No sooner was the ink dry on the Clyde Road offer, when Joy and I started looking for a new house.   Bruce & I have been clear that we wanted to keep a city pad, something small, inexpensive, and easy to care for.

I’d been looking at houses on-line for several weeks and narrowing down the neighborhoods which we were keen to move to.

The Clyde offer was signed on Wednesday morning and Joy & I spent an afternoon looking at houses on Friday.

Several of them were quite nice, but one in particular stood out as it’s back boundary bordered a stream.

On Monday, we brought Bruce and Ollie to see it.   There was no question that we should put an offer in on this house.   Built in the 1950’s, it was in great shape.  The kitchen had recently been remodeled, it has a logburner in the living room, a northeast aspect which gets loads of sun, and has three bedrooms with a converted garage extra room and a very cute yard with fruit trees.

We found out on Tuesday that it was going to be a multi-offer so we put forth a very clean offer (no contingencies and six week closing schedule).  We were picked, we signed, we close on September 17th!

Oh, my, god, we’re moving.  And just in time for my birthday!

A few months ago, our Clyde Road flatmates, Vern and Evelyn, decided to move out.   We felt the universe was sending us a message to give selling the house another try thus allowing us to move on with our grander plans.   The Clyde Road house was just too big too manage now that we have our humongous project in Wainui

We asked friends for a realtor referral and was put in touch with Joy Butel of Sotheby’s Realty.  “Lucky Joy” we were told and upon meeting her in early June, we immediately liked her affable nature and no nonsense approach to selling.   We thought we were going to list the house in the spring, once we got through the dreariness of winter.  Who wants to do an open home in the depths of winter in a cold house?   However, Joy quickly nipped that idea in the bud and said that lots of homes were going to be coming on the market in spring and we need to be ahead of the onslaught.   Eeeek!   That meant Clyde needed to be ready for the first open home in a months’ time.

Thank goodness for woofers.   Erin and Mike (a Canadian couple who I’ve written about in a previous post) came to woof for us in Wainui.  However, they did a one-day stint with me at Clyde Road and the three of us spent an entire afternoon raking & bagging leaves and pruning trees & hedges, and getting the outside area all tidied up.

Meanwhile,  Joy, prior to leaving on a three-week holiday, sent a notice out through the Sotheby’s database that Clyde Road was coming up for sale.  During her trip away, her colleagues showed several parties through the house;  one in particular was quite keen and scheduled an external building inspection.   Well, the building inspection report was abysmal and full of, how shall I say it, downright lies.   {If anyone reading this post would like to know the name of the company and further details of their report, send me an email}.   The report was so bad that the potential buyers backed off and we were left scratching our heads wondering what to do.

Pete and Ollie to the rescue.  Once we all combed through the report, Pete and Ollie said they could fix all the raised issues with just a few hours of work (and not $10k of work like the report suggested).  And so, suddenly plans changed, and a week+ of Clyde Road work ensued which encompassed:

• Replacing a gutter on the carport which was leaking in two areas
• Putting flashing over an external window
• Replacing a large chunk of rotten weatherboards on the south side of the house
• Cleaning the gutters
• Scrubbing parts of the roof that had mildewed from leaf fall.
• Patching up a few areas on the rooftop.
• Painting two external window frames
• Doing a deep internal house clean of windows, floors, and carpets and moldings.
• And, more raking of leaves!

Friends’ Briar and daughter Jack were staying at the house for a few weeks and they took responsibility for washing floors and bathrooms and cleaning windows.   Previous woofer Cathy (the sound healer) came for a few days and painstakingly raked up leaves around all the shrubbery as well as doing some clearing work on the property.

I tackled the roof scrubbing and external window painting and a little bit of weatherboard fixing.

Ollie and Bruce did most of the weatherboard replacement in three days time.

And Ollie did the gutter replacement job as well.

The weather cooperated and we had a very mild week which allowed us to get everything done!

