Tuesday we are flying back to Christchurch, we are staying with Rick and Liz for a couple of nights. Rowan has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. on our way to the airport we get a your flight is canceled message. Bloody Jetstar, we normally avoid them like the plague because of this. But the flights were very cheap we couldn’t resist. We carried on to the airport as we had to get our hire car back. Once there we realised Jetstar is lying and our flight hasn’t been cancelled due to weather as every other flight is still going. As we line up to see when we can next get out, it is not until tomorrow. The flight we were supposed to be on is still running it is now taking the 9am passengers. I ask the desk person why are they able to fly at our time and we can’t. We ask to see a supervisor but are told they won’t come. So we march over to airnz and book a flight for the afternoon. It is the cheapest one available. Back in line at Jetstar for a refund. The people behind us tell us on the speaker over the airport it was reported to be a fault with the plane and it would be delayed. The fault turned into cancellation. Now if Jetstar tells you it is because of a weather event they don’t have to pay, where if it is their fault they do. This has been written about several times and they keep doing it because one, there are no consequences. Two, because it is much cheaper as most people don’t question it and just rebook. So Jetstar you will be refunding me and paying me for the cost of my flights on airnz, thanks!
We get to Brooklands later than we expected but we made it! It is great to see Rick and Liz, they had a great holiday in Bali. Unfortunately Rick’s dad passed away just before so he had to hurry back to the UK.
On Thursday Rowan and I make our way down to Ōamaru. We attempt to see Jerry and Margaret but they are not home. When I message Margaret she said she tried to visit us today in Herbert haha. We catch up with Leona and have dinner. I ask her if my house will sell. She is pretty confident it will. The buyer is coming tonight to measure up for curtains. A good sign indeed.
Rowan and I spend the weekend on Herbert. It is good having some time to get things organised. Pete and Bev take our leftover Axminster carpet for their cottage they are doing up. They have done heaps of work to it since we were last here. It is looking great. Rowan and I really want to get Herbert more the way we want it so it is relaxing for us when we are here.
Monday, we have Cory here today. He is helping with jobs in Herbert. There are 3 baths I will use raised herb gardens. He finished off the garden edging, it is now looking tidy. Our week is only a vague plan at the moment as we are waiting for contractors to get back to us before we can really plan what we are doing. I get a few jobs done, I painted the moped that we got out of a garden in Timaru, Rowan put it on a stand. I started work on the pot belly stove. It has a few leaks in the water jacket. I hope the cement I used will do the trick. Won’t know for 48 hours.
Tonight we get told the due diligence clause has been satisfied which means we are unconditional wahoo! Till Street has now sold!
Well we got up to nothing really. We had a chance to cook and bake loads of food for Bette. The freezer is now filled with lots of easy meals for her to reheat. Joanne has gone to Europe for a month and a bit. So better will be alone for a few weeks with different carers that come throughout the week. We did get an offer on the house of $350k which we countered and the lady waffled. While she was doing that another buyer came along and it ended up going into a multi offer. So we now have a two week wait in place but the house will hopefully be sold. The lady loves it and is already thinking about curtains, that’s a good sign. Rowan ended up going to the doctor here for a check up and I tell you what there are some vast differences with our systems. First you have a Medicare card which means you can go to any doctor and still get the government discount. The doctors were available in 10min. They did a thorough consultation and tested for nearly everything. When it all came back Rowan has been advised to drink less. No surprises there. He already planned to do 6 months dry when getting back. So definitely going to do it now. Doctors orders. Now I am not saying the Australian system is perfect but it appears to be a lot less underfunded and stressed like our system.
Auckland;
We fly into Auckland and pick up a hire car. We head straight to Beachlands to stay with my dad a couple of nights. It is really good to catch up with him. Rowan cooked the second night some delicious beef cheeks. Sue was working late so we had a late dinner. We slept in the new spare room which was Alice’s bedroom.
Saturday we headed back into central Auckland and waited at Emma’s house for Clare to come. It is great to see my mum and sister. Clare didn’t know I was here, we were trying to make me a surprise but she told me she had an idea I was here. We are celebrating Clare’s 40th Birthday this weekend. We all go out to lunch and then I leave Rowan at Emma’s with the cat. We head out to get massages and our nails all done. Ellery, Emma’s daughter gets her nails done too and she sits very still and waits for the polish to dry. We all head back to the airbnb and catchup. My youngest sister Sarah is flying in from Rotorua after she finished work. We end up having Thai food delivered for dinner. We made our own paint and sip. We decided the fake flowers would be our inspiration. I am not sure my message went down well on top of my flowers. I thought it was pretty accurate.
