We moved to Rāumati Beach!

 

 

 

We've bought a 1952 bach-like weatherboard house at Rāumati. That's about a 30 minute drive north from our ex house on that windy hill in Newlands. Not that far as a seagull flies but it's a really  different environment. A warmer and calmer climate for starters. We can grow a bunch of things we couldn't grow in Newlands. Waaaay less wind here and a flat coast. We hear the sea.

Rāumati is the te reo (Māori language) word for summer. It's pronounced ro-mat-ee.

We're on an old sand dune so are a wee bit elevated (15 metres above sea level and prepared to host the neighbours running up the drive in a tsunami). 

We've been here a month already and still feel like we're on holiday!

Okay, let's go back to the move and work forward. It's been a while between blog posts.

'Twas a 2-day move. Movers loaded one truck on Feb 11 and then Mish and I abandoned the house and went into the city to a swanky hotel for the night. We walked out for a birthday dinner at the local yacht club on Oriental Bay. That's one birthday I won't forget.

Had to get back to the house early and we just made it before the jolly moving guys who cheerfully arrived with truck number 2. They loaded that one in a couple of hours and off we all went in convoy. Bye bye house!

At the new house, here's the front and a view from the garden the first day we saw it in October 2020.

Yep, liking it. Let's buy it!

In the same spot, five months later in March 2021. Mish is calculating what we'll see if we build something on the site and go up. She is full of, full of, full of...oh, ideas, that's it. 

Summer has been hot and dry - look at that grass, or lack of grass rather.

At the moment we have a peaceful interior green view (a lot like Robertson for those who remember that house), with western views over a huge park to the top of Kāpiti Island ... 

... and southern views to impressive hills leading into the Tararua Ranges. There will be snow over there. That's a big pohutakawa centre of image. We have trees and loads of interesting trees around us. Mish thrilled. Newlands has few trees. We had an exposed site in an exposed area and we copped the Cook Strait wind in both directions. 

There's lots of work to do on the house and in the garden. Here's a sample of house works so far, as the unpacking went on. One box to go I think.

In the kitchen, Mish draft-proofing a window and installing a UV sun blind (cause it has been blazingly bright in there).

In the washouse, we had to move the washing machine out to reveal the entry under the house the internet installers needed to crawl down into. Internet connection took nearly a month to install - hooray for wifi.

We have a mudroom! It's an add on room that will be veeeery useful. That's the house's original exterior back door steps and Mish is laying some garage carpet. We spruced up the room before that with a good dose of Wet and Forget. 

Screwing in some of the windows in anticipation of breezy winter nights.  This one had a monster gap. No more. The joys of an old timber house - we've done it before. 

Siliconing some bedroom windows shut. All original 1950s windows. The casement windows with the metal bar with holes in it you pop over a bump to hold open - they get to stay. 

Now Mish and I have both fallen off a ladder. She hit the ground and hurt herself, and I fell backwards into a chair and didn't hurt myself. Ladders!

It's not all work of course. We've had absolutely beautiful summer days since we got here, and walks and swims and cafe strolls (walk to great cafe!) and cycles (loads of tracks and parks and wetland areas) and bbqs and deck lounging. 

We're enjoying the large number of fruit trees we've inherited. We're never buying lemons again! Feijoas and figs and oranges and limes and tangerines and grapes are coming along; peaches and plums and blackcurrants have finished for the season. This is a pear experiment. 

The meringue maker is also enjoying the bigger kitchen.

Shops at the southern end of the beach. Mish with mosaic chair and a little library.

Our path to the beach at the end of the street. High tide. South Island just visible.

From the bottom of the beach steps, looking west to Kāpiti. The island has been a bird sanctuary since 1897 and you need a permit to go there. We've been over twice and walked to the top. It's a very cool place. 

A little boogie board surf. The long sweep of coastline from Wellington is not a surf coast. It gets a bit bigger than this but not much. Water temp lovely.

A panorama as I write this at the kitchen table. It's nice to have an actual dining area again. 

Standing by for visitors post-Covid.

The joy of upcycling

Here's what I created for Carol's birthday: a retro shelf for our digital photo frame which I upcycled from an old bit of plywood. And now we can enjoy all our holiday photos in the kitchen.

An inventive take on a pop up cafe

Here is the latest funky cafe I chanced across while strolling in the city yesterday.
Yet another use for a customised shipping container.  I want one for a studio! M

Sofa stack in the doorway

Well, I did say how cold it was with the French doors open (wet paint drying on the outside) - so this is what we did to keep out the night breezes, a sofa and cushion stack. We've turned on the heater and got it up to 20, so all is well. Now, about those windows that are open in the bedrooms...
For those supersleuths trying to read the paper, the  Dominion Post headline reads '20 Seconds of Terror'.
 Hmmmm, dinner's cooking and we are toasty warm.

Ministry of Silly Walks

We often have video hits playing on the tv, so here's Mish dancing to...something boppy.

And here's the new rug! It's only been down a day or two in the living room so this is its inaugural stomp.

