Our Christchurch Modern

Twelve months of neglect..

2012-02-09T13:36:00.004+13:00

Well, it's not quite the full twelve months, but close. Thought I'd post a couple of 'then and now' photos. We are at the stage where the foliage can't get much worse. And hopefully, we will be starting with some building action in the next couple of months.

Then:

Now:

Then:

Now:

Best Christmas present ever:

2011-12-20T12:18:00.001+13:00

Community meeting

2011-11-10T12:55:00.002+13:00

I went to my first community earthquake meeting to get an update on zoning, and the process involved for getting our house sorted. There was an amazing turnout at the local school hall:

...a lot of grey hair (check out the guy to the right of the photo - not happy):

It was long, there were several speakers (respresenting CERA, EQC, CCC and the Port Hills Geotech Mapping peeps) - it wasn't particularly informative, there were a lot of crazy hecklers, and I got tired so spent the last half sitting on the floor, watching a sea of angry peoples' legs.

The whole gist of it was: we are working through each white zone to make a decision about access to running water, but there are lots of people who don't even have access to their houses yet, so we have not forgotten you but you are quite far down the list in terms of priority. Can't really argue with that. No-one would put a time-scale on the process though, all they would confirm is that they hoped it would be complete within a couple of ............years. But it may be sooner. Here's hoping!

Surviving..

2011-10-17T19:56:00.005+13:00

Don't get excited - nothing significant to report from around here. The weather is warming up though, and what is left of our garden is going crazy. I braved the potentially unsafe backyard to search for any remnants of my vege patch and was pleasantly surprised.

Some tarragon made it through:

And quite a few clumps of chives are thriving:

The lemon sage is going nuts, but I hate that stuff - it's just a glorified weed. But down in the bottom right of the photo you can spot a few small tufts of chervil:

And bizarrely, in the middle of the 'lawn', some parsley is springing up.

We have decided to start attacking the ivy which has consumed the plants on our path:

It's hard going, but satisfying, and it's nice to be doing something towards tidying things up around here.

My pessimism pays off..

2011-09-07T21:15:00.002+12:00

Did I say we were being re-zoned? Oh, I'm sorry - I meant to say that pretty much every single property surrounding us has been re-zoned to green. We are still white. Technically white means they are still assessing us, but a very small and very pessimistic part of me is getting very slightly worried that we may in fact be told we can no longer live here because of land issues.

Could that actually happen?

Sheesh - nearly a whole months between posts.

2011-09-05T20:24:00.002+12:00

Things are certainly slow around here, we are gradually settling into life back here - things have been dull and quiet for a while, but the past week has heralded two pieces of good news.

Firstly, we met with our landscape architect to look over his plans for the section - he thought these out before the big quake, but they are still relevant - we might just have to wait a couple of years until we can start.

I won't talk you through it - except to say we think it's awesome, and it made us excited about the house in a way we haven't been for a good twelve months.

The second piece of good news came tonight - it looks like we are being re-zoned from white to green and we all know what green means: Go!

I'm still very pessimistic though, and doubt it will really alter the snail's pace of things around here. Let's see.

Plumen.

2011-08-11T13:46:00.002+12:00

Sorry for the unexpected hiatus - a minor hiccup on the family front. But back in action now.

The lighting situation at our place has become rather comic - all of our lampshades and lights seem to be beautiful, but useless. The ones in the living room are the worst, but the dining area and our bedroom were also pretty silly in terms of being dim (both had Poulson PH 5 shades - lovely, but pointless if you actually want to shed light on anything). Come sunset, we have been squirreling round like a couple of blind moles, in light not even bright enough to read a book in.

It got a lot worse after the earthquake, as we lost both of our table lamps.

So when we visited this lovely shop last weekend, we couldn't resist picking up something new. A Plumen bulb. They are pretty fun to look at, and as they don't need a shade should be reasonably bright. They are eco-bulbs though, which do tend to be a bit on the dim side.

Oh, and they are stupidly difficult to photograph. See better pictures here.

Let it snow...

2011-07-26T09:04:00.002+12:00

Yes, a record dumping of snow fell yesterday. We are warm-ish. The underfloor heating is on, but I suspect we lose quite a bit through those plywood walls upstairs. This morning is sunny and clear, but the snow isn't budging yet...

FAQ: Warren & Mahoney colors.

2011-07-24T17:11:00.005+12:00

Every now and again we're asked "what are the Warren & Mahoney colors?"

So here they are:

Blockwork - pure white (inside and out)

Opening window / door sashes - Hairy Heath (rust)

Window / door frames - Mongoose (tan)

Warren & Mahoney used these colors almost exclusively during the 60s and 70s and the rust color was known as "Warren Tan" in the office at the time. No idea where the scheme originated?

These are the Resene names, but you could mix up any brand to the same color. And they were always applied nice and glossy, rich and wet-looking.

Miles' also had a fondness for orange which he used in the W&M logo and a grey-ish blue, often used to paint concrete lintels and foundations.

Other things

2011-07-22T21:20:00.005+12:00

We had a meeting with our builder and a project supervisor from Fletchers today. Looks like things are still on hold indefinitely until they sort this shizz out with the White Zone.

In light of this, and the likelihood that nothing is going to change around here anytime soon, I have decided to branch out slightly and talk about a bit of other stuff. Still modern. Like modern-y things and modern-y stuff. I will blog about the house if and when things get moving. Okay? Okay.

To kick things off.... today's Google logo. Commemorating Alexander Calder's 116th birthday. No idea who he is, but the logo is a mobile, which swings gently, and using your mouse you can spin it round. Super fun.

ps - check out what's on our Trade Me watchlist (over on the right) - if you live in Wellington and have $800 000 to spare, I'd go have a look.

Home Cracked Home

2011-07-17T15:25:00.002+12:00

We moved home yesterday -after getting the land report to say that although the bank may collapse further, the house should be okay. I've cleaned the place about three times, but it still feels dusty. I put clean linen on the bed and we slept here for the first time since February 19th.

There was a decent aftershock about ten minutes after we stepped in the door - ha!

In the afternoon I sifted through the ruins of our backyard and salvaged a few clothes-pegs.

The using some twine I found lying around, hoisted up a new clothes line - it's actually in a way better spot than the original, but I doubt Matt will approve of this location in the long run.

Why I have Katy Perry stuck in my head...

2011-07-13T20:24:00.002+12:00

What a week it's been. I can't even recall where we were at when I last posted. We have gone from thinking work was about to begin, to the announcement of the "White Zone" - after which our scaffolding was actually taken down and carried away.

Our builder sighed, and said "Hmmm, I think we should maybe touch base again in 6 - 12 months, because nothing is going to happen before then"...we wept.

Then this whole land report, which had apparently been mailed to us, but actually hadn't been mailed to anyone.

I kept chasing this up - it was obvious the report had been prepared, and all the land assessments finalised, and all we really wanted to know was whether it would be safe to go home.

I called one of my contacts at the local Hub: "Remember me? The slightly deranged woman who came in with a folder of paperwork and a snotty baby boy?".... and she put me in touch with someone from the EQC in Christchurch. Anyone who has been a part of this earthquake will appreciate what a big deal that is - mostly we can only speak to call centre staff in Auckland or Brisbane.

Anyway, this guy had our land report and was able to tell me the pertinent points (ie the cliff/bank is not safe, but our house is, so long as we stay in the house and don't hang out under the cliff). So I mentioned to this friendly, intelligent guy that our scaffolding had been removed and how gutted we were that it looked like it would be twelve months or more before our house is fixed. "What?" he said. "We should be fixing it right now," he said. "I will talk to someone tomorrow about this," he said. But that's not the amazing part - the amazing part is....

....he did.

Really.

And I got a call today saying that Fletchers will meet me at home next week for a 2.5 hour meeting to discuss the extent of work and project management, and would it be okay if they were to begin and finish work in the next three months?

Really.

Truly.

Hell yes.

Bring it.

Oh, and I can't get this song out of my head - I hate it. It just sums up what's happening here. Such a bloody emotional rollercoaster.

I seriously can't believe this....

2011-07-11T13:14:00.002+12:00

Hello this is the Earthquake Commission, how can I help?

Me: Hi, I was expecting our Skope Of Works for our land to arrive in the mail, and it hasn't, so I was just calling to see if you could send another copy?

Okay, I'll just look you up on our system......[long pause, lots of tapping, verifies my identity etc etc]... Right...hmmmm....I'll just transfer you to our claims department in Brisbane..

[hold music - quite rocky, no more plinkity plink keyboard music - nice touch]

Hello, this is M------, I understand you are calling about your land claim?

Me: Yeah, I thought our reports had been forwarded to us but nothing has arrived in the mail...

Right, no, we are not sending out reports any more.

Me: So nothing has been sent to me?

That's correct.