Sunday we headed out for breakfast, nine of us in total. It is dad’s day, great to have us all together. It is very rare now that we are all together, I am mostly the missing one haha. From the cafe Rowan and I head to Whangaparāoa to see Nana. We meet at Runamuck first to see the progress. It is all growing back nicely. My aunty Deb and Uncle Sam are up here too. They are not staying the night at Nans, tonight it will just be us three. Nana is exactly the same, I can barely keep up with her. We all go out for a nice meal at a local Italian place. It was very good. Rowan and I do a few little jobs around the place and I fill all the salt and pepper grinders, that was grandpas job.
Monday; We catch up with Rowan’s cousin Lynne who lives out in Stillwater. I met her at Mudgee family trip a year ago. It was great to catch up with her. Tonight we are staying with Emma and Paul. We planned to stay with Nana but the timing was bad for our flight, we would have been stuck in traffic.
Sorry for the delay, I have been highly unmotivated to blog. I will skip through a lot of the last few weeks. This one is more detailed as I wrote most of it before coming to a halt. I also lost a few days and I really can’t be bothered rewriting it all.
Tuesday; We had Cory in Herbert today helping us clear up the place. It will be nice to come back from Sydney and not have an explosion to deal with. We are getting there slowly. One more day of tidying should do the trick. I finally got to sit down and catch up on paperwork. I had receipts coming out in all directions.
Wednesday; A fairly good day. We caught up with our friend Liz and we got all the jobs we wanted done in Palmerston. It made sense to spend one more day here before going away so we could take another load of materials and we got a bit more tidy. I had a chat to our neighbour and brought her some cookies. Also gave the Skevingtons crew some beer and wine to say thank you for all there last minute help. Carl came to stabilise the ground with hydroseed which then means our consent with the Otago Regional Council is complete. Yay back to one council for our builds. I got around to booking our return flights and we are coming back via Auckland.
Thursday; We have a day here with Cory doing some jobs around Herbert. I have a few small jobs I want to do. The boat needs a little clean out so I get that done first and then move all the paint and plant pots I dumped from Till. Cory works on a garden edge to put a clear line between the dirt and driveway.
In the afternoon we get chatting to Jim and end up having a few beers. Sylvia calls and asks Jim if he has been patting the cat, which he hasn’t. She is away in Christchurch. When I go to the toilet I give the cat a cuddle. In my infinite wisdom I pick the cat up for a cuddle and think it can sit on my lap outside. Well I go to put the cat down and little did I know it was an indoor cat only. So I spend the next 5 hours trying to get the cat which I could see for a bit but has gone into the hedges and won’t let me find it. The stray cat that they feed is very dominant so we try to trap it in the garage over night. I tell you now I am never touching another cat again haha.
The stray cat is too smart and realises something is up. So I over feed it and hope he doesn’t go for the indoor cat. We end up giving up and hoping Ally has gone inside.
Friday; A fairly easy day. I get an early text from Jimmy to say the cat came home. Yay, bloody cat. Probably hid at home the whole time. Today we are just slowly making our way to Christchurch. We are in no hurry and we slowly make our way up. We arrive around 5pm and get ready. Rowan cooks dinner for Tabitha and I. I am glad we didn’t have to drive up at a ridiculous time. I came with my own linen and bedding to save changing sheets.
Saturday, Sunday & Monday; After landing in Sydney and settling in, we spend the day doing a small amount of errands and important things like getting our nails done. Sunday we head off around lunchtime to Mudgee. It took a while for Bette to feel well enough and get ready to travel. We packed Peter & Grahams ashes into a basket. We arrived in the beautiful Forgandenny bed and breakfast. It is almost a year to the day when we were here last. Rowan found out his sister Melanie is not coming to put the ashes in the family plot. He is disappointed that she hasn’t come to support. On Monday afternoon we put the ashes into the plot. It was done very well and we all had a shot or two of whiskey. The boys had a few too. Rowan hurried the rest of the bottle in with them, just in case they get thirsty.
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.
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.
