And just like that we have a second house! Rowan and I are not much help at this stage of the build apart from helping pick items up or hold a tape measure.

We have been told last minute we need scaffolding, so now we are scrambling to get that sorted. This may cause a few weeks delay.

Leona asked us to take drone pics of her new listing up Mt Misery Road. Isn’t it awesome? Right on the river, lots of potential. It was a school outdoor education centre and for the last 8 years it has been rented to a family of 10. There is the main house, a little two bedroom cottage behind it, another two room bunk room, storage sheds, plus girls and boys ablutions. That is just the upper part of the property. Lower down are another two large rooms and bathrooms. Oh the endless possibilities. You would want to live there and run it like a business. Weddings? Eco farm? A few acres and all those buildings a mere $570k price. If Rowan and I were settling down we would buy it in a heartbeat.

Thursday is here, we had booked Chris is for Friday but we did a bit of swapping around. I have been wanting to get this done for a long time. Let’s make a proper water course. It gives us a lot more usable land and I get to plant it out with some natives and hopefully have some wildlife. The job was just finished when the rain hit. Chris will come back in a few weeks and smooth it out more when it has dried up a bit. He will also put the bridge into place.

Woke up to a nice little wetlands. It rained and rained, it didn’t take long at all to fill up.

Today we are heading to Christchurch to get our stuff out of storage. National storage are well I am not sure what the correct term would be. Price gouging? Predatory pricing? Basically they advertise a good rate, wait for all your stuff to be in there and increase the price over the years while still having units available at the lower price. It went from $190 per month to $320. We decided it was just getting out of hand and it’s time to get it all out. Luckily we didn’t have much left in there as we have been slowly removing our stuff.

I have so many things on my mind I thought I was under control but we had to go back to Herbert to get the keys to unlock the container and I forgot that we were to meet up with Tama. We eventually got on the road properly and was quite a bit later than we had aimed for. We got into Christchurch in the evening.

Lovely Rick and Liz have taken us in again and will even store some of our things if we can’t fit it all in this one load.

It takes us all day to get our stuff out. We started with all the boxes and decided it was easier to take 90% of it to Brooklands and sort it there. The last load was a haberdashery and some museum specimen cabinets. Rowan went off to cook dinner while I carried on with packing. I got most of it done before dinner. We left Rowan to do the last bits as Liz and I went to see a play at the botanic gardens. It was really funny and very well done.

Sunday, time to head back. There are a few shops I want to visit before heading back. I have to think about lighting and fixtures for the houses.

Rowan noticed the towbar wasn’t looking right. I tried to find a mechanic but none are open. we called AA at Trade Depot and it took 3 hours to sort us out. The mechanic came and told us not to tow the trailer and that he will get a tow truck to come get it. Looks like we are missing a bolt and there is a crack. I am not sure if the lady on the phone was just unrealistic but Rowan refuses to pay just over $2k to town the trailer back. Finally she thinks of doing a long haul load. We agree and a truck comes to get the trailer. There is nothing wrong with the trailer which makes it easy for the tow guy.

Not much happening in sunny Palmerston. The scaffolders should be here tomorrow.