Me: Right. So can you tell me anything about our land claim?

I can read you parts of your engineer's report over the phone, but I can't give you any costing information.

Me: Okay, anything would be great

Okay, so it says here that following the September quake, there was partial failure of five of your retaining walls, and full failure following the February quake.

Me: Um. We never had any retaining walls. That doesn't sound like our property.

[Laughs] Okaaaay. Hmmm. It looks like we have the incorrect report attached to your file. Sorry.

Me: So how do we find the report for our property?

Do you know who the engineer was? I think you should contact them directly.

Me: Righto. I'll do that then [trying to sound cheery, and not at all irritated].

Anything else I can help you with?

Me: No, thank you.

This conversation actually took 26 minutes. 26 minutes for nothing. Nadda. Zilch. I have left a message with the engineer (fortunately I know who it is), but don't like my chances of getting a reply seeing as he is in the midst of making assessments of the entire Port Hills region right now.

I am so annoyed I can't even be bothered attaching a photo to this post.

Guess who just had a real life conversation with someone helpful?

2011-07-05T12:53:00.003+12:00

So, I took my folder of correspondence with me, and walked right into the Fletcher's Hub dealing with our house, and I sat down and said I wasn't leaving until I spoke to someone with authorit-y.

Not really - I asked nicely to talk to someone about where we were at. I was expecting to have security called on me or something, but instead a lovely lady named Di came and listened while I explained the whole history of our house, she was intelligent, and understanding. Then she went and found our file, and had a chat to someone else and came back and said 'don't worry'.

She explained that we were right near the top of the list (higher than she herself was, or that lady over there on reception....oops, starting to feel bad now), and given that our Skope of Works was in the mail (AKA "what is majorly happening to your land"), it looks like we will be getting things moving as soon as anyone. Unfortunately, it does look like our scaffolding will be taken away, as any land remediation will be carried out before work on the house beings.

I cannot express how amazing it was to have a face to face conversation with someone. And at the end she gave me her card with her number on it and told me to call her directly if I need to know anything. Amazing.

I don't see any reason why I couldn't have been told this over the phone, but I had a hunch that going in in person might yield more results. Now we just need to wait for that letter to arrive.

One step forward....five steps backwards.

2011-06-29T20:09:00.004+12:00

So last week, the big guys 'zoned' the entire city:

We fell in the white zone. We thought it was no big deal, and had no real consequence to our repairs. We had our scaffolding up, and our builder was talking to the EQC about starting work. Then in today's paper they came out and said that they have put a hold on all repairs in the white zone...indefinitely.

Our scaffolding is going to be taken down. We have no timeline. We have gone from optimistically hoping work would begin in the next few weeks, to the very real possibility it may be over 12 months before anything happens.

What the heck am I going to blog about if that happens?

Another phone call...

2011-06-29T13:34:00.002+12:00

Hello this is the Earthquake Commission, how can I help?

Me: Hi, about ten days ago someone called me and said they were assessing our land, and would get back to me within a day or so and I hadn't heard anything so was just calling to see how it was going?

I see, can I have your claim number? And full name? And address?

Me: [gives details]..

Right, um, okay, let's see......[pause]...okay.....[pause]...it looks like we have assessed your land.

[pause]

Me: Okay, so what was the assessment?

It looks like we have sent you a letter, um, this morning.

Me: Okay, great, what was in the letter?

You will receive the letter in 5-7 working days.

Me: Can't you just tell me what it says now? Seeing as I'm on the phone?

I'm afraid I can't see that. But I can see that you are being sent a letter which talks about what is majorly happening to your land.

[this is actually what he said "majorly happening to your land" - wtf?].

Me: Majorly happening to our land?

Yes that's right Ma'am.

[he actually called me that too - "ma'am"].

Me: Is there anyone I can talk to who can tell me what is in the letter?

No, but I will make a note that you would like to know what is in the letter...[taps on keyboard]....is there anything else I can help you with?

Me: Ah no, you have been majorly helpful....loser.

[I didn't actually say this, but it's what I thought. I am not mean to people who work in call centres as I was one once. It's not their fault there was a majorly massive earthquake and the EQC was majorly unprepared and they were at the front of the dole queue and so had to take the stupid call centre job talking to all the Christchurch losers who are all grumpy because they desperately want to know what is majorly happening to their land].

No doubt I will have a major update in 5-7 working days.

Un-prompted contact!

2011-06-20T21:15:00.004+12:00

After all my whinging and moaning, I received a phone call this morning from an actually quite intelligent sounding woman who was simply calling to let me know that a team of peeps from the EQC were going up to the house today to have a look at our cliff. As in progress. I have no idea what this means, but it's got to be a step in the right direction, yes?

I can't believe how this is totally like what I imagine to be going on behind the scenes right now...

2011-06-20T16:46:00.002+12:00

Average weekday morning.

2011-06-16T09:30:00.003+12:00

Phone Call Number 1.

Me: Good morning builder-who-shall-remain-unnamed. Just wanted to check in and see if we have made any progress towards starting repairs...

I haven't heard anything - maybe you should try calling Fletchers directly and see if you can get them to assign the job to me.

Me: Okay, so I'm asking them to appoint you as supervisor?

Yeah.

Me: Okay. Will do. Speak to you soon.

Phone Call Number 2.

Welcome to Fletchers, this is Sing-Song-Telephone-Operator-Voice

Me: Hi, I wanted to speak to someone about beginning repairs on our house and appointing our own contractor.

Did you want to opt out of the scheme?

Me: No, I wanted - ...

I'm sorry, but repairs will not be beginning for some weeks in your area, someone will get in touch with you directly at a later date, goodbye.

Dial tone.

Phone Call Number 3:

Welcome to Fletchers, this is Abrupt-It's-Only-9am-And-I-Want-To-Go-Home

Me: Hi, I wanted to speak to someone about electing our own EQR approved contractor to project manage our repair work.

You mean you want to opt out?

Me: No, I want to elect our own contractor to manage the repairs.

I'm sorry, you can't do that.

Me: But it says right here I can do that...

I'm sorry, I will have to get someone to call you back [takes contact details].

Phone Call Number 4.

[waits 7 minutes on hold listening to repeated messages of other numbers I can call for help - none of which are applicable to me]

Hello Earthquake Commission, you're speaking with Student-JobSearch-Kid-Who-Has-No-Idea-And-Doesn't-Care, can I have your claim number? [looks me up in the system, asks my address and verifies I am the homeowner]

Me: I was just trying to get an idea of what is happening with the land part of our claim, and when we will be able to move back to our house?

One moment please

[waits 2 minutes on hold - stupid music that sounds like my one-year-old son on a xylophone]
Hello, you're speaking with Very-Busy-Why-Do-Those-Idiots-On-The-Front-Desk-Keep-Transferring-Calls-To-Me.

Me: Oh hi, I was just trying to see where the land part of my claim is at?

Can I have your claim number? [looks me up in the system, asks my address and verifies that I am the homeowner] Okay....[taps at keyboard]....hmmm...the engineer's report is here...[taps at keyboard]...hmm. We seem to have all the documentation...I'm going to have to transfer you to another department.

[on hold - same stupid music]

Hello you're speaking with Someone-Obviously-In-Brisbane-Australia-But-Let's-Pretend-I-Am-Right-There-In-New-Zealand-And-Have-Some-Understanding-Of-What-You're-Going-Through.

Me: Hi? I just got transferred to you regarding my land claim?

What's your claim number? [looks me up in the system, asks my address and verifies I am the homeowner] Okay. We aren't currently processing land claims - we are concentrating on house claims and repairs and will be looking at land claims at a later date.

Me: Right.

Anything else I can help you with?

[dial tone]

One step forward...

2011-06-02T12:48:00.003+12:00

Well, as far as landscaping the garden this year goes, I think that will have to wait. I'm starting to grow attached to the pile of rubble out the front though - some sort of installation piece perhaps?

Anyway, something happened. Like, something has been fixed, which has to be a step in the right direction.

We got new doors for the dining area:

They haven't been treated yet, but they are exact replicas of the ones that were there, and are fitted with the pre-existing brass fittings. Finally. Something positive.

I've managed to get some half decent photos showing how the floor has slumped in the corners - above and below are the dining room corner.

..And the same has happened in the living area:

It's much more noticeable when you see it in real-life. As I mentioned earlier, the EQC's plan to dig up our entire floor and re-lay it doesn't sit well with us. We have looked into an alternative, and it seems promising.

In the meantime, we are starting to struggle with not living in our house, and so are about to start the big clean, and move back in. Despite the fact that the cliff hasn't been sorted.

Who cares if it's not technically safe? So long as we keep the back doors shut, we should be okay, right?