Tuesday; The weather is gross. The perfect day to be in bed with a good book and lots of tea. Well we are not going to do that. We are going to work and attempt to stay warm. I have tidy up jobs to do and finishing jobs here and there. I want there to be nothing on the floors for the carpet man tomorrow. Glenn the sparky is coming early to finish off the wiring. He said he will be here before the carpet man. Cory is helping get organised today and we are going to have him as much as possible this week. I want to get agents looking through the house this weekend. Later on I window shop for plants in the garden. I don’t want to spend much as I saw the new neighbours pull out most of the their gardens after the lady put them all in to help sell her house haha. You can’t guess what people want. Some may want none and very low maintenance, some may want a cottage secret garden. We have a bit of hail at Till, it is snowing down to 300m, we can certainly feel the bitterness.
Wednesday; Rowan and I are splitting up today. Rowan is meeting the fencing guy and a roading guy in Palmerston. I would have gone but I have too many people coming in the early morning. I get in to Till at 6am and start sweeping the floors and making sure everything is ready for Lance the carpet installer. I have Laura and her husband Alistair coming to help today and I want them cleaning and gardening. I need to go to Mitre10 to pick up the plants but don’t want to leave until the sparky is here. I would hate to miss him and he not get everything done. So I wait and I wait some more. Obviously I am doing stuff. I eventually message him and he won’t be coming until later. Dam I am here way too early. You may remember I wanted to embroid my meat safe doors for the kitchen. Well I am cheating, I don’t have time for a new skill. I purchased some old doily’s from op shops and I will see them on. I sat there and completed that when Laura arrived. I got them on to cleaning while I ended up more coffee maker/supervisor. I did manage to do a few things but it was hard to concentrate when I had to keep the workers like bees. Cory and Rowan arrive just before lunch with some food. We sent Cory to Herbert to load up the trailers and bring in some mulch for the gardens. Alistair planted the plants Cory mulched. We got to the end of the mulch and Alistair said if you get another load that he is happy to get it down. It looked so good we decided to mulch the top part where we put the hay. What a transformation. I spent a little over $100 for the flowers and I managed to save quite a few plants from that garden I ripped back out. Under $500 for the materials. Can’t complain about that!
Lance got all the prep done and the underlay down in three rooms. He even got the living room Axminster mostly in. It really has been a productive day. Long but productive.
I painted the bathroom floor another coat just before we left for the night. Glenn did come and did 2 out of three jobs. I had to call Fred and ask him for a huge favour. He is coming back Friday to install the rangehood. Glenn left his hole saw kit as ours don’t go that big!
Thursday; Today is a lot more relaxed. I have a couple of small touch ups and then I sit down to start outlining the blurb for the house. Our friend Danny is back from Invercargill and he pops in to see the transformation and we end up having lunch out at a local cafe. We were hoping Lance would finish the carpet today but he will be back tomorrow to finish the main bedroom.
Friday; A big day. I worked around Lance and did some more touch up painting. It really is getting to the small annoying jobs. Lance gets the carpets done in time. I get the vacuum out and get them as clean as possible before the carpet cleaner arrives. As this is second hand carpet I wanted to make sure the carpets are in great knick. Cory loads up our trailer and is working on things in the background. We tried to stay out of the way of Lance so he could get on with it. After the carpet cleaner and Cory left we made the decision to unload the trailer at Herbert and come back. We are dumping at Herbert and it really is looking like a pigsty. I hope the neighbours don’t get too annoyed. We head back to Till Street and do a little more work before showering and getting ready for the quiz night. We set the heat pump up and dehumidifiers and fans. I want all this carpet to be dry tomorrow. We are doing a school fundraiser quiz. We did terrible but it was a lot of fun and a good night out. We are shattered when we finally get home at 11pm.
Saturday; An early start, we get to Till St at 6am. Running on very little sleep. Our first appraisal is at 7am, the last is 4.30pm. I left 1.5hr gaps thinking we would have time to stage between agents. Well most took up over an hour. Only one was a quick 20min in and out. We kind of get most of the furniture in but we don’t really have the energy to do much. I could easily nap but with 9 agents coming it just wasn’t going to happen. We did have a window cleaner come which I thought great I don’t have to do anything for the windows. Well they didn’t do a great job so I am redoing a lot of them. More work I don’t want! By the time we got to Herbert I went straight to bed.
Sunday; Cory comes to help out today. Yay. We get a lot done with the staging. Not all of it though. It is 90% there. We plan to be here Tuesday to finish off and get photos etc. I have been so busy but also tired I haven’t really been taking photos of the progress sorry about that!