The first open house was held on July 18th.  The house looked really good.

Joy said about 40 people came through – a record number.  Two parties in particular were very interested and came for second and third looks throughout the week (one was a church group who were keen to convert the house into some kind of student drop-in centre).

On the 25th of July, the 2nd open house was held and over 100 people came (most of them the church congregation).  Joy put out the word that we were doing a multi-offer, meaning interested parties had to put their best offer forward by a particular cut-off date, which she set to be 10 am, Wed, July 28th.

Two offers were presented, both of them with reasonable prices, but one clearly outshone the other, as it had no contingencies.   It was a no-brainer.   Clyde Road is sold!   We close on October 1st.   Thank you Universe!

Bruce, Ollie, and I found ourselves stuck in Christchurch for a week, making repairs on Clyde Road, while Kat and Pete head off to Wainui to continue work on the heating system.

Well, from a pictorial standpoint, it’s not going to look like a lot of work got done in those ten days, but from a technical engineering standpoint, heaps was accomplished.   Apparently the living room floor was laden with copious fittings and pipes which Pete fashioned and welded together and onto our Gourmet stove.  There will be four sets of copper pipes running from the stove up through the attic to the hot water cylinder basket and then throughout the house to all the radiators.  It’s quite a complicated thing to build, but Pete’s our guy to get this job done!

They also started connecting the hot water cylinders together.

And, the easy part, several of the radiators got mounted onto the walls.

So, all in all, a good round of work, but it felt, to me, like very little got done.  (I’m a visual kind of gal).  Everyone was starting to feel tired and in need of a break.   The group decided that Pete and Kat should take the month of August off as they had things they needed to take care of at home and we needed a bit of downtime to heal our weary bones and deal with our impending house sale.

So, the schedule slips even more, but hey, we’re actually staying warm through winter with the temporary stove, so we are in a better place than we were last year.  But here’s my latest guestimate of the schedule now:

• Phase 1: Demolition of existing infrastructure and installation of temporary stove  {March}  COMPLETED!
• Phase 2:  Opening up of kitchen/living room wall and installation of structural wall beam and installation of reinforcing beams in attic space  {April}  COMPLETED!
• Phase 3:   Installation of hot water cylinders and some of the radiators  {May}  {June}  PARTIALLY COMPLETED just a wee bit!  {July}  Kind of COMPLETED!
• Phase 4:   Installation of remaining radiators and piping {June} {July/August} {September}
• Phase 5:   Installation of Gourmet Cooker {July}  {August} {October}

Despite the schedule slip and a few dreary days, the sun came out for Kat’s birthday which we celebrated with bunches of bouquets made from the garden and a yummy cream-cheese frosting cake!    Life is still pretty darn good!

Ah, nothing like a deluge of rain and a slide into winter to put us waaaaayyyyy behind schedule.

I have failed miserably as a project manager <grin> as my original ‘guestimates’ for the heating installation project timeline has now slipped by a month or two:

• Phase 1: Demolition of existing infrastructure and installation of temporary stove  {March}  COMPLETED!
• Phase 2:  Opening up of kitchen/living room wall and installation of structural wall beam and installation of reinforcing beams in attic space  {April}  COMPLETED!
• Phase 3:   Installation of hot water cylinders and some of the radiators  {May}  {June/July}  PARTIALLY COMPLETED just a wee bit!
• Phase 4:   Installation of remaining radiators and piping {June} {July/August}
• Phase 5:   Installation of Gourmet Cooker {July}  {August}

We ended Phase 2 on May 7th and Pete, Ollie, and Kat were due to come back May 23rd for their next two-week stint.  But a huge storm front came through and dumped rain on the south island for a good solid week.   Roads were washed out and the days were just miserable.   The main highway from Oamaru (where Pete lives) to Christchurch was closed for a few days due to flooding and Pete was stuck on his property, not able to pull the trailer out of the mud and muck.    So, slippery, slide, work was postponed for a few weeks.