Broken things - Part 4

2011-05-15T13:45:00.003+12:00

I know it's getting a little depressing, cataloging everything we lost, but there is something cathartic and final about it. Making a list, setting it down, so we can start thinking of positive things - like getting new stuff (one day, when we eventually get paid some sort of insurance)!

These chairs were a housewarming/wedding gift from my brother. A traditional style deck chair, similar to what was the folks sat in on board the Titanic.

It was pretty sweet sitting in them on a nice day, enjoying our courtyard...but alas.

You can kind of see remnants of one of them in the rubble there. Alongside a piece of our back door - which we also (obviously) lost. And come to mention it, the ends of the clothesline are visible above the kitchen window - not a major loss, but for a laundry-fiend like myself, distressing enough.

There hasn't been any change in our situation yet. Still waiting, not complaining though, I think the task of fixing this city is huge, so we're kind of happy to be in a line at all, even though we're probably far from the front.

[top image is a watercolour by Sir Miles Warren of the Raymond House]

Broken things - Part 3

2011-05-04T21:13:00.003+12:00

We had two of these lovely Snelling Saran Lounge chairs. Well, one footstool but two chairs. I think they were slightly different. The reason I am not sure is that they never made it to our house. We bought them on Trade Me a couple of years ago, they had been restored and were nearly finished - we had a professional upholsterer re-webbing them (in black).

Then the professional upholsterer's premises collapsed in the earthquake. Not only were the chairs severely damaged, but the building was such a danger that it and all it's contents were demolished before any retrieval could occur.

We're not sure if insurance will cover them, as they technically weren't in our house at the time, but we're putting in a claim anyway, just in case.

image

Broken things - Part 2

2011-04-28T19:58:00.002+12:00

Ah, the clock...I've always had a bit of a love/hate thing going on with this clock. It had a shaky start in our lives - while I was studying in Melbourne I saved and saved in order to buy one as a Christmas present for Matt, and had it smuggled to New Zealand (where we were to spend Christmas), only to discover, when I signed for a courier, that he had gone and purchased one for himself, like the week before Christmas. The aspect of this that irked me the most was that I had spent days on foot and on the telephone sourcing one, and had to order it in specially, while he just went to the MOMA website and ordered online. I wasn't as good at the internet as I am now.

More recently, I have gone off the clock as these bastards are selling cheap replicas, and it is actually quite hard to tell the difference. Call me a snob (I won't deny it) but I hate the thought of people visiting our house and thinking we shop at that horrendous store.

So when it fell off the wall and on to the concrete tiles, my heart didn't sink as much as it probably should have. The arms got all bent, and I tried to bend them back, but now it just looks all munted.

Broken things - Part 1

2011-04-26T09:14:00.004+12:00

I have been spending time over the last few weeks getting photos and quotes together to finalise our contents claim with our insurance company. When the quake hit, I thought we got off pretty lightly in terms of contents, but now that I'm going over it, there are quite a lot of special things which unfortunately got broke.

Including both our Artemide Tizio table lamps.

Turns out these are pretty fragile wee things. When it comes to falling on to concrete (although the one in our bedroom just got slammed against the wall and broke). We will be able to replace them, but with new ones - ours were older and therefore cooler.

One of our lamps in better days..

Exciting new feature!!

2011-04-18T20:00:00.004+12:00

This is not relevant to the thousands of people who subscribe to this blog via Google Reader (or other applications where you can't see the extra stuff like banners and ads from our sponsors. Ha! Sponsors! I kill me), but anyway, over on the side bar I have added a new feature.

While the rest of the world has eBay, or craigslist, here in New Zealand we have Trade Me. We are always watching something, and occasionally we bid and get new stuff. We also sell stuff over there. The earthquake has given us a whole new excuse to buy more stuff. Not only for us, but also for Matt's office (his old office is still within the central city cordon so he has no access to his furniture).

If you are nosey, or interested, or looking for something nice and can't be bothered trawling through all the listings, then check out my new "Watching on Trade Me" thingy over on the right. Apologies, but I couldn't think of a more inspiring name. I've kicked things off with this Rosewood coffee table.

We have some action...sort of.

2011-04-15T19:35:00.004+12:00

That's right, it's been nearly two months since the big quake, and the weeds are growing through the rubble.

We are considering ourselves very lucky, because despite earlier predictions, the EQC guys came up today, clipboards in hand, to carry out the full assessment of our house.

There was lots of measuring and pointing with laser beams. Basically they just made a big list of broken things, and the repairs that were required to fix them. It took over two hours. Two hours!! It was boring. Something of an anti-climax. They weren't interested in the cliff at all - there are special "Land Assessors" for that.

The big issue that we discussed is the downstairs flooring - it has slumped in the corners of the house, and in order to fix it, all the tiles, grout, underfloor heating and concrete would have to be removed (read - uninhabitable house, tonnes of dust, dirt, work), and relaid. New tiles. After the hours of agonising, I have to admit, I've formed quite an attachment to those dirty old quarry tiles. The thought of new ones, even if identical, just upsets me. We have heard rumours of some process which involves pumping a filler under the slumped corners, thereby preserving the flooring, but the assessors didn't know what we were on about, and so it's not looking promising.

We are desperate to get back into our house. I spent more time there today than I have since the quake, and it was just so sad to lock it up and leave again. It is starting to smell. It's getting musty, and it's dark because of the boarded up broken doors. There is still a layer of dust over everything, and even though I had lot of time today, I just couldn't bring myself to clean up - it seems so futile when more sanding and painting and general mess-making is going to be done.

Anyway, we should consider ourselves lucky to have ticked this assessment off the list - there are thousands of houses needing urgent assessment, most are probably more damaged than ours. I just keep have to keep repeating it - lucky lucky lucky.

Before and After - from the sky!

2011-03-25T13:49:00.003+13:00

They have just released satellite pictures of Christchurch on February 24th - two days after The Big Quake.

Here's our piece of paradise before:

And after:

Not only can you see piles of rubble at each end, but you can see the four patches of our roof which are all higgeldy-piggeldy after being thrown in the air.

For the science-y among you, yesterday there was a write up in The Press by Dr John Berrill explaining why the hill suburbs (where we live) was especially hard hit. The following paragraph brought it all back for me:

...this suggests that a building, and possibly some underlying soil, would have been left behind in the air as the ground accelerated downwards beneath it, with the building then falling under it's own weight at near, but less than, 1g until it impacted on the ground, giving the high positive (upwards) acceleration.

Well it turns out there was a reason it felt like we were being thrown up and down in the air - we were.

(to read the full report, visit www.csi.net.nz - his report has some cute hand-drawn images illustrating what happened which never made it into his article).

Aint nothing gonna happen round here for a while

2011-03-24T13:03:00.002+13:00

Turns out the EQC guys popped round to our house at some stage and left this note. I guess it's reasonably accurate, in that we don't think we have any major structural damage, but it's still kind of heartbreaking to realised that we won't get a full assessment until September. And that's if they run according to plan, which is highly unlikely.

There are stories going round about who these guys are - there used to be about 20 assessors, but after this quake they decided they needed a few more, so suddenly there are over 200. Rumour has it that they are mechanics, truck drivers and policemen. So not really that qualified to make judgment on structural soundness.

At least this gives this blog an increased lifespan! We were thinking that once we'd done the garden (which was going to be in the next 12 - 18 months) I'd have nothing to write about, but now it looks like we'll be working on this place for the next 3 - 4 years! Awesome!

Shiny happy bathroom!

2011-03-16T17:51:00.002+13:00

Turns out tilers don't have much on right now, with lots of work presumably coming to a halt due to the quake. Not our bathroom though...we have progress, people!

..and it looks a thousand times better than first time round.

What's more, the peeps came and resurfaced our bath. I wasn't there to see it, but apparently they stripped back the old surface and then painted on a new one. Looks good to me.

All that's left is some tidying up. Actually, a lot of tidying up.

Nearly watertight

2011-03-14T20:27:00.002+13:00

One of the few good things about having our bathroom drag on, is that we had our builder on speed-dial when the quake hit. And (potentially out of guilt) he was more than willing to jump in and arrange things so that we could get our house watertight asap.

And so, last week some nice men came and put up scaffolding, and today more nice men came and boarded up the front of the house (the back was done using a ladder soon after the quake).

On the one hand, it is great to have something being done (although, word on the street is that after the house is watertight, the scaffolding will be moved elsewhere and then there will be a very looooooooong wait before repair work is started due to the massive amount of administrative work that needs to be done by the EQC), but on the other hand, I was hoping never to have to see our house clad in scaffolding ever again...

Side note: bizarrely, this new round of scaffolding was erected exactly one year after last year's was put up. Okay, so that's not that bizarre. But it will definitely be getting weird if we put the scaffolding back up for repairs on 12th March 2012. Hopefully things will start before then, but we are pretty much in the dark right now, so it's within the realms of possibility.