Monday; I am still calming down. Wow what a crazy day. It is finally here the digger driver is here, a builder is here. Palmerston is finally moving. But of course it doesn’t go as smooth as we thought it would. It was a really stressful day and I am annoyed and frustrated. It all started well. Chris got stuck a few times trying to remove the soil and we ended up calling the local civil contractors for help, Skevingtons. They got us a wheelbarrow on steroids but we are hitting it from someone else in Dunedin, I don’t want to know what that will cost us. We end up with the Skevington crew starting on the driveways and Chris doing the house pads. Murray the builder definitely got me in a fluster and everyone was making it all feel doom and gloom. Our house pads are deeper than expected, we have more top soil than expected. Well not really true, we had the ground tested when we purchased the land and Rowan and I knew it was fairly deep.
What is frustrating is we knew, we told, we asked multiple people and no one could give us a straight answer. Do we go pile foundation or concrete? The unanimous answer was, whatever you like. They cost roughly the same. But no one said to us, if you go with concrete and we have to dig further than “this” to good ground you will need an engineer to design the foundation. So here I am calling as many people as I can for help. I have Dean (the guy we purchased off) who also tests the ground on the phone. I was sending a SOS to every engineer I could find. It honestly was horrific. We got back to Herbert and I was just a big ball of nope. I am done for the day. It doesn’t sound like the end of the world talking to the engineer but I was put on full throttle and now I have burned out.
What was supposed to be an easy fun day watching the ground break ended up being way too overwhelming. On a positive note I did have a fairly good start of the day and by the time I calmed down I was fine. Talk about trying to put out fires. We won’t be at Till tomorrow we will be in Palmerston meeting the engineer.
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
Tuesday; I left Rowan to be in Herbert with Chris. I went into work and I got a lot achieved. Jas was really helpful with getting stuff out my way and cleaning ahead of me. I got the second bedroom fully painted, it is now ready for wallpaper. I got a coat on the ceiling in the dining room and I got the first coat of green on the window. It was a wet day. I think the gardens are relieved as we haven’t had any rain for a long time.
Wednesday; Dad, it is not Griffiths Plastering level but I gave it my best haha. The base of the hearth needs repair, I mortar the bricks into place and then fill in all the gaps. Now it is safe to use as an ember shouldn’t be able to get under the tile and set the whole house on fire. Now to wait for it to dry. I got a second coat of green on the window and a first coat on the cupboards and shelves. I was a bit worried with the green but it has grown on me. I wasn’t feeling motivated but decided to tackle the wallpaper in the second bedroom. This vintage gingham wallpaper is so much fun. I don’t have enough to do the whole room so we will have a clash coming!
Thursday; I got the last layer of blue paint in the main bedroom. It looks a bit odd with the maroon walls. It will really change when I get the wallpaper up. We went into Professionals to get some paperwork done and have lunch with Leona. It has been a while since we caught up with her. The wallpaper clash is happening. Vintage 60s florals with vintage 60s gingham. I love it so much. It is such a clash it just weirdly works.
Friday; Today Rowan and I are splitting. He is in Palmerston this morning with Tama and I am at Till St with Jas. Tama is a week early and he came down to drop off the temporary fence. Chris also came back today to do some more work on the wall. It looks so much different now. It isn’t not finished but it is getting there! We have so much more room.
We must have a neighbour out to get us. First they complained we had a fire. Now we have a letter from the council saying our trailer can’t be parked in the same spot for more than 7 days. I would have thought it was obvious that we are building a wall and that is why our boat is on the berm. I am thinking of writing a cool sign up and putting it there for them to read and can’t do anything about. I know our place is looking like mess but it is a work in progress. I am sure if they could complain about our camper being here they would. Rant over
I got stuck in and finished the ceiling in the living room. It took me a moment to get into the swing of things as I couldn’t remember the consistency I made and the technique I used. Note to self, when doing something creative for the first time don’t stop haha. While I juggled that I did coats of paint on the door in the second bedroom. I got that ceiling done and Rowan popped in for tools and for some lunch. Jas is on wood putty filler, it is a full day for her. I then got the last coat of green on the shelves in the dining room. After that I got the last coat of blue on the fireplace. I was wallpapering the door when I realised the time and I better get going. I paid Jas and told her to shut the door behind her. I have an hour massage to get to. After the massage I went home to shower before going out to Herbert. All in all a productive day.
Saturday; A bit of a lazy morning. We don’t have a day off this week so we may as well have a bit more of a relaxed morning. Today’s mission is to get that wallpaper finished in the second bedroom. I have a bit of paint to do first. There is some door frames that I still haven’t got to so I have a bit of filler and paint to do. We get the wallpaper finished as it starts getting dark. Time to go home and do it all again tomorrow.
