Since my last post in August (how embarrassing) we have completed all of the major work. The water is running and I can confirm that the bathtub fits two people comfortably. :-) We have electricity now although I keep forgetting this and keep working until it’s dark before I remember that I can turn the lights on. Old habits die hard. The kitchen sink, bench-top and cabinets are finished. The bedrooms are pretty much done and Seb even attempted to grow grass.We’ve had a short list of friends who have visited now and we already have a short list of friends who are visiting us next year.

So what’s left? Well there is still painting to do on the windows outside. The floor needs to be sealed although we’re debating leaving it as is because we like the look. We need to plant some things and insulate under the house. After that (I’m sure I’m missing something on that list as it looks way too short) we’ll start doing tracks in the bush so that we can easily get down to the creek.

We’ll be in Mahakirau to start off the new year (and to celebrate our anniversary) and we’re looking forward to entertaining more friends and family there this year!

Happy New Year from Seb and Karen!!!

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.

Late February we started to sleep in the house, even when walls were not finished, it was fun. Since then the place has been enclosed, the verandah finished (and very much used to keep working while heavy rain was pouring in the mountain some week-ends), and a lot of furniture has found its way in already! Beds, recycled kitchen cabinets, tables and chairs, a-ton-heavy old claw foot bathtub, an old scruffy arm chair to sit in front of the wood stove that Seb picked up on the side of the road. Ah oui ! The wood stove has been in for quite a while now and is already put to use every week-end. It looks great and gives good heat especially in the loft area ;-)

So, with all this installation, it became easier to work and live up there, and progress became very apparent. With the help of my brother Julien visiting from France, we installed the old staircase our builder has extracted from one of his sheds. Julien – who is a professional cabinet maker back in France – carved a beautiful frog in the supporting pole, which is now the centrepiece of the main room!

From then, it was a fellowship of friends that contributed to the place.  David helped build a concrete pad for the gas bottles, sanded and fitted all inside doors.  Charlotte, Clement, Kristel and Simon gave 8 hands on the outside railing painting in exchange for shelter & a memorable full lamb barbecue night at a neighbour’s place.  Lizzie installed most of the plumbing work.  Kevin gave us all guidance and cables to wire the whole house…

So in less than a few week-ends, we have now finished all the electrical wiring, most of the plumbing, the inside doors, the gas fitting (water heater & stove), the outside steel railing, the deck oiling, the front door varnishing…

And last week-end, at last, all converged to be ready for our pre-lining inspection. Karen spent the week-end working furiously to fit the insulation in all exterior walls while I had to finish the millions of bits and pieces everywhere. It seems this comes at point for the freezing cold that hit us that week-end, which put the batts and the wood stove to the test.

Hopefully, inside wall linings should happen next week-end, with the help of our favourite builder, Peter. We will have inside walls like a normal house!

To be continued…

We originally planned to leave the external walls made of plywood and battens untreated so that they get naturally weathered. Well, naaa… this ‘new box’ looking house didn’t look right to us, and waiting for it to weather would be too long! We decided to stain it before they completed the cladding. What a great decision! The next week-end, on our late Friday arrival, we were stunned by how good it looks in this chocolate colour. It enhanced the windows and doors and gave it more character.

Since the house was not finished and we couldn’t start any work inside, we did a clean up of the tipi, finding all kinds of weird insects and slugs that made it their home. We also built the water pump box behind the tank. The following weekend we started oiling our timber ceiling. We also enjoyed a lot of good sun after the very cold Atlanta winter… And finally we had our first nights inside our new home! First with the foam mattresses, then with a better bed brought from Auckland, in the loft area under the beautiful tongue and groove timber ceiling.