The bullshit begins

2011-03-09T13:07:00.003+13:00

Looks like the bank behind us is going to cause us a lifetime of grief. I think deep down we already knew this, but this latest quake has made it a thousand times worse.

Firstly there are issues with establishing how safe it now is (not very, is my guess), then what can be done to make it more safe (not much without spending loads of money, is my guess), then whose responsibility it is to do that work (hopefully not us), and then actually getting it done (we think 1 to 2 years time is actually quite optimistic). Yikes.

Shitty shitty bugger f*%# bugger.

A bit more damage..

2011-03-01T09:42:00.004+13:00

Another part of the fence has fallen down in an aftershock - no biggie, we weren't planning on keeping that fence long term anyway...

We went in and cleaned out the inside last weekend. The internal pane of glass that smashed:

Small cracks in paint and gib-board upstairs:

Cracks in the downstairs block work:

We have had our builder, an architect (thanks bro), and a structural engineer have a look and all three are optimistic about the long-term future of the building. If we can sort out the immediate issues of weather-proofing and clearing unsafe debris then we may be able to occupy the house pretty much straight away.

Hopefully we will have scaffolding up in the next week so we can secure the roof tiles back in place, and waterproof the front of the building.

There's still no water, but we have power. And a portaloo out on the road. Getting there.

Weirdly, the guys want to carry on with finishing our bathroom, and so someone is coming next week to recondition the bath. You'd think it would sort of slip off the priority list, but I think lots of tradesmen are keen to get jobs done to keep up income - it could be months or even years before some of the highly skilled work actually eventuates. If you're not a builder or digger or scaffolder there's probably not a lot of work right now.

More damage

2011-02-25T21:57:00.002+13:00

Sorry about the iPhone photos..a few more pics from the house - one of the walls to the side has actually fallen, and the other is slowly subsiding/falling:

Now if more boulders fall from the cliff, they can run all the way down to the road - yay!

Sifting through the rubble, we found some old newspaper which had been used to back some of the blocks:

The Christchurch Star - Thursday December 17, 1970. Choice.

Things could be worse...

2011-02-25T08:13:00.002+13:00

This is another old Christchurch Warren & Mahoney house. See it in it's full glory here..

A few more photos.

2011-02-24T20:11:00.005+13:00

Okay, we are starting to come to terms with what's happened, although the stories that we are starting to hear are just horrific. They are yet to release any names of some 300 dead and missing people, and although thankfully our close friends and family are safe, we are all sure we will know some of those who have died. Anyway, if you want to know more about that kind of side of things, then you can go here. This blog is about our little house, so I will keep it focused.

The image above shows the back of the house, which was definitely the worst hit. The brick 'veneer' or facade over the top storey has literally flown off the side of the building. The concrete roof tiles have also been shaken off.

The blue tarpaulin above covers the french doors - they were open and got smashed by falling blocks.

My vege garden is definitely no longer...you can also see one strand of our washing line which remains - the rest of it snapped in the middle - illustrating the huge amount of tension placed on it when the house and the anchor of the line obviously moved in separate directions at high speed. Mental.

The view out the french doors.

A significant part of the cliff came down, including these chunks of clay - they are at least 1m in diameter. You can also see that one of the bricks from the fence has flown off - it landed about 10 feet from the fence.

The front of the house isn't as bad - similar damage, but to a lesser extent.

Those parts of the building which have lost the walls are not strictly waterproof, although they are covered in building paper. We have organised a builder to get up there this week and waterproof them.

Internally there is a LOT of dust, partly from the fallen blocks, but largely from the slip at the back of the house. When the first shake ended, I was spitting out dust from my mouth and had trouble seeing for a minute or two.

The internal window by the entrance way (I haven't got a photo) shattered, but otherwise the damage inside isn't too apparent.

There are a couple of cracks downstairs like the one above.

But perhaps of more concern is this crack in the rimu beams which are bolted into the concrete walls. It is hard to imagine how much force must have been present to do this.

Our builder came up to the house yesterday and after a quick look, seemed to think that structurally the house is okay, and he thought it is all reparable, and once waterproof could be liveable in it's current state. We will be getting an engineer's report and probably another builder's opinion before even considering going back, but I guess we are feeling pretty optimistic that we can save our house.

After donning hard hats and salvaging our precious things, we are staying with my parents where we have power and running water. We are incredibly lucky. As they say - it's only bricks and mortar.

More about our personal experiences here.

Just so you know....

2011-02-22T21:54:00.002+13:00

In case you have heard the latest, we are fine. Unfortunately the house is far from fine.

We are all safe, but many people aren't. I'll write with more news when my head can deal with it.

The one about the skylights...

2011-02-05T09:01:00.003+13:00

Somehow I have managed to miss out our skylight update..

Well, when we got the new ones put in, I thought I was being really clever, because we wanted exact replicas of the ones we had (which were rotting), and we have copies of the original working drawings for the house...So, me being the logical and straight forward thinking person that I am, I figured if we gave the builder a copy of the working drawings, and said that we just wanted them exactly the same, then he would be able to get us some new ones, exactly the same.

And because they're working drawings they have all the dimensions, materials and information anyone would need to reproduce new skylights - right? Wrong.

I already wrote about how the glass that goes into them is different, but we dealt with that (fortunately Matt preferred the clear glass). The next problem with them came up after they were installed. The wind blew. And our toilets were filled with leaves and dirt. Lots of leaves and dirt. You would go the toilet and if the wind was blowing you would have a shower of little green leaves gently falling on your head and shoulders..almost kind of romantic. Except it was in the toilet. And leaves are not meant to come into toilets.

What went wrong? Well, our skylights have a vent which is really just a gap between two of the wooden parts, and if you look at the working drawings, that gap is supposed to be bridged with some mesh. But it wasn't. They just left a big old gap. Nice.

So as well as re-doing the bathroom, we're getting the skylights removed and mesh installed. Did I mention how awesome that is (insert sarcastic tone here)?

The Bathroom - Take Two.

2011-02-04T16:40:00.002+13:00

Well, it wasn't finished last week as we were promised, and looks like we will be without a bathroom for another three week stint, but our standards have dropped to the point where we are okay with this - at least it's happening right?

And it looks super precise:

Unfortunately, the super duper tiler (truly - this guy was mental, he turned up at 6.30am on a Saturday and worked without a break until about 2pm) ran out of tiles, which is part of the reason for the delay. And after the tiles are done, we need to get the bath re-enamelled before we can start using the bathroom again...

So, I wouldn't say the end was in sight, but it's somewhere out there, it exists. And that's enough for us right now.

Larger victories..

2011-01-12T12:33:00.003+13:00

Word has it the builders are re-doing the bathroom as requested! Apparently. So they say.

I am one of those "I'll believe it when I see it" kind of people, but we're feeling a bit more positive around here.

Small victories...

2011-01-10T14:20:00.004+13:00

After attacking various plants on Saturday, including some of the smaller agapanthus, Matt came home from watching the cycling and decided to get stuck in to the two giant agapanthus plants which have been taunting us from the living room window - I know it is hard to look at this photo and see exactly what we are complaining about - the scraggly trees? The cracked fence? The weedy lawn? No, it's the two green luscious perennials situated in the centre and to the left of this photo:

I don't think they had ever been officially 'planted' - just dumped on the ground as the root systems were largely above the earth, and some were still plastic wrapped...

Anyway, after getting them out, we needed to figure out how to get rid of them - drag them down the hill and borrow a trailer and drive them to the Green Waste Dump? Hmmm, we couldn't really be arsed with that. So I thought - what about Trade Me ...(the rest of the world has eBay or Craigslist, but New Zealand has Trade Me). Matt said "no way" and "no one is going to want these". But I listed them anyway - as is, where is. $5 Buy Now.

We waited.

And less than six hours later someone had snapped them up and is apparently going to come and pick them up next weekend. With a trailer. And take them away. Then give us five bucks for doing so.

CHOICE.

Taking it out on something...

2011-01-08T16:18:00.004+13:00

We have been here nearly twelve months and I feel like we have just been sitting back letting the garden get the better of us. Watching it grow and close in. So in response to the recent bathroom fiasco, I took to the outdoors today and attacked. There were no power tools, just a flannel shirt, some old jeans, some gardening gloves, a trowel, some secateurs, a hand-held saw and brute (or in my case not so brute) strength. And some anger.

I tore at weeds, ripped out as many of the hideous agapanthus I could get my hands on, and then I spied this tree:

Minding it's own business near the back courtyard. It kind of annoyed me. Just the way it looked. It attracts heaps of bees and flies too.

So I took to it with the hand saw:

Ten minutes later, it was a goner:

Just a stump remaining (well, a stump and a whole tree which needs to be cut up into smaller pieces to remove...).

