Tuesday; Today we have a heat pump coming! Very exciting, it is going to make the interior work very easy. I have washing to catch up on and I have a lot organising to do. Rowan is feeling crap so I leave him to chill in the small room with the heater on. I start making a plan of attack for everything that is left to do. The heat pump installers arrive after lunch. The machine is massive! Thankfully it will just fit where the guy thought it was best. I love the location over the door, you don’t see it as you walk into the house. It isn’t such an eyesore and it heats all the way to the back of the house. Once it was running on full it only took 10min to heat the whole house. Absolute magic! No need for a bathroom heater. Once they had finished up we tried out the shower and went back to Herbert.

Wednesday; Our day got turned upside down, we planned to do some work in Herbert and Cory was coming out. That has now changed to tomorrow. We had a catch up with Leona and did some paperwork. I have set up our meeting for tomorrow and we have a massage in the afternoon. Leona got us sushi for lunch, yum. It has been ages since we have had dinner or lunch with her. The day goes pretty fast and I can’t really remember everything we did. But I do remember getting to try out the bath! It was really good to have a bath, I can’t actually remember the last time I had a bath. I have had a few hot tubs but not a bath in a very long time. It did use all of the hot water haha. So poor Rowan had a second hand bath, lucky for him I didn’t pee in it! lol

Thursday; Wahoo, our second consent has come through. I paid the council, it will take a few days before stamped plans come through. I guess I better show you what we are up to.

This is a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom 73sqm compact home. We are building two of them on two different titles. This has been keeping us rather busy. We are finally ready to break ground. Tama is our builder and he is ready when we are, the timing has worked out perfectly. I can’t believe it has taken 7 months to get here, I thought it would take 3 months at the most haha. What is the rule? Twice as long twice as much? I hope it isn’t twice as much haha. We were going to build one at a time, but our resource consent means we have to go both at once for the earthworks. This whole thing is all new to us, we have learnt a lot already and I am sure we will learn a lot more. I feel like I need a lesson on how a house is built. Tama has been great and I am sure he will keep holding our hands.

Cory has come to Herbert to help out moving some stuff around. Chris our bobcat man is coming to build the retaining wall end of the week. Cory didn’t tell me to after, but he had his birthday this week. Another year older another year wiser. Cory was unloading iron while I organised the plumbing parts and I started making a pile to go to the tip shop and a pile of stuff to go south for building. Like the letterboxes which I now have 7 of them! Rowan helped out quite a bit for someone who is still under the weather. Once we got the stuff shifted that we wanted we convoyed to Till St. There Cory loaded up (hopefully) our last lot of waste to the dump. It is a really nice day, it is beautiful and sunny but man we have been getting some heavy frosts. The camper has had ice inside! Once we were all loaded up we went out to do some returns of items we haven’t used for the plumbing. We have a meeting with Eugene at Mitre10 to go through costs to get a better understanding. Mitre10 have been fantastic with holding our hands. We get the load dumped and grab some pizza for a late lunch/breakfast. It is 2.45pm and Cory is about to head off, so we quickly feed him some pizza before he goes. I give Rowan a beard trim and we have a shower and go back to Herbert. Oh our afternoon massages were cancelled as the lady is sick. Probably for the best as Rowan is still congested. We need a bit of wood to take back to Till from our pile in Herbert. Rowan goes to load up and I get the camper sorted as I had the mattress up to give it some air. Rowan got stuck over the other side of the land. I had just come over to help and use some planks of wood to try get it out when Chris came along with his bobcat and got a chain to yank us out. Thanks neighbour! He told us our Ōamaru blocks are coming on Monday and they will dump them anywhere. So we best be here to make sure the camper doesn’t get blocked in!

Friday; A very productive day. We ran out of gas last night after dinner. This morning we used the last of our camping gas to make a coffee. It was so low we had to use the camping trick of using our hand warmth to boil the water. I have Fred here today and I plan to use every last minute of his time. He has a list a mile long and he manages to tick them all off! I have a lot of trim work to be done which is most important so I can paint and wallpaper. There is the dining room, the exit hallway, kitchen and a little left in the living room. Fred also gets the floor base down in the kitchen. I undo the packs of vinyl and lay them out to come up to temperature. The house has to stay warm for 48 hours after I stick them down. If you don’t they can expand or contract and you get gaps or they push out. We learnt that one the hard way renovating 7 years ago. Cory was also here today and he achieved a lot too. He emptied the garage from the wood and stacked up the furniture from the main bedroom into the garage. Only the carpet remains in the bedroom, which I can easily work around. He then got stuck into pulling out all the nails in the studio ceiling ready for plywood. We grabbed some finished ply on clearance for $40 a sheet because it has some scratches. Rowan and I played helper. I scraped the floor ready for Fred. The kitchen floor is disgusting thick full of food, dirt and dog hair.

Saturday; It is rather nice coming in to a toasty home. We haven’t been living in the house and it is rather cold yet we haven’t had any mice wanting to nest here. My bait has been left untouched. Mission today get this vinyl down. Rowan is feeling like pants still. I get his help as I need it. I get rather frustrated throughout the process but I get it all done! Now to keep the house warm for 2 days so it adheres properly. I will paint the trim and get the silicone on so we can put the oven in place. Oh and doesn’t the kitchen look better without those side panels!

At lunchtime we go a couple blocks over to an open home which is extremely comparable to our place. Unfortunately we can’t afford to build and keep this place like we intended. I have made so many funky decisions that I wouldn’t have done if I knew we were going to sell it. I hope the people love the quirky. We are in the steampunk capital after all!

Sunday; Day off! I need a day of chill before jumping into a full on week. I have a lot I want to achieve and only so much time. I will be really pushing myself. But today, I don’t want to achieve much at all. Have a relaxing day and then dig deep tomorrow. Rowan’s friend Sarah is in town so we end up in Ōamaru late morning. While we are here I may as well get the undercoat on… Mmm that is dry. I may as well get the top coat on….

Okay my day off has turned into a day on. Bugger. At least I can get the silicone on in the morning and the appliances out of the living room!

Monday; Today I got a lot done, it was later than I really wanted to work but at least I got 95% through my list. We started in Leona’s office as I had some stuff to print for Tama. Also it was good to have a catch up with her. We had a meeting with Tama so we can get our ducks in a row to start the foundations. Rowan and I have to build the perimeter fence before we start. We have set a start date for the end of the month. Later on the day we got our stamped plans for the second house. Shit just got real! Haha

I got the wood putty done on the wooden part of the living room. Patched all the small bits for wallpaper. I also got an undercoat on the ceiling in the living room. I also did some of the silicone in the kitchen so we got the appliances out of the living room and into the kitchen where they belong. Rowan worked on the picket fence rails. Working late has sucked when I am an early riser. Tomorrow I am to start early and finish early.