The crew finally made it up on June 7th and in between a long weekend trip back to Oamaru, a few days off to Christchurch, and some more inclement weather, the team managed to get about 15 days of work done in this three-plus week period.

Pete brought all the components of the hot water boiler system on the trailer and laid it all out in the garage driveway so he and Kat could finish up attaching the fittings and piping and Pete could get his head around the mechanics of the system.

The boiler system consists of five hot water cylinders:  one very large copper tank (about 300 litres), which I’ve aptly named Steampunk Sys (just look at the photo!) and four 200-litre plastic drums which Pete has fitted out with heat exchangers, gauges, and pipes which will run our radiators.  It all kind of looks like a pile of random bits and bobs, but I know that it will all be amazing once it’s up and running.       The whole system will sit on a big aluminium ‘drip’ tray which Pete fashioned together.   It’s going to be cool (er, I mean hot!).

So, work commenced slowly on the system.  In addition to putting together the cylinders, there was work to be done in the attic to bolt the beams into place.

Finally, we were ready to move the components into the attic and the only way in was through the roof.  So off came a part of the roofing iron, a planking system was thrown together, and with a bit of help from our Canadian woofers Erin and Mike, the crew carried, rolled, and heaved the cylinders and the drip try into the attic where they now sit strewn about until the next round of work.

Meanwhile, the rest of us do not sit idle!   Pete and I each did a trip into town to collect the other components of our heating system:  the radiators and The Gourmet stove.   The five radiators made it out in the van and the stove, weighing a mighty 450 pounds, got fork-lifted onto the trailer and hauled out by the 4×4.    Pete backed the trailer as close to the house as he could, and then six of us, slowly lifted and stepped, and lifted and stepped that puppy into the house.

My oh my, what a beauty.

As you can see from the photo, it’s twice the size of the current logburner we are using.   The Gourmet has a baking oven on the bottom and a stove top for cooking and we’re really looking forward to when we’re preparing full meals and heating the entire house from this classic stove!

And while Pete and Kat focused on the heating system, the rest of us did other things.   Ollie continued work on the outbuilding bedrooms and we enjoyed the company of three woofers for a week.  Cathy, a traditional Shamanic sound healer from Wales, spent a week with us, giving each of us two rounds of 1 ½ hr individual healings.  This coincided over the weekend of the full moon eclipse which was very powerful.  We all bundled up and went to the meditation centre in Akaroa for a full-moon meditation and then celebrated the 11:38 p.m. eclipse by belting out our best howls from the front porch.

Erin and Mike, our Canadian woofers, spent ten days with us.  In between downpours, we managed to transplant 40+ strawberry trees into the upper paddock, collect many buckets of cow manure, weed out parts of the lower paddock, prune the hedges around the porch perimeter, and dig in a leaf mold bin, along with making curtains for their van and whipping up many, many delicious meals.   We all also were treated to using Pete’s new foot spa!

We also had the privilege of celebrating Canada Day, on July 1st and were treated to a traditional meal of poutine – a deep fried french fry dish covered with cheese curds and gravy.  Hmmm, the perfect winters’ day staple, though we did try to make it somewhat healthy.  We also gorged ourselves on pancakes and Canadian maple syrup and learned to badly sing the Canadian national anthem.

We love the team!

“Phase 2:  Opening up of kitchen/living room wall and installation of structural wall beam and installation of reinforcing beams in attic space  {April}”

This was going to be quite an undertaking.  Pete hauled up five steel beams on the back of his trailer:  three to be used to frame and brace the wall between the kitchen and living room and two to be put up into the attic.  It took five people to lift the beams off the trailer!

We were a large crew this go around with me, Bruce, Pete, Kat, Ollie (who is a builder friend of Pete’s and whom we met at Easter and who happens to have just moved up to our neck of the woods), woofers Krista and Stephanie, and friend Hippie Tim who came for two days to help, and lastly our San Francisco friend Mei who arrived during the tail end of the week.