A long overdue update on the bathroom

2011-01-06T20:27:00.003+13:00

I'm not going to harp on too much about this, as frankly it is getting us down. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, the tiling job wasn't super great. Here are just a few examples:

I have had to be totally brave and actually asked for all the tiles to be removed and for the builder to start again from scratch. Mental. I can't believe I asked that. We did spend ages agonising over it, wondering if maybe we are being unrealistic, and pedantic, and just plain fussy. And I felt sick when I got off the phone...it remains to be seen what happens.

I'm hoping that the whole thing will be finished by the end of February. But I have a horrible feeling I will still be posting about it in June. Hmmm.

We got ourselves some blinds for Christmas!

2011-01-03T12:28:00.003+13:00

Yes, we really splashed out and got ourselves two blinds for the house. One for the huge front window and another for the sliding doors.

We have decided to go for Luxaflex Duette blinds, as they have a similar profile to the original venetians, but have the added property of providing some insulation when in use. As a bonus they kind of let the light diffuse through nicely, so that room almost feels lighter when they are down.

From the side they have a honeycomb profile which is how they can insulate:

And they are really slim when pulled up, so they don't interfere with the frame at all.

They are super dooper expensive though, so we only bought the two, but hopefully a bit later in the year we might be able to get a few more for the other downstairs windows.

The front one is currently permanently down as we had some big aftershocks on Boxing Day and I am so sure that that window is very close to shattering (it is old and thin and there mustn't be much flex in the frame)...we'll see.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T14:07:00.001+13:00

I got a new camera, so will back soon with lots of amazing photos and witty stories regarding our house...stay tuned.

New Skylights

2010-12-21T09:56:00.004+13:00

A bit of a bum post, you know, no camera, no good photos, blah blah blah.

Here is a photo of one of our old skylights:

Dirty old glass, broken and what you can't see is the rotten wooden frame.

Anyway, we got our new skylights yesterday - essentially they are just a wooden box/frame with a piece of glass slid into them and narrow ventilation gaps around the edges. We have a full set of working drawings for the house from back when it was built, so we handed these over to the joiner and asked him to make us new ones exactly the same.

And they seem to be just that, except that our glass order got muddled, and instead of frosted/opaque glass, we have crystal clear glass. I groaned, nothing ever goes right, but when I broke the news to Matt, he shrugged and said he quite likes the clear glass...it's not as if anyone can see in, and it lets more light in.

So with no further ado, I give you our new skylights, as seen through the eye of my iPhone:

...ooh! we can look up while we are on the toilet and see trees!

Twiddling thumbs and paper pixies

2010-12-15T13:40:00.004+13:00

Wondering why no posts? ....because there's been no action of course. Nothing, nudda, zilch. Apparently someone was going to be here Friday, then Monday, then Tuesday.....

We have had an extremely awkward conversation with the guy overseeing this work, where we sort of stumble around the fact that we are unimpressed with the standard of work. We are total pussies though and didn't demand that the whole thing be started again. He conceded that certain parts were shit and the builder who is going to finish the job will re-do these parts....now it's just a question of when someone will show to actually do something.

In the meantime I'll leave you with these cute paper pixie houses, built by these guys who were also responsible for this.

Update with crappy iPhone photos...sorry

2010-12-08T17:05:00.002+13:00

Sorry, but my camera has passed away, suddenly. But as I know you are all totally enthralled with progress in our bathroom, and just dying to see how things are going, I'm giving you some iPhone photos...some not very good ones.

First, something good - our new benchtop arrived and has been installed - it is divine. So clean and orange. I love it. We are using the old sink - it's heavy and porcelain and we see no reason to replace it with something cheap and plastic (as that's all we would be able to afford). i gave it a good scrub and it has come up like new.

Now something not so good...

Most of the tiles have been laid, but we have to say that we're not stoked with how it looks. It's not the fault of the tiles - they are fine, and we know that things are far from finished, but there are too many odd looking gaps for our liking..

Plus, as you can see above, the tiles have been built up so they are higher than the window frame, which means we have to build up the frame with another bead...which is getting pretty messy all round.

At this stage, we have someone else stepping in to finish the job and hopefully rectify a few of the issues we have (yes, there are more, but to be honest I am a bit over the whole thing to feel like listing all the badness right now)..

Anyways, sorry about the snaps, unfortunately we didn't budget for a new camera right now, so I'm not sure when the high quality photos will return...sigh.

Where we're at.

2010-11-28T09:02:00.002+13:00

It's been nearly two weeks with no shower...yikes! The whole taps debacle held things up immensely as the builder had other commitments last week so things didn't really move forward at all.

But we have waterproof walls. Nice blue waterproof walls.

And the benchtop has been taken away...

So a bit of a mess, but hopefully we will get things moving again at sparrow's fart tomorrow. Matt is getting tired of washing himself down with the garden hose...

My husband's famous..

2010-11-22T20:09:00.002+13:00

On a brighter note (the taps arrived this afternoon - delivered by a sheepish employer in his own car), my husband is now famous.

Appearing on the back page of Home magazine, talking about the Lyttelton tunnel building:

What a hottie.

Young mother totally loses the plot in public place...

2010-11-20T13:15:00.002+13:00

Okay, so the first major hiccup (watch out, this is an ultra long worded post, so make a cup of tea and get comfortable). Last Saturday (one week ago) I went into a shop we have here in Christchurch called Smiths City to order some taps. We are simply going to replace the old taps with the latest version of the same thing - by the same company and everything. So, nobody buys shower taps anymore - usually people replace them with mixers, but we figured we'd just take the easy route and stick to taps. Anyways, so nobody stocks taps - they have to be ordered from the manufacturer which is cool, so last Saturday we went into Smiths City to order our taps.

There was a bit of confusion regarding the pricing - something was $130 but no-one was sure if that was for one tap or both the hot and cold. We need two sets - ie four taps. I mentioned to the shop guy that if they were $130 per tap then there was no way we could afford those ones, cos that would be over $500 just for some taps which was just silly. The shop guy laughed and agreed and asked another lady to check that it was the price for two. Which the woman went somewhere to check and came back and said that it was for definitely for two taps. Now, that's still heaps of money - $260 just for some taps. Whoa. Anyway, we went with that and ordered (and paid for) two full sets.

So, they came in on Wednesday which was a bit late, we had to put the plumber and builder on hold cos they couldn't do much without the taps (as we have the huge holes in the wall which need to be sorted before tiling can proceed) so I was a bit stressed. It was also really hot - like nearly 30 degrees, and the baby was unhappy and crying a fair bit cos of all the men and power saws etc.

So I went down on Wednesday, with crying baby on my hip, ultra tired, dirty and smelly (as we have no shower, and incidentally baby had vomitted down my front before I left home and I couldn't be bothered changing - put together this is a great image oui?) to pick up my taps when disaster struck.

Firstly, they only had one set of taps. Okay, this means work will still have to be on hold. Then, they tell me that I've only paid for and ordered one set anyway. Uh, hello? And get this, it's the same lady who went and checked for me on Saturday to make sure the price was for a whole set. Then it gets really screwy - she denies ever having told me this, and tells me it they are always priced per tap and makes it totally sound like my fault. She was so rude - she kept turning her back to me and speaking over me and trying to get rid of me.

So...it gets a little messy here. In my head I was trying to work out which part of this was worse - the fact that we can't proceed at all with our bathroom until more taps are ordered, or that we have to fork out another $260 on taps. These thoughts, combined with the heat, crying, sweat, smell and fatigue lead my eyes to well up and me to quietly whine..."but we can't afford more taps"..before breaking down in snotty nosed red-faced tears. In public.

Unbelievable.

I have never behaved like this in public before. I had to grab my phone and call Matt in order to stop myself actually sitting on the ground and throwing a total tantrum. I wandered around the store, sniffing and sobbing and talking to Matt while he tried to calm me and wisely suggested I just pay for the taps and get out of there.

Returning to the counter, the ladies were obviously a little freaked out by the crazy smelly red-faced crying lady with the confused looking baby on her hip, and although they didn't apologise, they offered me a $50 discount and assured me the taps would be here by the end of the week. Okay, I sniffed, and paid for more taps...

End of unpleasant experience? Why no, it's now Saturday and they still haven't arrived. When I rang this morning I was told to phone them again after 9am on Monday to see what had happened. What the &%*#?

"Smiths City Has It All" reads their slogan. Should be "Smiths City brings young mothers to tears" or "Smiths City hasn't got what you want in stock and will break you down by stuffing up your order, taking ages to get things in and being rude to you in the process".

I'm stepping aside now and passing it over the Matt - I'm sure he will be much more rational and demanding when he speaks to them on Monday. This has pushed the whole project back by a week. A whole extra week with no shower! Don't worry though, we have been driving across town and showering at my folk's place every other day. And the baby is happy enough if we fill up his toy bucket with water and dunk him in that.

ps. see that tap up in the photo - $130 right there. Wham.

