Plums

 Our big beautiful tree is in full fruit again. It's jam, chutney, and sauce time, and friends are coming over with buckets.

Jam batch #2 underway.

The Thomas Keating family picking plums on a lovely Sunday afternoon.

Nesting time

A greenfinch making free with webbing holding the new magnolia.

 

We're calling it - DONE!

We have council approval for the works and no more needs to be done on the building. 

No big celebration here - we've been almost finished for a while. Most defects are done too as of this week and they've been minor. Very happy with the  builder, his team, the architect, and every tradie who has been in and out since March. We're finished on time and over budget haha, but - done.

Here are some before and after shots.

The first day we walked around the place going, yep, we like it, let's buy it. I'm standing in what is now the new wing.

Mish began plotting the add-on as soon as we moved in. Here, she's standing in the new bedroom.

Taken from the kitchen, the bookshelves were on the spare room's wall. We've broken through that wall.  Old front door, living room and dining area.

New front door and windows and dining area pushed out.

Plotting the works in the old dining area between living room and kitchen. The old kitchen is behind Mish - that wall got knocked down.

From the same spot looking into the kitchen to the back door. Previous dining area ended at the photo on the left.

The front steps with pots left just where they came out of the mover's van. Sandbags on the deck's roof - daggy but they worked a treat to hold that end down on windy nights. 

New steps and corten planter boxes, new roofing over the deck and bye bye sandbags.

Sealing the windows to keep the drafts out. 

Window is in the same position. No drafts.

Sue and Phil passing through on a bike trip. Phil is about to prune the grape vines. The concrete water tank behind took some effort to knock down. 

This area became the back door and a space for the hot water system. Rain chain!

Done.

Summer's here

 Pohutukawa flowering all over, blue skies, warmer days and nights, and spring winds easing.

The pohutukawa on our southern boundary.

Looking north west, Kapiti Island from the front yard- 3km off the coast.

Driveway works

One morning in spring - a short working bee to continue securing our driveway bank. This is actually the neighbour's land but we look at it and they are above it, so we occasionally work on it together.

Don't compare the landscapers' timber work with ours 😐.

Plants will grow over it.

Cook's privilege

 And that is to have two drawers (two!) for her little bowl and little saucer collection.

Such extravagance.

The view from the shower

Bit of a nutty idea, but we did it anyway. The mirror from the bathroom we demolished is reused in the new bathroom. We have it on a pivoting tv stand and positioned to show the neighbour's pohutukawa tree. And now is the time - New Zealand's Christmas tree is blooming all over the North Island.

Photo doesn't do it justice, the tree is a mass of rich red blooms. The famous 'borrowed view'.

Table tennis returns!

 Yay! Our first game since February - I've missed my table tennis. We can now see the garage floor and I've just spent a hour or so getting the mountain of left over screws and nails and misc building products into some kind of order on brand new shelves.

Mish usually wins but I did hold her to 25-23 haha!

The sparrow sand spa

All of the yard around the new building is bare sand now. There's one particular sandhill where the sparrows love to have a good old wing cleanse. Check them out on full screen, little darlings.

It's very tempting to keep the sparrow spa in some form, but it probably won't happen. They'll have to go back to the budget dust spa: the driveway.

The most problematic corner

Where two gutters meet the roof on several angles and levels - this junction has been cause for much discussion over the last couple of months. It's where the old roof met the new roof on a corner and it was less than seamless.

Head builder Martin lying on the roof (he thought he had a cold so he's wearing a mask), our main builder, Tim, and architect Fiona nutting it out.

Gutter installers coming next week to finish the job so all is hunky dory - problem solved.

With some creative thinking Tim solved our rain chain connection to gutter. It's still a work in progress to prettify, but chain is in and falling into the copper water heater we took out in our Newlands house and have been saving for a project. We're already plotting a change of chain as that can be done easily.