Sunday; Wallpaper day. Rowan and I have committed to getting this room done today no matter how long it takes us. This wave wallpaper is great. An awesome wallpaper that is very calming and neutral in a way. I love it so much! It is perfect exactly what I envisioned. That room was so dark with its deep purple colour that I didn’t realise how much natural light it has until we made it light and bright. We made a few mistakes but nothing we couldn’t fix and we were all done just before 5pm. It definitely had some fiddly bits but we worked as a team to get it done. Rowan enjoys wallpaper as it is like a puzzle.
Monday; Salmon Monday. First thing you walk into now is a pink tropical surprise in Ōamaru. We had Jas and Cory working today too. Jas was prepping the dining room for wallpaper tomorrow. Cory mowed the lawns and tidied the edges. Man it looks better. He spent the rest of the day painting the fence. Rowan and I got all the wallpaper done in the living room. It had a lot of fiddly bits and it took some planning to make sure it all works. It annoys me the bit we haven’t done but that is because a shelf is going up there. It makes the room look incomplete. I will be much happier when it is up.
Tuesday; I felt slow today. I got the no more gaps done on the ceiling of the living room and anywhere else I needed it. I then got the sander out and did all of that. There was a little bit to do by hand. By the time I did all that is was lunchtime. After lunch I started on the ceiling, I am doing a texture which is taking a lot longer than just painting but it looks pretty good. I got a third of the way through by 3pm. We had our showers and went back to Herbert. The deal was an early start an early finish. We popped next door to say hello to the neighbours and ended up building a bed for Sylvia. Jimmy came home not long after we had finished it. We ended up having dinner with them. I am envious of their lovely fire! Finally light enough to take a photo of the blocks for you.
Wednesday; A full on day, with three people all arriving at the same time. We had Dave, Cory and Jas all at once. Jas is friends with Laura and they are on a cleaning mission for me. I want all the house with clean enough surfaces so I can paint. They got through a lot of my list but of course there is more to do! My plan was to be painting while they did that but it was too hard. I had organising to do and it was more important. Sorting out the tools, taking loads back to Herbert and only keeping here what we now need. I need to access the dining room so I can paint it. Cory tackled the studio with some plywood. It looks much better than it did. He also did a few other jobs but Rowan was on that so I don’t know exactly. By the end of the day I was spent. We ended up with takeaways for dinner and getting back to Camele around 7pm. Let’s do it all again tomorrow! Oh and what a beautiful job Rowan did with replacing the glass in the bedroom door. We couldn’t get an exact match but this glass works perfectly for our quirky home.
Thursday; Rowan is staying at Herbert waiting for Cory to arrive while I go to Till. I have quite a few jobs to do, but when do I not have quite a few jobs to do haha. I have to sand the GIB stopping in the dining room and unfortunately Rowan has all the batteries so my tools are useless. I use a plug in sander and turn the house to dust. Don’t worry I wear a mask. After the house is covered in a fine white dust I move on to my last coat of plaster. Just as I finish the door gets a knock. Oh yay it is Kathleen and her dog Barry. I texted her last night and told her to knock if she is walking past. Now that I am inside I hardly see any of my neighbours. I have been keeping an eye out but haven’t had much luck! It was lovely seeing her and she hasn’t been inside the house so I showed her around. It also has the benefit of not standing out in the cold. A package arrived while we were chatting. Yay I got my custom house number for the fence!
I ended up on the phone to my dad while I wipped up some mortar and to use on the fireplace and realised I made too much. That’s okay I have some holes that need filling outside. I get a bit artistic with some bits lying around. Wabi sabi at a shabby chic level. Wabi sabi is the Japanese art of fixing things that are broken and leaving them looking repaired which in itself makes the object more beautiful. I started filling in gaps in the main bedroom and Cory arrived. I got him onto the jobs we wanted done here. While I continued on in the bedroom. I didn’t get very far and then I had him pulling out any random screws and nails for me. Rowan arrived not long after and then took off to go to Placemakers. Andy from Bunnings wanted to catch up so we he had a bit of a meeting with him. Before we know it Cory is going home and we need to go too. Rowan is making curry for dinner and needs time to get it done.
