So, hell ya! We finally got our house signed-off. The council managed to stick us with another bill on top of it but whatever, it’s done and we don’t have to deal with them anymore. Now we can rip out the balustrades, pull out the insulation, and throw out the fire alarm!

Just kidding Mr Councilman. :)

No sense of humor those guys.

We didn’t actually celebrate much beyond a couple of “WOO HOOs” cause I think we’re kinda tired but yes we’re very, very happy too. There’s still work to do on the house but it’s the little things like painting the window frames for the fifteenth time and all the little woody bits that go around the floor and ceiling but mostly there. At least now we can actually relax a bit more when we’re there. Yippee!

So I think it’s fair to say we are pathetic at blogging but I guess when you’re working on two houses you kinda find it hard to sit down and write about it. Excuses aside, we’re happy to say we’re nearly ready for the sign-off from the council. We have one minor thing to finish which is just finishing up the underfloor insulation and then we’re done.

Done, of course, has nothing to do with all the bits and pieces we still need to get to…like the skirtings and the wood that goes around the windows and doors (Seb knows what it’s called but he’s in the middle of sanding the floor in our Auckland house so I can’t ask him). What else needs to be done? Oh yes, the little baguette that goes where the ceiling and wall meet. We also need to put a treatment on the floor. I need to fix the paint on the outside of the house around the doors and windows because it’s a hideous shade of green. A green which I might add looked beautiful inside the house. But looks like radioactive vomit on the outside. Nice, no? Ah yes, and then there’s the garden.

I’m thankful for the times our friends come up to Mahakirau with us because it means we’ll actually get to relax…so here’s an open invitation to our friends!

Happy new year!!!

After too many months of writing about what is going on with our gorgeous little cottage in the bush I am happy to say we are finally at the stage of painting. Let the fun begin! The weather has started to change finally and we are seeing slightly warmer days and a little less rain. We expect more rain going into spring but at least it won’t be freezing cold (hopefully).

So we employed our fabulous builder, Peter, to help us with the gib board and it was a good thing we did. It was a hell of a lot of work and it took four days to do it. One day he and one of his builders did the hard part of the vaulted ceiling then Peter and Seb worked together the next day to do one bedroom and part of the living room. Then it was just me and Seb to do the rest. We managed to break one board trying to fit it into the bedroom…what a disaster. Thankfully we had a few extra boards. When the gib was done it took us a while to get used to the new look of the house. All of a sudden it looked new…far from the old cottage look we were hoping to achieve. It will come with time.

We employed a stopping company (stopping is the plastering over the gib joints) to finish up the work on the gib. We would have done it ourselves but after a few people including our builder told us how difficult it was we thought it wise to employ professionals. These guys were done in two days. They were messy as hell but I’m sure they were less messy than we would have been and they saved us days of work.

So now we’re onto the painting. Seb did a beautiful job of installing some wood panelling in the bathroom and finished it with a delicate curved edge. We painted the wood panelling a light beige and painted the wall above a light cream colour. I painted the bathtub a shiny green apple shade so it  will stand out as the feature of the bathroom. We’re going to leave the feet of the tub blue for some fun contrast.

I painted the bedrooms a very light cream colour and each room will have a bright contrasting wall. In the main bedroom it will be a medium greenish yellow and the second bedroom will be orange. I’m not sure we would have really gone for orange but Seb wanted dark red and I wanted bright yellow because it’s a small dark bedroom so you can see how we arrived at orange.

We’re still deciding what to do about the kitchen. I would like to tile the countertops so I’m wary of not choosing colours before we find the right tile, which is like finding a needle in a haystack here at the bottom of the world. But that’s another story.

We’ll probably take a bit of a break from our lovely cottage because we just bought a house in the city (YAY!) and it needs some work as well. We’re gluttons for punishment.