We're on!

2010-11-18T13:10:00.003+13:00

Things started with a hiss and a roar yesterday - the plumber and builder arrived and by the end of the morning we were meant to have the taps sorted and the walls prepped for the first stage of tiling.

Neither of those things was achieved.

Firstly, we found we needed to cut giant holes in the wall to expose the taps fully. After a heap of noise with some sort of power saw and a massive cloud of grouty dustiness we had holes:

Note to self: baby does not sleep through the noise of power tools, loud men, and debris crashing into a enamel bath.

Unfortunately we then concluded that the whole taps need to be re-plumbed which the plumber couldn't do without the new taps present. I ordered the new taps on Saturday but they hadn't arrived so Mr Plumber had to leave and can't come back until Friday, which brought things to a grinding halt. Grmph.

Well, not a total grinding halt - the plan had previously been to tile over the existing tiles, but after the mess created above we realised that the old ones peel off quite nicely so I worked away at getting them off but that didn't really work out (note to self: baby doesn't sleep through noise of hammer and chisel) .. so we spent the night elsewhere and Matt came back after dark to finish it off.

This morning we had buckets of old tiles and a skanky shower door ready to be thrown away.

And lovely (!) bare walls.

Hoorah!

Bye bye bathroom!

2010-11-16T13:09:00.004+13:00

After weeks of inaction following the Big Quake, our mate Gary got back to us last week with a quote to sort the bathroom (re-tile the walls, resurface the bath, replumb the taps and replace the formica benchtop) and to build new skylights. We said ok, he said he'd be round to measure at 3pm the following afternoon....but never showed. Grmph. We threw our hands in the air - tradesmen!

No more contact, brief one-word responses to emails...then, I popped out for a coffee this morning and when I got back there wasn't one, but three vehicles parked on our driveway! With men everywhere - what was going on?

Turns out Gary rescheduled the measure-up to this morning, but didn't feel the need to tell me - heck, they just found an unlocked door round the back and let themselves in! True! Oh well, he is not a bad guy, and so I let him get away with it. I am a pushover.

So we are all on. Today I need to scrub the existing tiles with my old friend the sugar soap and then the tiler will apparently come and prime the walls tomorrow. So no more showers for some time (don't worry, we will be driving across town and showering at my parent's place so we shouldn't stink too bad).

So here's a few bye-bye photos of the bathroom:

Bye-bye icky lime-scaled grout and grotty shower door...

Bye-bye recessed soap dish and old worn out taps...

Bye-bye faded benchtop...

Bye-bye brown tiles (but I'll miss you)...

Bye-bye dark dark bathroom...

...we were wanting to replace the tiles with white ones of a similar size, but the cost was horrendous - it would have cost about $3500 just for the tiles!! We are not that rich. We are not actually rich at all. So we are going with a larger simple glossy white tile (there's one on the bench in the photo above but you can hardly see it as the room is so dark). We did consider a dark blue/grey too, to match the bedroom cupboards, but thought it might make things a bit dark, and neither of us is particularly good at committing to colour choices. So we went with boring.

However, we are sticking to the original with the benchtop and replacing it with another Valencia Orange one... ooh la la.

So watch this space for a flurry of excited, frustrated, despairing and entertaining posts over the next couple of weeks. For the record, we were told that all the work would be finished by mid-December....not feeling very hopeful of that, but we'll see.

Evidence.

2010-10-20T14:37:00.002+13:00

When we were gardening on the weekend we dug up not one, but several of these little plastic tags:

So the horrible ivy was actually deliberately planted! I like the description - "tolerates almost any situation" - it sure does!

More outdoor goodness..

2010-10-17T21:50:00.004+13:00

We had a cracker weekend here in terms of weather, so we made the most of it and got out in the garden. Something I had been meaning to do for a long time was tidy up the path round the back of the house...it was covered with about twenty years of leaf mulch and dirt, but somewhere underneath it all lay a neat brick path.

So although I had intended to do it myself, my mum couldn't hold herself back and got stuck into it with gusto on Saturday. The end result?

A path! This side of the house is all dark and cold and gets absolutely no sun at all so I am thinking of planting a wee fernery along the wall. See that ivy on the right? Evil evil stuff. So invasive and clingy and overpowering. There are actually full grown trees underneath that ivy.. being strangled and suffering a slow and no doubt painful death. We abhor ivy. It is the devil's plant.

Anyway, enough of the anti-ivy campaign. A few weeks ago, we tidied up the small garden bed outside the kitchen window...it was a bit of a mess but had potential..

Matt hauled away most of the big boulders (a couple were too big for his wee muscles so he left them sitting in the middle of the courtyard), and I dug some compost through the soil.

I planted a herb garden (rosemary, thyme, tarragon, sorrel, chives and parsley) and also about a dozen little lettuces for summer salads.

I am really hankering for a proper vege garden with real veges like potatoes and pumpkins, but for now this will have to do.

Matt's five cents...

2010-10-10T17:24:00.009+13:00

We spend a fair bit of time talking about the things that are wrong with the house, but there's a lot that's right. By 1968 Warren & Mahoney really had it going on. They were no doubt the best architects in New Zealand and their style was unmistakable and often copied.

What made them so good? Huge talent and attention to detail.

Stark white blockwork walls, off form concrete fireplace mantel and exposed chimney flue.

Tongue and groove ceilings seem to float above the walls. Unusually the ceiling has no cavity - these are the floorboards of the second storey.

In a country in love with wool carpet and soft furnishings; quarry tiles and no curtains would have been pretty rad at the time.

All the doors are custom, made from rimu timber with brass fittings. There's 10 in total.

More pics to come.

Blocked drain funtimes...

2010-10-04T16:47:00.005+13:00

This is our bath. The tiles are back to looking yucky as I am too scared to clean them, what with the general leakiness of them now. We are waiting on a quote to get the bathroom re-tiled, so until then why spend time cleaning something that is only going to get replaced? Cleaning shmeaning I say.

Anyway, see that plunger there? Well, the drain has been kind of blocked since we moved in - years and years of scum and dead hair - eeewwww...

I have been trying to unblock the drain using the plunger, but it only makes a temporary improvement. When the drainlayers were here last week, they suggested a new method.

Okay, I have gone all Perez on you with photoshop here...that white line is the line of the drain from the bath down to the outside. The plan goes like this...shove a hose up the drain from the bottom, about 20cm in, then seal off the drain using some old rags:

Turn the hose on full bore, leave for a minute (while holding tight to the rags as the pressure builds up), then release:

I did this about 3-4 times, and each time big chunks of this gross black jelly kind of gunk came out. The pressure felt really high. However, when I checked in the bathroom (I half expected huge hair balls to be splattered on the walls from the force of the water), the water hadn't even managed to come up as far as the bath....presumably there is more in there.....eew eew eeewwww!

The water was freezing, and the drain seems to work way better now, so I am not going to do it again for a while.

On another note - that tree right in front of the drain? The one with the flowers? That's a pear tree.

I really like it - the flowers are pretty, and it had pears on it in Autumn (I didn't eat any, but they looked nice). On the downside, it has huge spikes coming out of the branches that can cause serious injury if you are silly enough to get speared by one.

Anyway, Matt thinks it's ugly and reckons it has to go. Chop chop chop. I'm quite fond of it. What do you reckon? Stay or go?

Before and After - the dining area

2010-09-29T14:06:00.008+13:00

I don't know why I didn't post this much much earlier. I think it is because it has taken ages to get an even half decent photo of this space - it is so dark for a large part of the year, which makes photography difficult. Yet we spend so much time here.

It's the dining area...here are a couple of before photos (nb for those of you that haven't been with us from the beginning - all of the 'before' photos were taken when the house was tenanted. This is not our furniture, nor our dodgy wall decorations, nor our messy bookshelves).

Needless to say, regardless of the general filth which is impossible to appreciate from these photos, the place looked fairly cluttered and generally icky. After we moved in, the place looked like this:

..which doesn't seem too bad until you see that the walls aren't white, they're just filthy cream..here's the white paint going on:

Then, about five months later:

I know this photo isn't exactly pimping, but it really is very hard. I think Matt is going to take a few really good shots of all of the interior at some point, but this will have to do until then.

New Sewer! - postscript

2010-09-28T22:04:00.003+13:00

I forgot to mention the casualties which occurred on Saturday - there were two.

Firstly, the power cable supplying our garage got sliced through by a shovel. Luckily no-one got electrocuted. I have an electrician coming tomorrow to fix it.

And secondly, my father got smacked in the head with a long metal crowbar and was apparently laid out for a while. There was some blood, but he continued working without complaint. I forgot to take a photo.

In light this and the chainsaw incident, not to mention the fact that he was wielding the shovel mentioned above, I feel we will have to increase supervision when dad is helping out.

New Sewer!