Friday; Today we have a visitor actually two. Paul from Christchurch is here with his brother Harry from Sydney. Harry came over for the week to celebrate Paul’s birthday. Happy big birthday Paul! They come check out the house and we go out for a lovely breakfast. Jas is here today finishing off some jobs in the house. She gets the last of the cleaning done and then gets on to filling some gaps in the smaller bedroom. I
can’t believe how much different the house looks after today. Rowan and I attack the picket fence. It takes three tries before we actually get the hang of it. The first time we ended up on a slant as I wasn’t holding the spacer in tight enough at the bottom. We got there in the end and it looks great. Yes we are going to paint it white. It is the proverbial white picket fence. It also feels much more private in the backyard and in the two front rooms. I am ecstatic.
Saturday; Gap filling. This is my day, the whole day. Filling in gaps. I think I went through 5 tubes. I will have to count out how many I gave gone through for the whole project. It will be a lot! It does make a huge difference and people who skip this step are silly, it really finishes it off. I want all the no more gaps or at least the majority of it done. I manage to tick off all four rooms.
Sunday; It has been a year since my grandpa passed away. It really doesn’t feel that long ago. Talk about a crazy year. My Nana is doing very well and the family have a small get together. The Māori side of the family would traditionally do an unveiling which it is not. I know they are finding it hard not having the ashes in the ground. Nana plans to have them put in the ground in the summer. They have a little get together at grandpas shed and celebrate his life. Rowan and I got a Behemoth beer a few weeks ago ready to give a cheers.
Today is a day off, sort of. We take 50 posts down to Palmerston this morning and unload them at the blocks. There is 70 metres of fencing we need to get sorted before we start. It was pretty early still as we headed back to Herbert and we made the decision to keep working. I got all of the undercoat done at the house. It took two coats of paint on the ceiling of the dining room. Now everywhere is ready for the first coat of paint. Our intention was a day of pottering at Herbert but alas one day closer to getting it done.
Monday; Yay it is time to get those blocks in place. Chris is here with his daughter Aurora. There is a fair bit to do and the digger makes light work of it. I run off at 9.30am to go to Till. Rowan comes with me to do a couple of errands and rides back on his motorbike. It is a nice enough day for outdoor painting so I get Jas on the picket fence doing an undercoat. I tackle the ceiling in the main bedroom and I get the fireplace first coat on. Talk about seeing blue for me! I am really happy with the colours. When I got back to Herbert around 4pm I got to see the progress they made. It looks way better with the stones in place. It is not cheap to do this but it really makes a difference.
It is Rowan’s grandmas birthday today. Happy Birthday Bette!
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.
A much needed break away! It was great to see Kelvin & Paula. We ended up hanging in Nelson until Wednesday. Each day we op shopped a little with no pressure. Normally we race through but we got to take our time. Paula had the smart idea that we should turn around the boat so if someone parked up next to it we can still pick it up. After saying out goodbyes we headed off in the afternoon and Rowan got to fossick in the Pelorus River. We left the boat at the bottom of the road and just went up in the camper. The road was worse than usual as there has been logging trucks using it. Rowan has a swim in the river before we left, he was nearly wet from head to toe anyway. Back down river to pick up the boat and we stayed stayed in a layby.
On Thursday we headed to Blenheim to pick up the WOF sticker for the trailer and grab some stuff from the supermarket before heading to Picton to see Kate & James. On Matariki we took the boat out for a spin. Amazingly it was easy to launch with Camele. There were some guys on the dock taking a video, I think they were rather disappointed when our home didn’t end up in the ocean. Before we got it in the boat Conner was playing on the edge of the water, then he just ran for it and ended up right in the water. Luckily I was on my way to him from paying the dock fees. I hesitated a little because I wasn’t expecting it. I fished him out, he got more of a fright and of course some cold tasty sea water. It was really funny to watch. Once dry he calmed down and on the boat he swiftly fell asleep with all the rocking. We got the sails up but I was too busy steering to take a photo. We had heaps of Dolphins around which made fishing near impossible. It was still a great time and everything runs pretty smooth with the boat.
On Saturday Kate and I left the boys. Rowan was in charge of Conner for the afternoon while we got our nails done and did some shopping. James had soccer at midday, so Rowan put Conner to bed. Sunday we headed back to Ōamaru but didn’t make it all the way. It is a long drive and we had plenty of stops along the way. Rowan picked up a Nintendo Switch, which is perfect for someone with no TV. We don’t plan on getting a TV as I prefer to read a book. We ended up staying at the Lagoon about an hour north of Ōamaru. In the morning Rowan woke up sick. I think it is from Conner who just started getting a runny nose. Today we have nothing major planned. Get back, unload and relax. Once mostly unpacked I put Rowan to bed and I ended up doing some emails, paperwork and organising a few things. The rest of the day I read my book!
Kiwi Hobos 