with time to spare. As we leave Rowan hears a funny noise but assumes it is the trailer. We get stuck in peak hour and we really notice it when we pull into the gas station. He drives around in circles and try to repeat the noise so we can work out what is wrong. Well there is no clearance for the new tyres we have. It is touching the wheel arch. When we go over a bump it touched the top. Mmm not good. By the time we work out the problem the mechanic is long gone. Luckily we weren’t planning on heading south. Hopefully it gets fixed easily. When we get back to Rick and Liz it is dark. The last lot of colour in the sky. We have a nice brinner (breakfast for dinner) with them.

Wednesday; Rowan calls the mechanic, they order different tyres but they won’t be in until the afternoon. We say our goodbyes and attempt to see Billy to pay him. No such luck. From there we head to the container to load up the back of Camele. We get a few stacks of boxes in. We are nearly at the point where we get past the cabinets and have all the childhood stuff. Camele handles the heavy load well. From there we go to trade depot. I have decided I do want the oven. We can’t fit it through the door, the next idea was the passengers seat. It is too tall and goes too close to the drivers seat. On the draw bar of the trailer it is. At AA we get the tyres changed, we get out of Christchurch at 1.30pm not bad for timing. A slow drive back to Herbert. A stop in Ashburton at the op shops, then on to Timaru where we make it to the St John’s before they close. We get to Till around 6pm and quickly take the oven inside and take the trailer off. We put it at the top of the hill. When we get to Herbert it is dark, I move the ute out of the way and we park up close to the container to unload. The outdoor light does a great job. Rowan stacks everything inside and I stay in the camper handing out each box. It doesn’t take long at all. By the time we finish and I make the bed and Rowan starts cooking the hot water is ready for the shower. I turn my alarm off, let’s sleep in tomorrow. I know it is ANZAC, but I am getting grumpy.

Thursday; Not a huge amount on the agenda today, we are tired. At Till St we unpack the kitchen, which is harder than it should be as there is a norwester wind that slows us down. We had to unload in a different way to make sure we didn’t end up with items flying down the street. It fits in the living room, I am sure not all of this will be used but I am thinking of using some in the bathroom. We will see. I water my plants, a lot of them are very thirsty. I have all these wonderful old crocs I purchased from Liz. They came out of a pub in the UK that her family owned. I don’t want to drill holes in them so I need some plastic pot liners. Once we got some washing done we headed back to Herbert to sort out stuff we dumped. We put a load of it on the other side of the land and it looks much better. Next door at Jim and Sylvia’s we catch up. Jim was nice enough to keep an eye on our property while we were away.

Friday; Cory is here today, he got the garage iron cladding done while we were away. He water blasted the garage for us then moved onto fixing up the studio. I fixed up the leaning pipe and planted them out with succulents. I got more washing done. We only just made it back with a clean pair of underwear each. Rowan helped out Cory and then Dave. Dave came in the afternoon to do more plumbing work. Annoyingly the waste for the shower was supposed to be a corner waste. Well it is a centre waste. Now we have more digging out to do. I was looking forward to having that shower put in place today. I sanded off the last little bits I needed to do. Tomorrow (weather permitting) we will spray the house. We ended up having dinner with Leona, KFC. Very gourmet haha. It was nice catching up with her.

Saturday; Cory can’t make it today, we are on our own. Let’s get this undercoat on. By the time we get the house brushed down and sweep away all the autumn leaves and dirt, then make sure everything is out of the way to spray. There is a light wind that will work in our favour for drying the south wall. The temperature is good. First attempt our Wagner is not priming. Googling doesn’t fix the problem, we better pull the machine apart. Well we don’t have time for that. Let’s go hire a sprayer. At Mitre10 there is a cheap sprayer for $500 that is a lot less than a new Wagner. Off we trot with a new sprayer. Now whanau take a moment with me… I know you all know what an awesome person I am, but I need to a smug moment here. About 3 weeks ago (and repeatedly) I said to Rowan “let’s make sure the sprayer is working and we have all the parts.” Well he checked the parts but didn’t attempt to run it. Now for the smug part. I held my tongue, I didn’t say I told you so, I said nothing. That is until after the whole thing was resolved and we finished painting for the day and were back at Herbert. I still didn’t say I told you so, I said aren’t I awesome for not haha. It really was a moment where I didn’t need to say anything because I knew in his head he was thinking Katie told me to do this weeks ago. Back to the new sprayer. Unfortunately most components we have don’t work with the machine. Rowan tightens it as much as possible but it is still dripping a bit. It’s a bit of wait and see! Rowan has a go and gets the undercoat on. Not too bad! It does pretty well for a cheap sprayer. The paint is drying fast, but the day is getting on. Tomorrow we will get a top coat or two on!

Sunday; Top coat here we come. It is super still here in Herbert. I hope there has been a coastal breeze at Till. The place is dry enough and ready for a top coat, we only have enough paint for one coat. Guthrie Bowron doesn’t open on the weekends. Not that it ends up making a difference as it gets dry enough to get a film on it but you wouldn’t want to do another coat. We do decide to run to Mitre10 and see if they can make the garage paint. They don’t do all of the Dulux colours but we are in luck. The lovely dark green I have chosen is called Waimarama. When we need more I will get another pail from them. We learnt this lesson the hard way years ago, make sure you stick to the brand and to the shop if you need more paint. Each brands base is slightly different which affects the colour and each place has different tinting machines which also affects the colour. The weather is perfect, the first coat goes on without a hitch. Cory and Presley have a few jobs like filling in the holes and taking out old broken glass in the studio. Most importantly cutting the concrete out to a middle waste ready for Dave tomorrow. Tomorrow looks promising for the next coat. Danny has his last day at the dump shop, we have dinner up Mt Misery to celebrate. It was a lovely evening and we get an amazing blood moon to watch. I also sell my wee motorbike to a guy on Facebook. He picks it up on Friday.

Monday; Get that paint on, wait, it is wet. We came in nice and early thinking we can get the paint on, no we need to wait there is too much dew on the house. That’s okay there is plenty to do. Rowan cuts the glass to replace all the broken panes in the studio. So that is 11 panes of glass and four entire windows. Basically every window had a problem or two haha. Cory got some last minute no more gaps in, anywhere I missed. He got the undercoat done on the barge boards and anywhere else that needed a bit. I am stuffed and ready to go home, but Dave is coming soon so we will wait. I do a bit of hand painting around taps and things the sprayer couldn’t get too. Then just a rough site tidy, it was all I had left in me. Dave didn’t take too long, and the beer all round made it much more pleasant. The rest of the week I will be behind a sander, get those windows done! Looking like a real house now. Our neighbours came over to complement the colours. Yes I know, I am clever and modest lol