The view from the south side kitchen window. Vine is loaded with grapes mmmm. All the south side is bare sand now so that's been blowing around in spring winds and getting into everything. Planting and mulch on the way.

Landscaping kicks into gear

We're wrapping up the building works now, only minor jobs to be done: bit of guttering, painting, fascia work. Tim is on the roof now working out the rain chain. The detail of chain connection inside the gutter is a difficult thing to get right. Much discussion. I think we've sussed it.

Today was probably our last site meeting and it was nice to sit with our head builder, Martin, and our architect, Fiona, and talk through what else has to be done - defects, council, compliance, warranties, etc. They and Mish have held it all together and the product is wonderful. We're happy. Standing by for visitors!

The artworks are going back up in different places. Everything is unpacked and stacked and waiting for inspiration. 

The blue tape strikes again.

And outside, a design for the whole area is evolving. Out front, Mish has begun to plant a bunch of stuff that has been well kept for a year or so with shade and water under the big plum tree. 

Further back, the probable table position, edged by more corten planters with a crushed limestone path on the left and herb garden on the right. We've enlisted the neighbour, who has a landscaping business, to come over and give us hand with irrigation and materials. That'll speed things along.

I can hear water running - he's testing it!

Library's in!

The old guest bedroom - much improved.

Mish designed the metal frames and had them made in the city. The shelves are cheese boards from Gouda. We saw them about two years ago in New Plymouth and thought, bookshelves!  And here they are.

It took our builders a few hours to navigate the frames in and get them solidly anchored to each other and onto set points on both walls, and then to thread those long wide boards boards carefully in from acute angles.

They were immediately decorated with books that were lying around the house, and toasted. It's exactly as the designer planned it.

Then we began to trek the book boxes in from the garage. First draft:

Some rods to hold sections in place and fine tuning of categories to follow, but we're chuffed.

Second batch of Seville marmalade made yesterday. 

We discovered they'd dried out a bit from being on the tree too long and probably erratic watering too (must do better). But we made a batch anyway and it turned out way better than expected. Tart and delicious.

Today Mish has been silicone painting. The tiler had to use a white silicone product for our brass coin splashback so Mish has chocolate painted it to match the grout. Note her legendary blue tape in action yet again.

Kitchen is done.

Last weekend, a birthday trip to Havelock North, about four hours north of here. Our cottage view:

Relaxing weekend and a green drive through paddocks. Drove around on the annual arts trail and talked to some interesting people: a florist who works with resin, a stone carver, a paperworks gallery owner, and a German sculptor who used to live in Berrima and knows the artist whose wife bought our Robertson house. Small world.

Kitchen works - of an eating kind!

There's ploughman's lunches:

And bread making:

And very soon we'll have a marmoleum floor and a hob and a rangehood and a sink that works and a dishwasher and the kitchen will be done. Soon.

Magnolia

Drainage works are complete and Mish zoomed out today to plant her magnolia. This is bashing in stakes to keep it stable while it settles in, as seen from the bath.

It's about seven years old so a nice size. Planted just in time for a cold windy and wet front sweeping up the country. 

Tradies at work

The kitchen's stainless steel bench looked fab, until Mish peeled back the protective film for a squiz and realised the sink was not the size specified. Bum - the bench is all one piece! Seems to have been a software error, but, all is good as the manufacturer said they can cut the sink out without removing the whole bench.

Here's a craftsman welder taking that sink out and putting the new one in - seamless. Took him hours but it's a beautiful smooth job and the sink is now right.

Also today, the floor sanders doing the third pass. It looks great! Three coats of water based polyurethane to come and no walking on it over the weekend. 

 

Moving on to landscaping

The next two days will be hectic with trades in and outside the house, but that will pretty much wrap up the electrical, building, and plumbing work. Yay! The floor works will be a bit longer as the marmoleum layer in the kitchen and the timber sander are held up.

