31 October 2016

October 2016 - Our house has arrived

I think this month I will largely let the photos speak for themselves, because everything has been incredibly stressful and if I get started I will just start ranting. Like, I'm not going to go into the torture that our building consent became, with requirements to get our retaining wall designed by an engineer, and then build a barrier above it, and then tell them exactly where we would build the barrier and not only the specifications of the barrier but the actual materials we would use to build it, as if they didn't trust us to just go to Bunnings and get fence materials. Did they think we would build it out of sticks and string or something?! And let's not get into the incredibly tight timeframe we ended up with, where the building consent actually only arrived the very day before the house was moved onto site. Or the minimal communication that still leaves me a bit unsure as to when it will be finished and we can move. And how many extra payments we are suddenly in store for, with the engineered wall that will be at least twice as big (therefore twice as expensive) as the original plan, the extra fence, the extra building consent payment (building levies, that I'm pretty sure we also paid with the Upper Hutt building consent), something extra for some of the piles because the ground was too hard to drive them in (I don't even know how they solved that one), and all sorts of things like that. At this point we can only grin and bear it. We will be super broke for awhile, but at least once we're there we won't be paying rent as well as mortgage.

And before we get to the photos, just to let you know, going to Rarotonga for my birthday, so I'll post a mid-November update with pictures of beautiful beaches, and hopefully I'll be less stressed next week!

Now for the photo reel:











03 October 2016

September 2016 - building consent is being processed

September has gone by quickly, and I have a good excuse for being a couple of days late in writing - we had guests for the weekend. It's so exhausting having guests, it feels like there hasn't even been a weekend.

So the month started with two weeks of stress while waiting for the architect to get the right information to the city council. After a rather rude and obnoxious email (from him to me that is), I took a step back and left the rest of the building consent stuff to the other half. Finally we got an email from the council with an invoice attached. so we paid that right away and a couple of days later they confirmed that they had the payment and had begun processing our building consent. So finally a bit of good news and a clear time frame - they have to have it sorted in 20 working days. Which brings us to about the 19th of October.

As for the house in the factory - we have not yet got a new time frame for that. I keep asking when it will be transported but have not yet got an update. We have got photos though, and can see that it has now been painted and is waiting for the kitchen and bathrooms to be installed. Then it will be ready.





No other news from this end. Work is the same. Life is pretty tiring. Weather has improved a lot and the evenings are a lot lighter. It's actually been warm enough for shorts and t-shirt twice! At Wainui the weeds and grass are starting to grow pretty quickly so the next thing to do is buy a weed-whacker and start taking care of things. Here in the city it's time to start thinking of packing. I sold our spare tv and the ugly couches are next on the list. I packed up all my fabric and next I'll pack books and ornaments, and other semi-useless things that we won't need for a few weeks. If things go really well we might be able to move at the end of October. But we have our holiday in Rarotonga booked, so it might end up being after that!

Time to go hang up more washing and feed the dog.