Now that our builder has finished working inside, we started the flooring project.  We had been looking at options for recycled flooring all across Auckland region. We wanted either Kauri, Rimu or Matai floorboards. Most demolition yards stock such timber in various conditions. We initially made contact and agreed on a stock of 500m of recycled flooring from south Auckland, but on the day of checking the stock, we found out that the boards were in terrible shape, with loads of tongue damaged and holes. We were very disappointed (as we had organized delivery the same week). Seb rushed to another yard he had identified in Helensville (45km north, so close to 80km to were he was!). There, the friendly guy showed him what he had. “Yep, that’s our flooring there!” All their boards are made of recycled joists and beams, so they aren’t full of nail holes. Instead, they have the odd strange holes and defects that make it look very different…gives it character. Overall, a very good product, reconditioned to a good standard, and one that doesn’t initially require sanding! (saving $2000). The next day, the demolition guy and Seb had a great time sorting board by board and piling them for transport, which we managed to organize for the next day. After many phone calls and fine-tuning with Coromandel people for the last leg, the timber arrives safely on our land. Pfffiouu!

Waitangi week-end was spent laying our floorboards. Such hard work! In three days, we managed to do about half of the house, at the expense of 3 broken drill bits, a knocked finger, lots of swearing when the tongue didn’t want to go in the groove, and a 12-pack of beer under the hard sun. The result is an outstanding, and even our builder – usually unimpressed by our shenanigans – said we have done a good job. Good aye? We just another three days to go before it’s done but they then we should have our process down. Then, there are just a few more things to do…plumbing, gas fitting, wiring, bathroom, kitchen, jib, skirtings, etc, etc, etc…

In the meantime, the house will be finished outside. Before the end of February, we should have our verandah finished, waste water pipes in the ground, and the site cleared up!

To be continued…

Holy cow (Oh la vache) time flies. We’ve been a bit slack in the writing and photo uploading department lately but we’re catching up now. There are five, count them FIVE, fresh, new photo albums with loads of fabulous photos. Go check them out!

In the past month there’s been quite a lot of progress on the house. In the beginning of October we saw the piles for the house go in. Then a week later we had a large dance floor. We were nervous about how small the house seemed until the framing went up. I had Seb lay down in our bedroom to make sure our bed would fit and phew! Yes it will! We’re both thrilled with how big the living room/kitchen area is. It will be completely open with a vaulted ceiling so it’s going to be big and spacious while not being overwhelmingly huge…and with a gorgeous view.

Last week Peter (our builder) started on the veranda. It’s taken him just as much time as the house foundation due to ridiculous building regulations that require our veranda to have piles as big as our house…but more of them. Completely insane. It’s so obvious that this regulation was pushed by the timber industry. Our veranda is now stronger than our house. In case of a serious storm I think we’ll just strap ourselves to the deck.

The weather hasn’t been flash this month. We’ve had many days of rain…and even sleet two weeks ago. Spring seems to come to the mountains a little later than it does to the city. The weather systems get stuck in the hills and release their rain on us constantly. What this ultimately means is that it’s now unlikely that the house will be finished by the time Seb and I leave for the U.S. for Christmas. Damn! I’m quite sad about that but when we get back it will be like a huge Christmas surprise.

In the month of October we also had our first guest. David, our super helpful friend spent the weekend with us on the land. He helped Seb with the windows and managed to avoid the ice cold “showers” Seb enjoys in the mornings. While David was there we hiked along our stream from the mid-point down to the bottom and discovered we have a few waterfalls and swimming holes! It was a gorgeous hike and we have plans of making a path to one of the swimming holes for use in the summer. It’s going to be fabulous!

Our first meeting was full of promise. The Builder seemed very confident , knowledgeable, trustworthy and his schedule seemed to match perfectly with ours. “What a pick”, we thought! The first one we meet is the one, how lucky we are!

Thanks to him, we found our architect and had a great time designing our house. In the meantime, the earth movers cleared the land, we built the shed, and the consent process was started. Then came the quoting time…

We provided the Builder with plans, specifications, and our choice of materials. According to the budget we drafted, from speaking with people and doing research on the Internet, we had a good idea of how much we were going to have to invest to get to the lockup stage. After weeks of delays due to slow responses from the material providers, the Builder sent us his quote.