Mish delighted with her kitchen cabinetry and here comes the 5mt stainless steel benchtop:

Meanwhile, the garden is looking really good for a year of being almost ignored and having truckloads of timber dumped on it. We have flowers and blossoms and fruit coming on, and loads of birds having a lovely time in spring.

Mish harvesting grapefruit from the roof of the Borer Hotel (aka the garage). It's a productive tree.

The crab apple is going off with a beaut blossom show. It's getting a rare water here.

And now we shift gears to think about the plan for what's left of the front yard. 

Mish has been having fun this weekend  laying out a design for planting and pathways, with a planter box combo around a seating area in the foreground. On her right is the advanced magnolia that will get planted in that spot after the last bit of trenching to move an electrical cable. That's Monday ooh la la.

The plan looks good. Mish is chuffed. There will be plenty of Australian natives and vegetables, two espaliered figs and more citrus and a herb garden and crushed limestone paths and some paving and an irrigation system and then a cup of tea and bit of a lie down.

We have to move all the landscaping mockup on Sunday as there will be at least two tradie vans parked here come Monday morning.

Two tradies! Our sparkies levelling the circular lights over the kitchen bench.

Mish has been experimenting with low alcohol wine. So much for the Wolf Blass rosé. That's a mad curve she's got on the pour. This is our washhouse which is still the kitchen - for one more day!

Taking in the morning sun and spring odourama on the deck outside main bedroom and studio. So glad we put that back in the works.

Home stretch - things are getting finished

Bit by bit, things are wrapping up and the pieces of the house are going into place.

A few weeks ago we had an empty kitchen.

Then one happy day for Mish, the kitchen cabinetry arrived. This is Mish cooking breakfast on our
portable induction plate down the bedroom end, while the truck backs up the driveway.

Two days later, most of the kitchen cabinetry is in.

And today, beginning to unpack boxes and put things in drawers. Mish heaven.

Our kitchen floorboards couldn't be saved thanks to a gummy substance discovered under the tiles. Bum. But at least it wasn't asbestos. So the floor boards came up and the builders discovered a bit of extra work needed to be done with the bearers (of course!)  and we now have a plywood floor waiting for a beautiful black marmoleum to go over top. 

Still to come in the kitchen: flooring, blinds, lighting, stainless steel bench top (coming in the door in one veeeery long L-shaped piece in about two weeks), induction hob (seen above in cardboard box that was quietly chewed by Plum under the bed one day), and fridge (it's down the hall). 

Other bits getting ticked off include building the deck outside Mish's studio. Decking arriving:

The piles of topsoil and sand have come out of the soakpit we had to dig for drainage in the middle of the photo. We can plant over that, it's like a Lego system of plastic crates and matting underground. Just don't drive on it haha.

And the rain chain project. The chain will fall at the back door into the copper water heater we took out in Newlands and have been saving for 12 years for something interesting.  That time has arrived. Mish cutting the top off.

And the green glass bricks over the library entrance - they're in! 

The first of our tradies have left the site. Momentous! 

The painters finished yesterday and we lifted up the thin plywood sheets laid down over the floors to protect the surface from painters, plasterers, etc. Then we swept up, picked up, vacuumed, and hired a carpet washer and gave the guest bedroom a good clean. It's beginning to look and feel like a house again instead of a worksite.

Which is rather nice cause both of us are down with a rotten cold that's making us cough our guts out. I've had it nearly two weeks and I shared with Mish a week ago.  We've never been sick at the same time. No energy. Most inconvenient.

Running away yet again

This time to sister Arlene's small farm to look after their new pooch Bo, another huntaway, while she and kids spent a sporty week in Queenstown.

At this stage of our build we are so loving peaceful places to just hang out. So nice to have electricity at night - and an actual kitchen!

An  Australian with gum trees in the back paddock.

Bo spent the entire time relaxing too. He's a failed farm dog. Only three years old but far too laid back for the farming life. So he was no trouble. 

By the time we got home this time the worst of the disruptive works have passed. Phew.