We’re getting all fancy now. We’re the talk of the town.

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…

Seb’s been doing a lot of writing here lately so I am jumping in in between the French homework I should be doing with the laundry whizzing around behind me like a jet engine and I’ll talk about something we did this past weekend.

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!

When we started to have this idea of a house in the bush, we wanted something genuine, not a box with plastic cladding and aluminum windows. We didn’t want an ‘airport’ as we call the outrageous black and grey concrete platforms city people tend to build on beautiful coastal slopes. We wanted to go back in time, when early pioneers had to cut their section in the wild and build small places for themselves and their families. Two options were at hand. Buy and move an existing house, or build a new house. Unfortunately, the size and configuration of our driveway wouldn’t allow a house to come through so we had to move to the second option.[singlepic=315,320,240,,right]

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.