The building begins ...

While the plans were off getting the once-over from the KCDC, we got our resident sparky, my dear daddy Johm, to come over and start the power process.


Well this had it's moments! Dealing with two men (dear daddy and Crosie) who are oddly both right (hey, i'm the one writing this so i get authors rights!). After several days and phone calls finally got the power one - oh Meridian you are so easy to deal with ... not!


However, we now have power and phone cables laid and are able to liven to the electric fence for the sheeps and have some security lighting on around the section - to stop those nasty little grebblies that feel that they can come onto your property and have a nosey or take stuff!


So the trench has now all been filled in, Crosie has now started the painstaking process of digging the foundations and making sure everything is level so we can pour the concrete around Jan 13th.


The plan is to rent Crosie's place in Westridge and then get a temporary building onsite while the man-space is built so we can live onsite. A litle bit of an adventure for us .... hmmm no real kitchen, no shower - thanks to friends in advance as we will be coming to see you to de-smell during February! Also to my work colleagues!


As i write this, Crosie's place has been up on Trade Me for about 24 hours and we have had a lot of calls and several people come through to view the place. Which meant i had to do a lot of cleaning up, while the man was at the section doing man-stuff. In other words keeping out of my way!


So back to the building ...

We are up and runnng!

Finally after saying we will put pics on a blog so you can see our progress, we are actually doing it!

December 15th we received our buidling permit - yay!! Though the advertised 20 day turn around for KCDC was a little out when in reality it took 37 working days for us to receive it in our hot little hands! No matter as we have it now...

The story so far ....

Aug 2009 saw Crosie and I purchase a wonderful section in Nikau Views - nearly four blissful acres of with amazing views of Kaipiti Island, Mt Taranaki, the Marlborough Sounds and looking inland, the southern Tararua's - an amazing spectacle

The land has lain fallow for some time and the first "man job" was to purchase a weedeater - of course it had to be something super-duper, no ordinary Warehouse product would do the job - a Honda Brushcutter was purchased! Then began the chore of cutting through all the "old man" grass and getting some light into the depths of the grass to encourage new growth.

The man set about this task with reckless abandon and then the reality of how long this task would take set in! Crosie is not one to give up and kept going - though the sheen did come off the weed eater, it was worth it's weight in gold. Our section had had it's first haircut and was looking presentable.

We are of course a couple that set trends up here on the Coast, and it wasn't long before others saw the beauty of the spot and we had neighbours on both sides of us. However, putting that in perspective one is about 200m away and the other cannot be seen due to the large hill seperating us.

As it was going to be sometime before we had our building permit, we felt that we needed to build something on our land, so we did. As we are both avid vegie gardeners, though slightly different philosophies on how they should look, we made two gardens. They are 4.8m by 2.4 and there are two of them. Crosie's has been set out in perfect rows - we are talking nail and string lines, whereas mine is far more fluid and basically planted to as far in as i can reach! We have already reaped the benefits of early radishes and now potatoes. Peas are coming along nicely, we each have 2 rows, the great Pea-off is underway!

Then after an inspired idea, we transported the little hothouse from Westridge all the way up to the View, now we have approx 20 bags full of tomatoes, so chilli plants an basil residing in it - in very cramped conditions. The corn was seeded and taken to the section and forgotten! more corn seedlings were purchased then planted and then eaten by the resident bunnies and hares - so in the survival of the fittest, they have failed - perhaps next year we wll have better luck.

A range of herbs, carrots, artichokes, silverbeet, spinach, lettuces, beans, courgettes, celeriac, broadbeans and beetroot are all happily growing - some in regimented rows, others in a slightly haphazard fashion, but growing nonetheless.

Then came the arduous task of fencing. We sent out feelers to see how much it would cost us to get someone in to ram the posts and all was looking good to get someone in, when one of us had a brlliant idea that between us, we could put the posts in!

And so it was that late one Saturday afternoon we hired a two-man post hole borer. Sunday loomed ahead of us and voila! 8 hours later we had bored over 110 post holes - now we just had to go and put the posts in!

Over the ensuing weekends we did just that and then got to the fun bit of stringing up the wire. Crosie, being the creative welding type, fashioned a (technical term coming) wire un-winder (so i have just been told it's called a Jenny), so all i had to do was pull out the wire coils along the fence line. Using an antique wire strainer (courtesy of Crosie's grandfather) we strung up the wire. As Rome wasn't build in a day, neither was all the wire straining. But to be fair the boundary fencing that we had to do was rather long with the south boundary being 89m and the northern boundary is 158m long - so it took awhile to do!

With the fencing - both the boundary and internal fencing done, there was only one thing for it - we needed livestock! On Christmas Eve Mark came home with 8 rather large lambs - 5 boys and 3 girls. Now i am not allowed to name them, but i am talking to them everyday, just to make sure they are settling in ok!

Now it's onto the building of the house .....