Tuesday; This should have been our first day. Sure there were challenges but it was all calm and solutions were abundant. I had a much more relaxing day today. I do think the engineer may think I am a crackhead because I wanted to hug him and I got teary.

3 diggers, a wheelbarrow and countless trucks. Skevingtons’s boys got straight into making the driveways. Chris got onto finishing off his job and keeping the wheelbarrow very busy. Morgan who delivered our container took the wheel of the barrow all day. Rowan took charge of keeping the boys working in an efficient manor. We want to finish with that wheelbarrow today so we don’t pay for it anymore than necessary. The lovely Leona came to our rescue and took a couple of photos artistically of the house to make a photo board sign. We had this huge digger pull out the half dead willows. That certainly got the attention of the neighbourhood. The kids across the stream watched in the lunch break and played with diggers and trucks on the other side. I think we put on a good show! Early afternoon James the engineer showed up with Dean. Together they had a great plan to rectify our issue and it will be a bit costly but no where near as scary as we were lead to believe. It was another big day and we are very tired but we are getting there!

Wednesday; We hoped to be at Till St today but we are needed more in Palmerston. Chris calls us and asks if we should not be there today and go tomorrow as we will be in each other’s way while the boys get the driveways done. Rowan and I decide to spend the day at Till St getting some photos so we can go online. We have been so busy with Palmerston we had to put all the appraisals off. Leona sold our place in Herbert years ago and she has been a great friend to us. We finally get it all online.

https://www.trademe.co.nz/property/residential-property-for-sale/auction-4853084109.htm

Thursday; Rowan and I split again. I am in Till St he is in Palmerston with the diggers and mud. We never got a chance to wallpaper the bedroom wardrobe and I personally love the old wallpaper but Leona thinks it is worth covering. It is not an easy task and I am constantly interrupted by phone calls and visits all day. At one point Leona runs in and says I need to disappear she has a viewing. So I tidy up as best as I can and go down the road for a coffee. Tony comes to drop off the building report and Glenn comes to give me the electrical certificate. Talk about all go. But here is something awesome. In the cupboard I peel back the wallpaper gently to see if I can see a date on the newspaper. Wow the Christian record and it is for 25th December 1875! The house is older than I thought close to 150 years. Wow what a cool discovery. I found a couple of other newspapers with the same year. Not exactly concrete evidence but it could mean the house is at least that old.

Rowan is with Chris and Cory and they are working to the letter of the engineer to make sure everything is done right. Unfortunately it is a bit wet today which is not ideal!

Rowan gets to Herbert about an hour before me. I got 90% of what I wanted to do completed.

Friday; An early start. Rowan and I head to Christchurch to pick up an engine for Noodly and a dishwasher for the house. While we were at Trade Depot picking up the dishwasher we ended up buying a cracked bath for $10. My plan is to take the drain out and add more holes and use it as a fancy white plant pot or as a raised garden. Either way it saved it from the landfill. The engine gets put on by a forklift and I wonder how we will get it off. That’s a tomorrow problem. We take our time coming back and op shop our way down to break up the drive. We take the dishwasher to Till St and sit it there. We can install it later. I painted the front doorstep. It will be ready for people to walk on for the open home.

Saturday; A day here at Herbert. The place is a tram-smash. First to get this engine off the trailer so we can load it with stuff to go to Palmerston. Rowan has an idea on how to get it off. Our neighbour Ron stops and helps us. Yay for awesome neighbours. It wasn’t too bad, we got it off without incident. Back at the land and where to begin. We put some large items in the trailer first then fill up the rest with screws and letterboxes. It looks marginally better. We will need another day or two to make it a lot better. Rowan and I start on the cast iron bath. We have an old double skinned fireplace that should make a great outdoor bath.

Late afternoon we headed to Till St to finish off some last minute things like put the dishwasher in properly. Yay the house is ready for its first open home.

Sunday; We both spent the day organising Herbert a bit more. Now we can fit the motorbikes back under the shelter. My motorbike is still at Till St and we will probably leave Rowan’s there too when we pop over to Sydney. Sounds like the open home went well. With a couple of groups through. I hope we have a new rateable valuation come back soon. Everyone is put off by the house value only being $20k. Down here these things matter where most places people see a low RV as a good thing as it means you pay less rates. But I don’t think they have worked that out down here yet haha. In hindsight we should have spent the day reading books and going for a walk on the beach. At least this was a very chill day in comparison to the last 7 days.

Monday; We got cold, we got wet! Today we were in Palmerston with Chris attempting to compact in the gravel. Unfortunately we had some rain in the night and it is absolutely drenching us. Luckily it isn’t all day but this is causing heaving. Which is when the water comes through all the clay and gravel and it turns to mush, like a quicksand. We carry on where we can before Dean comes out to give us some advice. All we can do at this point is stop and wait a few weeks for it to dry out. We can’t do much else but that. We could dig down further but it will just cost a ridiculous sum of money we are better off waiting it out. By 2pm we were all packed up to go. Rowan and I are not worried, you can’t change it. We will hope the next few weeks are reasonably dry and take it from there. A little bit of an Aurora last night. We didn’t go out to look at it, no point after we had that amazing night back in May.