Task 1: Tear down the wall!   Pete, Ollie, and Kat were the work crew for the first few days and they took down most of the wall between the kitchen and living room.  We opened up the wall on one side about five feet and opened the wall up to the ceiling about three more feet.  What a difference it made in the flow of the space.       A couple of 2×4’s were erected to brace the ceiling during construction.

It’s amazing to dismantle a house as you get a glimpse at some of its secrets.  When we took off the gib board that was lining the kitchen wall, underneath were preserved weather boards from the existing exterior of the house.  We’d suspected that the kitchen had been an ‘add-on’ at some point, and now those suspicions were confirmed.

Task 2: Pete worked on the beams as he had to weld on metal plates to which some very large bolts were going to be fastened.  Meanwhile Ollie dug out and framed up the holes in which the two vertical beams were going to be cemented into place.

Task 3: All hands on deck!  It was time to move the three beams into place and it was going to require all seven of us to work together to carry them into the house.  First came the lateral beam which, once inside, was held temporarily into place by a pulley system.

Once latched on, we all then lifted and hoisted and lifted and hoisted to bring the beam up about nine feet.

Next, it was time to bring the vertical beams in and put into place.  These were a bit lighter and shorter but still took six people to carry into the house.  Getting them into place took a bit of finagling as we didn’t have a lot of leeway to maneuver them.  But we did it!

Now it was time for the most ingenious part yet.  Pete constructed a dual jacking system whereby he could slowly jack the lateral beam up to the ceiling.  Ever so delicately, like a lovers’ dance, he knelt on the ground and cranked one side and then the other, back and forth, as we watched the beam move ever so gently higher and higher.  It was truly a fascinating feat.

The lateral beam was then bolted on to the two vertical beams after some wiggling about.
The next day Tim and Ollie mixed and poured the cement into the vertical beam footings.

Task 4: Ollie and Pete then gibbed up part of the wall around the beam and re-adhered the molding.  Ollie also did some gib stopping (plastering) on the new walls.

Task 5: We were running a bit behind schedule, but one of the last things to do was to move the remaining two steel beams into the attic space.  These beams are going to be used to brace our three hot water cylinders which are to be installed in the next phase.

Now these steel beams are about eighteen feet long and required five of us to move.  The only way to get them into the attic was to take off part of the roof and slide them in from the back lawn.   Behold the power of Pete!  One, two, three.  We carried them from the driveway to the back yard.  With Pete balanced on the roof, the remaining four of us heaved and hoed and shoved those beams through that hole.   Truly amazing!

I really was in awe of the work we did this go round.  We had a great crew and had a great time and the universe blessed us with a double rainbow on the crew’s last day on site.

Go team go!

Last August, I wrote about our joining the Wwoofing Network (Willing Work on Organic Farms).  The Wwoofing Network is a great scheme whereby organic farms and properties can connect with travelers looking to experience authentic New Zealand life styles.  The catch?  The wwoofer host provides accommodation and food in exchange for four hours of work per day by the wwoofer.  It’s a great way for property block owners and farmers to get free labour, to meet interesting people, and to share their knowledge and expertise; and it’s a great way for travelers to travel cheaply, pick up some new skills, and meet quirky-yet-hopefully-interesting lifestyle block owners/farmers making a go on the land.   It’s a win-win situation for all!

Due to my travel schedule and the work we had started doing with Pete (our builder), we only had one or two woofers throughout the whole of Spring, but things kicked into gear in February and it’s been non-stop ever since.   I receive a couple of email requests per week, some for folks who want to come right away, some for folks wanting to reserve a space a few months in advance.  We’re slowly learning how to ‘read’ people’s profiles to see if they’d be a good fit with us and we’re learning lots about managing people and how to strike a good balance between having a house full of people versus a house of just us two to relax {the latter which has been far and few between these past four months!}.

