Rick, Nicky and Claire in NZ

We have had three “big” events with the house this week, one fun, one joyous and the other not so much. The not so much was failing the Code of Compliance Certificate inspection on Friday. We have failed on two things, and possibly a third. One is that the wooden trim on each corner of the outside of the house needs to be painted at the bottom, underneath. As you can imagine this should be straight forward to fix. The second is that the two drains on the drive that lead to the sewer shouldn’t be flush with the surface of the concrete. They need to be raised by 25mm to prevent stormwater entering the sewer. We understand that this shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve. The third item relates to our request for access through all external doors to be wheel chair friendly, i.e.: flush with no step. This has been achieved by using a drainage system (which I think is plastic) between the concrete and the frames of the ranch sliders. The inspector said he would have liked to seen a 12mm gap...

Our list of things to be done to finish the house build has become much shorter this week, due to visits from various tradies every day except for Wednesday, when we won the America’s Cup again. Coincidence? On Monday Caleb came and did the tiling of the window sill behind the gas hob to make it legal. He also tiled splash backs for us in the downstairs loo, shower room and laundry. This was partially to use up the one whole black tile and three sections of grey tile that we had left over from the original tiling in the shower room. However, due to the way they had to buy the extra tiles, we now have four whole tiles and bit of another left over! Hey-ho. All the tiling looks really good and works well. Tuesday was Bert’s turn. He finished the balustrade and built a retaining wall by the drive to stop the gravel disappearing in the rain. This has produced a nice “boxed” area which Nicky is looking forward to planting. He did a couple of other minor fixes too. Thursday was the “big”...

I am yet again reminded of the necessity to make notes through the week of our “doings”, because yet again I sit down and think “has anything happened this week?” Then I read through my notes and find that it has! I know it won’t last, and at some point in the future our lives will settle into routines similar to those we had in Auckland, but for the moment each week brings something new. We have had two exciting/fun happenings this week. On Tuesday some posh looking cars pulled up just a few yards from us on the other side of the road, and people eventually emerged from them and started making their way to Paul and Naomi’s (our vendors) home. It turned out to be an estate agent, videographer, and photographer with a drone camera. Once our home is finished (I’m sure it will happen one day) I plan to put a photo book together of the build, concluding with some aerial photography. I also am a little bit disappointed that we can’t see our lovely roof, and would therefore like some pictur...

We have been living at Covid Level 2 this week until 6am this morning, when we went down to Level 1, which is life as normal for us as we don’t travel overseas. What wasn’t normal was the earthquake which woke us a 2.30am on Friday. It was the first of three but we didn’t feel the following two which were much further off the coast in the Kermadec Trench. Even though we were in bed we felt that we could feel the ground “rolling” and could certainly hear it. It was my first real experience of an earthquake. Later in the day we put a Go Box together - a box of basic supplies that we can just pickup and leave with, if ever we have to evacuate. Nicky has been working hard on the berm, preparing the ground and planting poppy seeds and seedlings. She has also been buying plants for the font garden which is next on her list, and has included some Naked Lady lilies along with flax and ferns. I have done a little wilderness clearing in the back garden and and also bought some weedkiller to hel...