We fell from our chairs.

The Builders quote was 40% more than we estimated and we were stunned. Were we being totally unrealistic with our budget? We thought it could be this or perhaps he didn’t really want the job…or even that he was taking advantage of the fact that we’re not kiwis and (gasp!) that we’re Aucklanders. Not only were the figures excessive for ‘travel to site’, ‘insurance’ or ‘preliminary work’(?) but we would have to pay a solicitor extra to lock the money into a trust account and sign up a complete set of contracts and appendix.

A storm of thoughts and talks went through our place. We then decided to do what we should have done from the beginning…ask for other quotes. We decided to talk with builders on the Coromandel side instead of Whitianga. After many unsuccessful calls, we managed to find two builders to come up to our land the next week-end. Our hopes were up again!

Builder 2 and Builder 3 arrived on time that Saturday. After a brief look at the site, the plans and the schedule, it seemed each of them could jump on board. The questions then were…when and for how much!

That next week, the wait was unbearable. Eventually, on Thursday, Builder 2 rang and gave us a price that was perfectly inline with our budget and with what our research told us we should expect to pay. We were thrilled and at the same time cautious. “Is that material AND labour included?” All included, as per plans, and he could start early September. A faxed confirmation later and this time we were jumping from the chair!

Unlike the first builder, Builder 2 was very keen to show us his work and we were excited to see it. Considering the difference in his price from the first quote we also thought it best to see the handiwork of the magician we were going to give our dream project to, so we popped over to his place on the way to Coromandel Town the following weekend. Our first impression was that his house and lifestyle agreed with us. He took us for a ride around the area, showing us the many houses he built – half of the town really – and then he took us to his masterpiece. Hidden in a valley, he proudly guided us to a huge American Barn which took him a year to build. It was gorgeous and enormous. We spent half an hour admiring the job, inside out. All beautifully hand crafted in timber, from floor to roof. We couldn’t have been happier after seeing his work and especially the barn.

Not only did we like the guy, but he didn’t require a contract or financial securities, in a good old kiwi style. We felt very comfortable with him. In an effort to minimize any misunderstandings we did draft up a short contract that he signed with a grin.

On Tuesday 18th of September 2008, the house started to rise from the ground…

For any house-dreamer, the term building consent gives a chill from head to toe straight away. We were not different than others. The perspective of getting into this battle with council – hereafter named ‘the Devil’ – impacted on our choice of a local architect and on some of design decisions. In the last months we heard stories of long, painful and costly processes of getting a permit for any kind of building. But that was mainly in town, where it seems to be crazy. On our side, we were lucky not to have to build in a small section subdivision, where an army of experts have to determine where you put your house, your fence, your driveway, your sewage pipes and your mother-in-law. In our case, when the limits of your lot are hundreds of meters away, it was easier.

With our architect, we worked to be able to present plans as fast as we could in order to deal with the unavoidable issues that were due to arise. It took a month to draft plans and make little adjustments. As our architect mentioned, we were very lucky to ask for this consent now, because the law on windows is due to change in October. From that date, all new dwellings will have to have double glazing windows. A rule that would condemn all our great restored timber windows to the fires of hell! Ouuuf, that was lucky!

On the 30^th of May, our architect had the first meeting with the Devil. It seems all went well with the plans, but in the back of our minds we thought it was too easy. The Devil found an odd expertise that could slow our process, gnark gnark! Which one? Well…on how we are going to spread our s..t in the bush basically. So, there we go, 2 weeks and $1600 later, we had to provide them with a report on where the wastewater dripping lines will be lined up in the bush…and so the building consent process began. Tic tac tic tac.

The wait continued. A week later, a letter arrived with serious issues to sort on our plans, involving a scary mix of letters and figures (NZ1034?), basically meaning some of our timber was not big enough on the deck – or some similar thing. Luckily, our architect defeated the Devil and sent some corrected plans without the use of a crucifix or blessed water. What would be next?