We’ve been truly fortunate to have a great crew of people come through.  We’ve generally tended to schedule them for a minimum of one weeks time and often to coincide for when Pete is here.   “If we’re having one person on site, we may as well have three,” has been our motto.   And more often than not, we’ve been a household of six to eight people for ten days at a time.   Somewhat exhausting, often exhilarating, never boring, and always fun, we have gotten so much great work done.

Here’s a glimpse of what we’ve done.

February:  Erin and Vanessa from Chicago.
Vanessa and Erin came during the height of summer.  The weather was gorgeous and they were keen to have a go at anything.    Vanessa is a trained horticulturist and so it was great having her help with some tree pruning.  During their weeks’ stay we made a few batches of jam, they shelled piles of last years’ walnuts, and they transplanted over 100 seedlings and potted up over 50 cuttings of rosemary and sage (all of which are doing quite well).

March:   Mike and Mike from New Jersey AND Brian from Arizona.
I was in a household of six men in March as wwoofers Mike, Mike, and Brian were here along with Pete and Purple during Phase 1 of the Heating Installation Project.  Oh my.  We did a LOT of eating and Bruce and I were in the kitchen all the time prepping and cooking.  These guys liked to do physical labor like digging and most of our digging projects got done.  Brian dug a few swales in the upper orchard for our new fruit trees and the three of them dug a trench around our budding bamboo grove and they dug a few fencepost holes.  Mike and Mike also did a bunch of weed wacking and mowing for me.   Thank you gentlemen!

April:    Linnea from Colorado;  Anne-Sophie from France, and Kat from the U.K.
I now found myself in a household of five women as along with Linnea, Anne-Sophie, Kat, and myself, my neighbor’s sixteen year old daughter spent four days with us too.  It was a go-go-go week with some serious jam-making of four different varieties made (and a jam-off to taste test them);  seed sowing of a dozen or so styrofoam trays of veggies;  a trip down the hill to the ‘free’ apple tree where we collected about four sacks full of apples which then were processed (apple jelly, apple butter, and apple chutney), and the rest wrapped and stored (and still doing well);  arts-and-crafts day to mend our Green Fairy black light lanterns; and lots and lots of yummy cooking.   Anne-Sophie graced us with authentic quiche Lorraine and lemon meringue pies and Linnea led the crew on a culinary Nepalese feast for royalty.  And she made delicious fruit pies.  Linnea was also a seamstress-extraordinaire and so she got the task of hand-mending our greenhouse cover and for fun she made a pattern of some really cool pants we all liked.   The weather during their stay was also amazingly beautiful and so I made sure we got out to do some hiking and touring around Akaroa.   Thank you ladies!

May:     Stephanie from San Francisco and  Krista from Toronto.
Stephanie and Krista came independently and got along well together and with the crew as they joined me, Bruce, Pete, Kat, and Ollie during Phase 2 of the Heating Installation project.  Oi, what a busy ten days that was.  During their stay they helped dig out, weed, and create a few new garden beds; did a bit of seedling transplanting; helped de-nail a bunch of wood from the demolition; helped carry very large steel beams into the house; and, do what we do best, cook and eat!   We also had time for lots of fun and squeezed in a few trips down to the beach to explore some new areas and have a few yuks attempting to build a human pyramid.

We really have enjoyed all our wwoofers and hope to stay in touch with many of them. They have helped us get on top of our game and have saved us from endless hours of grueling work alone.    I am grateful for their hard work and enthusiasm and for helping us maintain our little piece of paradise.

Thanks team!

So here we are, eleven months later, the cattle stop sitting nicely on the front lawn with the grass growing a foot or two all around it, while we wait patiently in the queue of the local contractor, wondering if he’d ever get around to us.

Needless-to-say, I was shocked to get an email from the contractor two weeks ago saying that they’d be ready to start the job the coming Monday.  Hooray!  Cattle stop implementation about to start!

