Progress update

Well it's been another few weeks and we've been busy, but hard to see progress. Most of my time has been working in the kitchen, stripping off the old cork tiles, the gib from the walls and then both layers of ceiling!

Stripping the cork was looking like it might be a nightmare, however with a scraper blade attached to an oscillating saw, it powered through them super quick. The plan was to sand back the floors and get them polished, however we came across a large concrete slab where the old coal range would have been, so we've abandoned that idea and are going to go with laminate flooring again.


Behind where the old coal range was, someone had replaced the sarking boards with extra thick stuff, so the gib was never going to look smooth there, so had to replace all of that, or at least pad it out sufficiently.

Next on the list was to move all the wiring around to where we needed the new plugs, like everything, this was a bigger job that expected, with a lot of cables have mouse gnawings so they needed to be replaced!

Still finally we've got the new gib on the walls and plastering is done, waiting for that to dry, then hopefully we can start sanding tomorrow!

 


Here's a pic, where most of the gib is up, the bit under the window will done later as I need to do all the plumbing.

Meanwhile Paula has been busy with her jobs, working extremely hard stripping wallpaper from the spare bedroom, which is no easy task as well as the continuing work cleaning up the gardens, chainsawing firewood, getting rid of all the thistles in the orchard...

No rest for the wicked here!

Friday...

We've been here four weeks now. It still seems slightly surreal that we are not rushing off to work each day - while we are working hard there is a lot of downtime too which I think we both needed. I am starting to look for a part time job - saw one this week that sounds interesting, so I'd better find the box with my work clothes for the interview!

Mum arrived this week so I've had a couple of days of running her around. She is rapt with waipukarau and the general area, and has bought a wee unit - a title issue however so we are just waiting for the lawyers to sort that. We had to go to the council in Waipawa - the next town over - I am definitely going back there, some cool wee shops and the Settlers Museum looks interesting.

Grace is doing great - three days at kindy this week and she tells me she loves her teachers. Apparently a boy called her a duck head (haha I assume he said something else) but the teacher made him say sorry! She is enjoying doing lots of word games at home with us, and very much looking forward to primary school next year, which is five minutes down the road rather than back in town like kindy.

Meanwhile Rupert has been scraping up the cork tiles in the kitchen from the floorboards - the intention was to polish the boards. Unfortunately there is a big concrete slab where the old coal range would have been so it looks like we will have to put down some kind of flooring to cover it. Next job for him is stripping the gib off the walls and getting new stuff up, so we are not too far from installing the kitchen. That will make a huge difference to life down here.

We've had a few days of beautiful weather - today is rainy but I shall take that as a hint to get back to working on the spare room rather than chainsawing and grubbing thistles! Grace is home today but she quite likes sitting on the spare bed telling me stories while I work :-)

I've just put my first batch of eggs in the incubator so hopefully we will have chicks in a few weeks. Grace is very interested - I can't wait to see her reaction when they start to hatch.

Paula and Rupes

A bit quiet....

Well nothing seems to have happened around the place for the last week, though we've been very busy! Paula has been tackling the orchard, removing thistles by the 100 and sawing up a couple of huge logs and converting them into firewood, the new chainsaw has been very busy.

I've been working on organising the carport and trimming away the branches leaning on the shed roof, then getting rid of the foot thick layer of macrocarpa leaves that had accumulated - as the neighbours noted - it looks rather naked now!

Another big bonfire ensued, to get rid of all the smaller branches and another load of rubbish to the dump has tidied the place up a lot.

We lost a day when the toilet started to leak - unfortunately it wasn't the cistern, so needed to get a complete new set, unfortunately the previous installers hadn't read the instructions so had filled the underside of the toilet completely with concrete, so what should have been a 2 hour job, ended up taking all day - so wasn't happy with that!

Grace is back to kindergarten today so that will start freeing up some time for us both to get stuck into things, next big job will be to start on the kitchen, lots of cork tiles to scrape up, and then the fun begins pulling off the gib from the walls and ceiling.

Paula's mum arrives in the CHB today, flying down from Whangarei, then staying in a motel for a wee while until she find a place to rent or buy. That will make things easier with Grace also as we have a baby sitting close by!

On the live stock front, the pigs are making great inroads into the vege garden, turning over the soil nicely, so it won't be long until they need to be moved to their proper sty and we can start building up the garden.

We think we're going to go for these lovely beasts as our next livestock purchase - though plenty of fencing to sort out first... if we get a male and female, dare we call then Shazza and Dazza?

Thats about all the news for now, keep watching for more exciting Walnut Creek Farm updates!

Cheers
Rupert and Paula