2010-09-28T16:44:00.009+13:00

Not sure if that title really deserves an exclamation mark, but hey...

A few weeks back Matt and our dads (his and mine) started digging up the old sewer pipes in preparation for replacement.

My husband, the working man.

Boo, the supervisory dog.

Then last Saturday the Pooman came up (seriously, that's what his company is called) to lay the drains. We made a deal that we would do all the digging and contribute to the hard labour in order to save us time. They would do the tricky stuff themselves like jack-hammering the pesky rock that got in our way and laying the pipes.

For half a day there were old men, young men and shirtless men hard at work outside (ladies remained indoors out of the heat and noise...of course).

Burrowes showed up. And ate some cake.

Then somehow got roped in to being chief concrete layer...

Six hot, sweaty hours later, we had a brand new sewer!

Ta da! Now we just have to cover it up again..

(nb, thank you to everyone who came up, including my mum, Alistair and the Browns...sorry I didn't get any photographic evidence of you being there, we couldn't have done it without you).

A bit more on the topic....

2010-09-14T15:49:00.003+12:00

There was an interview with Sir Miles Warren (who designed our little house) and Maurice Mahoney on National Radio last week - chatting about the earthquake....in case you missed it, you can listen to it here.

My favourite part? That Maurice Mahoney's wife took him to the Crowne Plaza to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversay.

Okay, the earthquake debrief.

2010-09-06T12:04:00.003+12:00

I just heard on the news that there have been over 80 aftershocks since Friday night, and I am still a bit nervous that there is going to be another big one. Hopefully this debrief isn't premature!

Anyway, we were awake when the earthquake happened - the kids who live at the top of our cliff were having a bit of a party and we were on hold to the council, calling noise control (because we are old fuddy duddies with no sense of fun anymore). The baby had just woken up and we were debating whether to go in and get him up or just see if he would go back to sleep. Then it started. A rattle then a roar and it was all on. For a split second I thought it was our cliff was falling down, but then I realised it was more than that. I jumped out of bed and looked out the window - we could see the whole of Christchurch and although it's hard to describe, it was all shaking, the lights all jiggling around while the roar continued. A bright green flash of light tore across the horizon - I think this was a substation shorting out.

During the actual quake, Matt was surprisingly more panicked than me, he hasn't ever been in one and didn't have the practice drills at school which we New Zealanders are so familiar with. In my head I kept thinking we just needed to get under a doorway, so I grabbed Matt and we stood in our bedroom door for a bit before I remembered the baby....! I rushed in, switched on the light (there was still power) and grabbed him - with the light on the severity became obvious - his ikea lamp shade was swinging wildly and smacking against the roof - hard to believe when I look at it now...

Then the power went out and we were in the dark, in Clem's doorway, holding each other tight (and Clem - who had crapped his pants, not due to the quake, but it made the whole huddle thing a bit more unpleasant than necessary) while we listened to the whole city shake and things falling over and the sound of glass breaking - the sound was a total cliche - a jumbo jet flying low overhead, a train tearing through the house, it was the combined noise of the earth groaning and moving and the whole of Christchurch's houses creaking and breaking. Incredible.

It was only later, that I realised we had picked the worst doorway in the house to stand under...

That's right - a lovely pane of 40 year old glass up above just waiting to shatter and fall on us!

The aftershocks started straight away, we clambered downstairs, found a torch and our phones and tried to get some information online (although we had no power Matt's iPhone could still get the world wide web - yay technology!)...Twitter was the first place to show some photos and have information.

We sat trembling in the dark down by the study for about 45 minutes before setting up sleeping spots on the floor of the living room. I didn't even try to sleep but the boys had a bit of a nap. After we realised that we had no water, we packed up and moved over to my parent's place for the next 24 hours.

Driving around the city and seeing pictures online really illustrated what a solid bunker our house is. The only damage I can find is a dent in the baby's room where I swung the door open and the doorknob smacked into the wall, and the fence outside has a bigger crack than it used to:

As we drove across town, we stopped in at Matt's work (we were lucky to get in there before the police had cordoned off the city - his office seemed generally fine (another Warren & Mahoney building), but apparently there were a few broken bottles of wine on the concrete floor), and we checked out all the other W & M hosues we passed on the way - all seemed fine, despite being surrounded by houses with crumbled chimneys and broken fences.

My parents' house was unscathed, but the neighbour's chimney landed in their courtyard:

Now I am back home, pretty anxious about the aftershocks, if another big one hits I think I'm going to aim for the fireplace this time, but I really hope I never have to go through that again!

As an aside, we have had to postpone the work on our drains, as unsurprisingly the drain people are a bit tied up with the general destruction across the city!

Prominent architect nearly trips over grandfather clock

2010-09-05T09:46:00.004+12:00

"Renowned New Zealand architect Sir Miles Warren was yesterday wondering if he could ever restore his beloved Ohinetahi Homestead to its pre-earthquake conditions.

The quake collapsed four upper gables and sent stones crashing on to the building.

"It was such a tremendous noise" Sir Miles said, as he stepped over the grandfather clock that nearly tripped him up earlier in the morning.

The important seaward facing part of the homestead was badly fractured and walls and pillars in the famous garden were toppled."

(stuff.co.nz)

Earthquake!

2010-09-04T12:41:00.003+12:00

In case you haven't heard, we had an almightly earthquake at 4.30 this morning. Our little house stood up well, and surprisingly so did the cliff (well it was still there when we evacuated anyway - we have no power and water).

We did a quick tour of some other Warren & Mahoney houses on the way across town and all seem to be intact. Thanks Sir Miles.

That's the Repetory Theatre above, poor old thing.

On a different note..

2010-08-28T19:11:00.002+12:00

The whole "our cliff is about to fall down" thing is getting so last week. Shamus came back, took a photo and left again. No further movement.

Anyway, back to the drains - you may recall that a while back (over six months now! Jee-whizz!) we started clearing a path to dig up the old drains and replace them. Well, Matt started digging out there and we didn't find what we were expecting. Darren (the drain guy) told us that we needed to relay the bulk of the pipes as they were clay, but when Matt dug down, we found a slab of concrete and what appears to be PVC piping underneath. Hmm. Odd.

He dug in multiple places along the drain line and for the most part it was the same story aside from about five metres close to the house which looks like the original clay pipes. So on Monday I'm gonna give Dazza a call and try to work out what's going on, but we are quietly hoping that we may not have such a massive job ahead after all.

And that means we just might be able to get stuck in to sorting out the bathroom a little sooner. But let's not get ahead of ourselves now...

Come back Shamus!

2010-08-26T15:10:00.000+12:00

I was out bringing the washing in when I looked up to the corner of our cliff and saw this.... it's kind of a hard to see but it's a sort of cave going into the bank. It must have appeared in the last day or so, but basically now the land above it is sitting on a shelf, and if someone at the top of the cliff went for a wander out to their fence then they would probably fall downwards. Very quickly.

Um, Shamus? Can you come back please....?

The Process begins...

2010-08-24T19:16:00.000+12:00

WARNING: The following post is very long and wordy, and the only photo is this one above which I explain at the end, so if you don't like reading or are only interested in photos then jump to the bottom!

Wow, so the whole landslide thing has turned into a bit of a drawn out process. I was initially a little apprehensive about the whole cliff (and the house at the top of it) falling down, so called the council in the first instance. A nice man named Brian came and looked at the cliff and said "hmm, it's certainly a slip" and "hmm, unfortunately it's not our department" and "well, at least it's not as bad as the house two doors up - their cliff is steeper, and closer to their house" and with a final "well, I'm sympathetic, but..." he left.

So I called our insurance company who said "Landslide? We don't do landslides, you need to talk to the Earthquake Commission".

So... I phoned the Earthquake Commission who said they would send an assessor out to have a look-see.

Several days later Paul came round. "Hmm," he said. He took some photos. He explained The Process - and here I was thinking I was nearing the end of the process... oh no, The Process starts with Paul. Paul comes to say "yes, there's a landslide" (just in case we were telling porkies). Then he sends an engineer (a lovely chap named Shamus - more of him later) to assess how bad the landslide is, and whether it is going to get much worse anytime soon. Then a valuer comes round to assess the value of our land that has been affected by the slip. Then an estimator comes to estimate the cost of cleaning up the damage from the slip. Then we get paid the lesser of those two - either the value of land we have lost, or the cost of clearing up. Nobody actually does anything, we might just get a bit of money to put towards hauling wet dirt away. Or some compensation for the land that we can't use anymore cos there's wet dirt sitting on it. Or we can take that little bit of money and spend it on nappies, or new shoes, or expensive cheese - our choice.

Pretty long process eh? The weirdest part is that at this point nobody really cares about stopping the rest of the cliff falling down which was obviously my main concern. I quizzed the insurance company and they assured me that we will be covered for clean up if the whole cliff falls and buries our house. We will also be covered to pay for damage to (and clean up of) the house at the top of the cliff if it falls on us. But as for stopping it happening in the first place? Not interested.

