Tuesday; Wallpaper tick! The final room is now done. This is my favourite one out of all of them. We had to work around each other today as Jas was in here finishing off oiling and we were wallpapering. It worked out fine though and we got it all done. We only just had enough, Rowan searched threw off cuts to jigsaw piece together the last few bits. I spent an hour painting the picket fence to see how far I could get. It really is fiddly work. But once I got a rhythm and worked out the easiest way it was fine. I will continue the fence when I have more of the inside under control. Cory worked today in the studio and workshop with the leftover MDF. It just helps tidy the rooms. We finished earlier today and I went for a quick ride as it was a beautiful afternoon. It felt good to get out on my bike again.

Wednesday; I’m all alone, yay. I love a day by myself with no distractions. Well Dave is here for a little bit. But really not much in the way of a distraction. I have a few fiddly jobs to do today. Painting the green around the corbels o use a small art brush as it is much easier. I get a coat of white enamel on the door and shelves. I finally get a chance to get the fireplace paint on in the dining room. I then add some bling throughout. A bit of copper leaf and gold leaf. Sparkly! I decide I have had enough at 4pm and take a nice long bath.

Rowan was at Herbert helping Chris finish our wall. It is a two person job placing the blocks in the right place. I tried to look at in the dark but it was hard to really see. From what I can see it looks good.

Thursday; An early start with the container being dropped off in Palmerston. We had breakfast at Vanessa’s before meeting the Hiab driver on site. It is only moving a hop skip and a jump down the road. Our new container is being put on site. This will really help while we are building. After that we jumped into the car to get to Till Street. We moved the boat first in Herbert and picked up the trailer. Cory is well into it when we arrived. We grabbed the trailer to clear out some stuff from the gardens. Excess bricks and wood etc. For a bitsy day I still feel I achieved enough. I got the shelves wallpapered. The tiles stuck down. Team effort on the spider light, which looks amazing. Rowan did the other lighting. I finished the plastering in the little exit room. Which is really just a small back door area. In the afternoon I get a call from Tama, we have really bad weather coming our way, we need to delay for a week, we cannot dig in this much rain it will all turn to mud. I was just saying how mild it has been, we have had 17 degree days and barely any rain this winter. A few frosts but not many cold days. Typical. That’s okay we will push it out a week.

We ended up having dinner with Leona so it was a fairly late night. I am stuffed.

Friday; Fred is here today to fix the floor. He expertly fixes the bit I fell through haha. He also gets the shelves up next to the fireplace and finally new handle for our new glass front door. It looks better than I imagined. It is all coming together nicely. Cory finished off the undercoat on the fence. Which now looks much better. I try stay out of the way too and do jobs that are not getting in Freds way. I get some exterior paint touch ups done. I finish the toilet door paint. I spray some weeds and I try to put cayenne pepper in my sprayer to help stop the cats from pooping in my yard. It is a competition to who can claim my yard. They hate pepper so here we go. Oh it clogs up lol. We end up having another late night and end up having dinner again with Leona. Haha

Saturday; Fred is back this morning to put some extra screws into the roof. He said it would flag it in a builders report so we are more than happy to get a few xtra in there. Cory is working too on a Saturday. Just a few hours. I get him to clear the gardens and fill the trailer up with unwanted items. We are at the point where it is worth us brining a load home everyday to start clearing out things we don’t want for staging. I then got him clearing up the paths and patio so I can patch it this afternoon. I get 90% done with the fence yay. There is just some filler to sand tomorrow. It takes me a while to do the patching. It takes 4 bags of mortar, I finally finish at 6pm. I needed a light for the last bit. I pushed myself to get this done as Monday is not good, we have a load of rain coming and it will take a while to dry up, it did last time. I don’t want a massive puddle at the back door.

Sunday; We are taking it fairly easy. It is more of a prep day for the week. We come in a bit later and we leave early. Rowan brings my bike into Ōamaru to leave in the garage. This gets it out of the way while we are taking stuff back to Herbert. I get the undercoat done in the exit area and I finish gapping it. Rowan made a good headstart last night while I was getting the patches done. I got a coat of polyurethane on the copper and gold leaf. This will mean you can touch it without it coming off. I also got the seal and peel on the windows so I can give them paint tomorrow.

Monday; Rain, snow oooh. We have a heap of rain snow down to 300m it is said to be a bit wild. Right on queue the rain started at 6.05am. It is definitely more mild than predicted so far. We get into Till and I finish off the exit room paint. We are really on the loose end jobs now. It is all about getting tidy and doing those touch ups before the carpet comes in. I only have one room with painted skirting that may get a little damage but the layer insures it will be minimal. It feels good to potter along with no stress. Tonight we decide to stay in Kakanui, we had to empty the tank so we took Camele in with us today. I ended up getting straight into my pjs after