Another week later, the Devil – mimicking a woman’s voice over the phone – thought he would strike and take our souls away. But we were prepared and provided clues on how we would respect the QEII Trust’ covenant with regard to colours of roof, walls and windows. Ah ah, good try Lucifer!

In the meantime, we found out that our application could be followed up on the Devil’s website (www.tcdc.govt.nz). So all strikes and blows could be foreseen before the letters even arrived! Was that another trick to distract our attention and attack from the side?

Eventually, 5 weeks after the application, exhausted by nights of watching our backs – and sides – we received the letter with the invoice. After a check for poison on the paper, it seems we have our consent!

Thanks to all the saints – and our architect – for that good news!

But it’s not finished. At building stage, we will have to call for Lucifer’s messengers 10 times on site to check on us. We’ll be ready and waiting!

We have our very own tipi!

A while ago we thought it would be great to have a tipi on the land as a sleep-out. As it turns out our architect had one is his backyard when we went to visit him one day and it was then that we decided we should get one to stay in while we are waiting for the house to be built.

We contacted the same people who built our architect’s tipi, Jaia Tipis and they had a 5-meter one in stock, ready to send to us. We were so excited…like a couple of kids waiting for Christmas, crazy with anticipation.

And then finally, it arrived from Golden Bay!

We drove to the Freight depot on a Friday night after work and were astounded to see the size of the poles. They were enormous! Thankfully we had the trailer on the back of the truck as the poles reached midway across the trailer. And I think we were also very lucky not to get pulled over. The tipi gods were smiling on us.

By the time we got to the land it was very late and the weather was looking a bit dodgy so we covered the area where the tipi was going to with a large tarpaulin and went to sleep. We didn’t actually get much sleep though because the wind kept trying to take the tarpaulin away. In the morning the day turned glorious and we began the task of putting up the tipi.

We laid out our poles and admired the craftsmanship. Then we started reading the instructions and were hopeful we’d have the tipi up in a few hours. Five hours later, our tipi was erected.

Seb uttered a phrase his dad had told him on more than one occasion. “Doing and re-doing is still work.” We did a lot of re-doing…the magic number was three times for each re-do. Somehow our relationship remained intact and once the tipi was up we were both happy and all of the re-dos and mistakes were forgotten (well, mostly).

With the sun setting we started putting our items in the tipi. We used pallets as a base for the mattress and spread carpets over the tarpaulin that was now our floor. We put the little pot-belly stove in and started a fire. It was super cozy! Once everything was in we had a celebratory glass of wine with some Coromandel oysters and then I cooked my first dinner on the wood burner…a vege frittata.

As we were going to bed we could hear a storm brewing outside. It only got worse as the night went on and we spent another sleepless night wondering if our tipi would be blown away. We wondered if we should have gotten a caravan instead. Unlike sleeping in the truck, we could hear every single sound in the bush. We thought there were mice in the tipi. We thought the possums were just outside. I thought they might eat us if they were hungry enough and I remembered that story that one of the contractors told me about possums running up onto people’s heads.

As it turns out our tipi was still standing the next morning and the possums didn’t eat us. Only a tiny bit of rain got in and dripped on my head thanks to the rain catcher. I spent the next day wind-proofing the tipi, taking everything out and re-doing the floor. The next storm we go through in it should be much better and we might even get some sleep…

We built a shed!

Well, sorta kinda. Almost.

We had a three day weekend (happy birthday to the Queen) and so we skipped out of work early on Friday, spent two hours packing up the truck and trailer, and then headed off to the Coromandel. The traffic wasn’t horrendous thankfully and we arrived in time to make dinner in the dark and then head off to bed. The next morning we woke early to begin our task. A couple of weekends ago we had set the posts for the shed in concrete so they were well set by now and we began our morning with hot bowls of porridge and humming and hawing around the posts. It was all very exciting. Then after the last drop of coffee was drunk we got to work.