Two gentlemen and a digger showed up on an autumn Monday morning.  After sussing out the scene, they decided to drag the cattle stop from the front lawn to the front gate (about 200 metres) wherein they gently laid it on the roadside.

Next, they excavated a large hole about 24” deep.  The cattle stop needs to sit on an elevated concrete frame so that there is a ‘gap’ between the rails and a significant drop to prevent animals from crossing over it.  Also in order to do the excavation, they had to dismantle the surrounding front fence to make room for the cattle stop and to make an alternate vehicle passageway on/off the property.

Next they framed the hole and poured the concrete.

And lastly, after allowing a few days for the concrete to set,  they lifted the cattlestop into place.  Voila, we have a functioning cattlestop.  All in a weeks work.

Now all we have to do is re-build and reconstruct the front fence.  Hmmmm, let’s hope that doesn’t take us a year to do!

This house is extremely cold in winter (partially due to the lack of wall insulation which we plan to remedy) and the existing fireplace, in it’s brick encasing, does not put out enough heat to warm the house.     During our year-long meetings with our architect, we’d researched various heating systems and decided that we were going to install a cooker-heater wood burning stove, called The Gourmet Cooker,  which would be powerful enough to heat the house through a boiler/radiator system and heat our hot water for domestic household use.   This is accomplished through the use of two or three hot water cylinders which will be stored in the attic space directly above the stove.  When in use, the stove, which is encased with a hot water jacket, will heat water and distribute it to radiators in all the bedrooms, living room, and bathroom.    It will also heat up the hot water cylinder for our showers, laundry, and dishwashing needs.   When not in use (in summertime), we plan to heat our domestic hot water via solar panels or by normal good ol’ electricity.    And another virtue of this stove is that we can cook in/on it! (it’ll look like this when we finally get it:)

So, given that we can only work on this renovation part-time, we need to do the heating installation project in phases.  And as I see it, it’ll go something like this:

Phase 1:  Demolition of existing infrastructure and installation of temporary stove  {March}  COMPLETED!
Phase 2:  Opening up of kitchen/living room wall and installation of structural wall beam and installation of reinforcing beams in attic space  {April}
Phase 3:   Installation of hot water cylinders and some of the radiators  {May}
Phase 4:   Installation of remaining radiators and piping {June}
Phase 5:   Installation of Gourmet Cooker {July}

Time will tell whether my project management guestimate skills are on target or not.

But back to Phase 1.    The first task to accomplish was to remove the old fireplace (easy peasy) and take down the chimney (relatively easy peasy).  The brick chimney, Pete noted, was held together by clay and not cement which meant that it could be easily taken apart by light chiseling.  Purple, a chinese astrological monkey, climbed onto the roof and onto the chimney.   As the photo above shows, this was not for the faint of heart yet Purple climbed around like he was only inches off the ground.

While Purple was on top, chiseling away, and dropping bricks down the chimney, Bruce & woofer Brian were down below in the living room, with a wooden board over the fireplace, waiting for a batch of bricks to drop.  Then, voila, wooden board removed, and bricks available for wheelbarrowing out the kitchen onto the lawn.  This little dance of drop and haul took a full eight hour day to complete.   What was left was a rather large enclosure, large enough we joked, to potentially be a wee little bedroom!  And a whole pile o’ bricks, hopefully to be used as paving in one of the future projects.

The next day, it was time to remove the built-in furniture and finish demolishing the wall which had encased the double chimney.  This meant taking out part of the wall in the living room and one of the bedrooms.   Pete and Purple went at it all day, sawing huge chunks of the wall apart.   In the end, we had a very nice wall opening from one room to the other!

Over the next few days, the wall got reframed and insulated.  They put in additional electrical plugs and internet sockets.  And eventually they re-gibbed the wall.

Lastly, the new flue was installed (probably a good 30 feet of it) and the temporary stove was put in and tested that night.  Hmmmm, warm and toasty!    And a wonderful feeling of accomplishment for Phase 1.   Till next month……  {before and after photos:}