Snuggly buggly at home with a Mish fish pie & movie

Nothing earth shattering to report this evening...waiting for tea to brew and for Mish to email her niece before we watch a DVD...aaah, Thursday night ('tis almost Friday!):

• house window frames getting painted by a sweet Vietnamese guy (plus a bit of bogging where a great soft chunk of one frame dropped out - oops, that was vintage 1959 - there could be more of that on the south side)
• front door is also going to get a lick of paint; the interior designer is baulking at the vivid crimson tester she's taped to the outside of the door (but it looks GREAT!)
• Mish doing a bit of outside window frame scrubbing, one step ahead of the painter...
• ...and happily mowing our square inch of emerald turf with her new handmower (between showers)
• had to make a service call for the dishwasher the day after we bought it for heaven's sake (all good - that's what happens when two amateurs tackle whitegoods plumbing and get their power tools out in a small kitchen)
• van having intermittent blinker issues (yes it works; no it doesn't; yes it works really fast; no it doesn't)
• bike blew over today (wasn't on it - hooray). I'd taken the van to work cause the weather was a bit windy rainy grey miz, and Mish didn't need it. Picked the bike up when I got home and no damage; we continue to dream of a garage - but we won't build one (next house, we say)
• Mish doing pilates; me doing yoga
• both of us going off John Key (the NZ prime misery)
• we started a flax weaving course at night school this week and wove putiputi flowers from one flax leaf (whenu)- more on this anon 
• southerly roaring through tonight...

Sunday morning

We're in a cold snap. Southerly gusting, straight off Antartica and in through the gaps in our windows. Ten degrees last night and the wind chill making it feel like seven - a week to Christmas and summer holidays!

We are dog minding for a few days with a 7 month old Huntaway. They are a working dog, bred in the NZ town of Hunterville years ago. Dad had a Huntaway when he was a boy - he had a milking job before school and as fast as he'd milk the cows and send them out into the yard, Rob would gather them up and bring them back in. This one is very placid: very well trained by the New Zealand SPCA and well behaved, not at all like another dog...

Mish is restoring a 1960s liquor cabinet in the living room, the kitchen splashback is in, all of the book boxes are unpacked (marathon effort there), the last blind has been hung, a few more shelves have been banged into studs - a certain order is appearing. The cook has the gas fueled, stainless steel kitchen she's always wanted; I have the sound system I've been desiring, forevah.
Time to celebrate and buy some new CDs, wow. We've both had pretty daggy sound systems over the years, so it's great to get a co-ordinated and gutsy audio that can thump it out as well as pick up teensy sounds and details. And not a wire in sight. The tv is on the wall above the old fireplace, the amp etc. is in the fireplace, and there are four baby speakers in the living room corners, set precisely out from the corner at the best distance for speaker and room size. Heaven. There has been dancing.

And movies are cool.
In a movie we were watching last week, there was a knock on a door. It sounded like it came from our kitchen, and as we turned our heads to look over there - so did the characters in the movie . Wo.
I love sensurround.

Back in Wellington...

...after a quick trip to Sydney and Grassy Head, NSW. Talk about pack it in.

The renovation carried on while we were out of the house, so we came back to a brilliantly polished floor in the living room and kitchen, and most of the kitchen installed. We're not cooking with gas yet, maybe tonight!

Mish is very happy with her stainless steel kitchen, apart from some glitches in the interpretation of design and a tiddly bit of damage. It does look good. A designer did it. There is shelf stacking of pots, pans and cans going on at the moment, and cursing of short arms that can't get to the back of some shelves.

The builder is installing our new clothes line today (a John Reid rope production), and tomorrow our backyard of concrete is being jackhammered. Weather permitting - we've got the heaters on today and it is grey and blowy out there. That's funny after 36 in Sydney. Two days until summer (that's the old calendar, before global warming).

It's been SO blowy that, up here on the hill, lots of recycling bins blew over yesterday. Lots. Met our new neighbour on the south side as we picked up papers 'n' plastic together on the street. Scored a postcard from 15A's bin with a nice Mauritus stamp on it, amongst a whole lot of crap of course. Papers and unwashed no name milk containers all over the street, ugh. I did learn that we can put the bins wherever we like to protect them from the wind, and if the mechanical arm can't reach it a collector will joyfully leap out of the truck and manually empty it. That helps - we have a handy tree back from the street and we won't lose ours again. The things you find out from your neighbours.

I hear the clothes line is up - off to have a squizz.

Bathroom renovation in full swing

Much hammering, drilling, sawing, measuring, sanding, glueing, etc. Mish is project managing our two builders and their entourage of plumbers, tilers, plasterers and sparkies. It's still a little bathroom so there is fine tuning of design and wall shifting and space creation. Things change daily - this morning we decide we can fit another loo in the wash house if we shift the dryer into a new wall cavity, and a great idea for an attic ladder runs into a 10mm problem. So nice having a project manager on site.

We've had no shower for about 10 days, another 10 to go (apparently). We're blow ins with towels at the rellies, and once I even got Mish down to the local pool. There has been washing by standing in a big bucket in the kitchen, but she deleted that image so no go for the blog. Instead, there's a supermarket sign that made us laugh.