We cut and measured and attached beams all around, then across, then filling in the spots that needed more beams. There were a lot of beams. After the beaming was done we started on the roof. Seb bought loads of corrugated iron for the roof and this came in handy right about now. We had two perfectly sized pieces and the rest were too short. Awesome. So while the first two went on quickly, the remaining 854 pieces (actually it was more like 20) had to have little pieces cut up for them to fit properly. By the end of the day (just in time for an apero) we had finished the roof. We celebrated with a delicious bowl of scrambled frittata (don’t ask) and beer.

The next morning we woke to a glorious day which was great because the weather forecast was less than favourable. We spent the day doing framing and on this day we managed to get our first window into the shed (no thanks to my horrendous measuring skills which meant having to re-do some framing…it was a mistake!!!). Anyway, after that incident I refrained from measuring anymore. Damn metric system. With the first window done we were one a roll and we put the plywood on the wall to make it look all homey. The neighbors had come to visit us the previous day and invited us to dinner and hot shower (oh yeah baby!) and so we packed it up early and set off to their place. We had an awesomely hot shower and a delicious dinner with a couple of the neighbors and then crawled back to our place with a little too much wine making our heads spin.

Needless to say we both woke up with headaches the following day. Headaches and power tools are not a good combination and Seb made it half way through the day of hammering and drilling before I sent him back to the neighbors for head-ache fixer. After that we were back on track. We managed to get the second window in and cover the back and side wall with corrugated iron before the sun set on us again. We were disappointed that we couldn’t finish the work but pretty thrilled that we had managed to get so much done in three days! The shed looks amazing and slightly unfinished but we’ll fix it right up next weekend. That’s what weekends are for!

Check out the shed building photos…now!

If you don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest, there is the ‘kitset home’ option. Many providers out there have catalogues and can even customize the plans to your requirements. It is a fun process going through all shapes and styles and debating what kitset could provide a good base to our dream. We played with the American Barn, the Polynesian cabin, the typical cottage and more to eventually find the one. A business in the Wairarapa was making settler’s cottages in 4 different sizes and after we saw them we decided that’s what we would build.

On a business trip to Wellington, we escaped by train to Masterton where we visited the cottages at different stages. Their shape was close to what we wanted but there would have been too much work on their plans to make it to our requirements. But the most essential aspect to consider was the building consent process. The plans they provided were council ready in the Wairarapa, but not in the Coromandel! What seemed a cheaper option at first could end up being a more expensive one if things went wrong there. So in the end we decided to use the kitsets for inspiration and go for a local drafter, who was familiar with the Coromandel Council and would straight away know what to do and what not to do.

At an early stage, after we decided on a design, we then started our hunt for windows and doors. It has been an exciting – yet sometimes painful – process. We visited demolition yards, spent a lot of time on trademe searching for the quaint windows and doors that would achieve our goal. One after the other, we bought doors and windows, some very cheap, some not. We found out the hard way that an untidy window would eventually require hours or days of work to be restored. We then spent week-ends sawing, drilling, sanding, scraping and painting. Overall, the result is amazing! On some, we have recovered and exposed beautiful kauri timber, which will be fantastic when installed. Now safely stored in a storage unit, they are impatient to have a second life!

Silly enough, we started this process even before we had bought the land, were sure our design could be done on the land, or found a drafter! We were convinced that we knew what we wanted to do that, here or anywhere. We were also lucky not to do that at the end of the year… As it seems a new law will require double glazing on all new building – which will be fatal to any recycling project in a near future (very sad).

Lucky enough, and after some research on the Internet, we identified a builder living in Whitianga, who seemed available at the projected building period, and he referred us to a local drafter, who was also available. All seemed to fit in nicely. We met the next week-end with the drafter, Trevor, on the land – amidst the clearing of our land, knee deep in clay and power cables – and went through our detailed plans Seb had meticulously drawn on millimeter paper. He seemed fine with our ideas and was able to start the following week. After we gave him all the dimensions of our doors and windows and three weeks later we were delighted to have the first draft and really see our dream finally unveiling.