So back to Shamus, who visited yesterday. He wore gumboots and brought a measuring tape, so I instantly took him more seriously than the others. I forgot to mention that by this stage we had now had at least two more similar sized slips in different positions to the others. Shamus took some more photos. He made the astute observation that we can't really tell how bad it might get without having a look from the top, so after he left he was going to go and meet the peeps up there and have a bit of a look from above. Anyway, he explained a bit more about The Process with regards to stopping the rest of the cliff falling down. If, and that's a big if, he reckons the cliff is going to completely fall down in the next twelve months, then we might get some help with prevention - some sort of retaining structure. Otherwise, we're just going to maybe get a little bit of money to spend on nappies, shoes or expensive cheese...

Obviously if we want to build said retaining structure at our own expense that would be hunky-dorey, but to be honest, we reckon our little house isn't going anyway even if a whole cliff and another house falls on top of it, so I don't think we're going to do that. We might move Boo's kennel from the bottom of the cliff. And our kid may be banned from playing out there...

Anyway, so now I'm waiting for Shamus's report, then the assessor, then the estimator .... then some hopefully we can go cheese shopping.

(The pic at the top is of some sorry looking bulbs that have poked up out of the bog of clay sitting on the lawn following recent rainy events).

Ah, yeah, so...

2010-08-09T09:52:00.000+12:00

It rained cats and dogs last night, and all day yesterday, and for a large chunk of last week. Last night as we were sitting listening to the rain, there was some sort of sound outside..Boo got up and barked and growled - I let her outside to go find the murderous intruder she could no doubt hear, but she simply growled into the darkness, sniffed around the back of the house and wanted back in out of the rain. We thought nothing more.

Then this morning as I was making my cup of tea, I raised my eyes to look out our kitchen window and noticed this:

That is an almighty slip, coming down the cliff/bank which sits at the back of our property. We figure that is what Boo heard last night. There have been little slips and slides up there since we moved in, but they are too small to photograph well, and we figured that things had been okay with that cliff for the past 40 years, so it would probably be okay for another 40...

Of course, another way of looking at it is - things have been okay for the past 40 years, so it is probably due to totally collapse any day now.

Why we moved...

2010-07-30T19:16:00.000+12:00

All this house stuff can get a bit overwhelming at times, and living in Christchurch can be dismal in winter - the days are so short and the city is bleak. However, when I get up and see this view out our living room window, I remember why we (well, Matt) wanted this house so much, and why Christchurch is actually not that bad...

Water issue number 2

2010-07-26T12:56:00.000+12:00

Since we moved in, there has been a wet patch down the front by the garage...

It is worse when it's raining, but it's there all the time, even back in summer when there had been no rain for days.

I had a plumber here the other week who needed to turn off the mains water (which, by the way, had taken Matt and I about an hour to find as it was buried deep beneath the flax bush by the garage)....anyway, he saw all this water and declared that we had a leak in our mains. Bummer. He also pointed out a stretch of plastic piping that was sitting above ground that he reckoned was our mains water - apparently if they are above ground these pipes become brittle and will easily break. He told me that we had a HUGE problem on our hands.

So this weekend we had Alistair over (the only person we know with some DIY knowledge) and investigated.

First, they dug away around the start of the water pipe..

Then they tried to access the side of the garage where the "above ground" pipe was running (ah, not a very easy job as you can see)...

Then they realised that this pipe was no water pipe...it carried the phone cable...!? So, basically this plumber was wrong - there was no above ground water pipes showing...

The question remains though about whether we have a leak, or if the run-off is simply stormwater drainage from further up the hill?

For now, we're taking the stance we have had up until this point - ignore, ignore, ignore.

When Dad gets back from his overseas junket we will maybe get him in there with the chainsaw (oh, I forgot to say - it took something like 14 weeks for his knee to heal after the last incident and he hasn't picked up a chainsaw since), so that we can really see what's going on.

Water issue number 1

2010-07-22T10:56:00.000+12:00

Turns out there are three water-related issues with our house which have become apparent during the past couple of months as we have experienced ridiculous amounts of rain. The first is the washout through our section of the clay cliff that sits behind the house...

That's a clay river washing down from the cliff, and around the fences where it forms a puddle of clay on the lawn...when it dries, it is a solid clay platform. When we moved in there was evidence of this, but we had assumed it was some sort of old sandpit or something...

We're glad we didn't do any landscaping before now, as it would all have either washed away or been covered by this. I'm not sure how we will eventually address it, but for now we're just letting it accumulate. So attractive!

We have bigger problems towards the front of the section...

Keep your eyes peeled....

2010-07-19T10:11:00.000+12:00

So, we had the baby and have been kind of tied up with him for a couple of months, but now the house is crying out for more attention...specifically, we have a few "issues" with water. Inside and out... I shall expand further in day or so.

Before and After - the main facade

2010-04-16T08:41:00.000+12:00

Ok, these photos are pretty amazing, showing the transformation from sad, old, neglected house to shiny new loved house.

Before:

During:

..and after:

Ta da!

So clean, so white, so shiny, so waterproof! So awesome.

Before and After - some exterior shots

2010-04-16T08:27:00.000+12:00

Looking at this shots, I realise I have already forgotten what terrible shape the concrete block was in when we moved. It's amazing what a difference paint can make.

It is also obvious that we have a long way to go with regards to landscaping - we have basically ignored the garden and allowed the tradespeople to stamp all over it, and we've cut a lot of things out, but it felt that when we moved in it was too far gone to really salvage much anyway.

Before and After - the living area

2010-04-15T14:37:00.000+12:00

Okay, these ones are fairly awesome, as not only have we made things so much cleaner with the paint (and stripping the tiles and painting the window frames, and the chimney flue, and sorting out the aluminium door and...)... but our stuff is way cool.

Oh, and as you can see above, we have lights too (when we moved in, the fittings were taped to the ceiling). Our lights are not very bright. I think they are a bit silly, as they provide less light than a candle, but Matt smuggled them in before I had a chance to voice an opinion. And yes, I know they look very nice.

Before and After - the windowsills

2010-04-15T14:30:00.000+12:00

I could have taken a photo of each of the windowsills, as they were all in equally terrible condition, but this office window gives a nice idea of how things were then, and are now.

Before and After - the upstairs toilet

2010-04-15T14:28:00.000+12:00

The pictures say it all, really.

On the bright side..

2010-04-09T15:08:00.001+12:00

The bathroom is the only major thing left to do right now (well, apart from replacing the drains and skylights - out of sight, out of mind), so I thought I would start taking some 'before and after' shots. Starting with the bedrooms.

Firstly the main bedroom:

Before:

After:

Before:

After much deliberation regarding the colour of the cupboards (and several cans of unused paint), we decided against the original orange, and instead went for the colour of the downstairs chimney - a blue/grey:

Before:

After:

And the spare room before:

And after:

I guess we're pretty happy with it, it the main bedroom is a thousand times better without the purple walls, and it's nice to have all the handles back on the cupboards.

I'll get some more photos up early next week probably. We are taking a break this weekend - the first proper break since we moved in, and probably the last break in a while. I am SO looking forward to it.

More bad news

2010-04-09T15:03:00.000+12:00

This is a close up photo of the grout in our bathroom tiles. It is all porous and eroded. So water is seeping through the walls of the shower and down on to the floor (and the ceiling below). It has been happening for a while, but has been flushed back into the bath at the bottom of the tiles. Since we sealed the bottom with silicon, the water has had nowhere to go except over the edge on to the floor.

Bummer.

Long term solution: Re-tile bathroom.

Short term solution: Re-seal tiles, and possibly use plastic sheeting to prevent leakage.

We have runout of money so will have to consider the short term solution for the time being.

The plumbing..

2010-04-07T13:58:00.000+12:00

This is the hole in the hallway which exposes the plumbing to the bath. The plumber cut this hole today to try to diagnose why we had water coming through the ceiling when we showered on the weekend. You'd think that such a big hole would make it easy to see the problem, but no. Bizarrely, everything is bone dry in there. No leaks, no water, no nothing. Very frustrating.

Rather than seal up the hole and carry on, we are going to leave it open for the next week or so, and see if it leaks again, then have another look.

On the bright side, in terms of tradesmen and painting and repairing etc, we have otherwise finished! I said farewell to the painter this morning (I think he was relieved to be rid of us and our indecisiveness with regards to colours), and everyone else has packed up and left. If anyone is looking for some Resene Lustacryl in various shades of orange, green or grey then keep an eye on TradeMe, as I will be listing the leftovers in the next week while!

We still have lots of small jobs to do here and there, but we can finally clean the house properly (so long as I ignore the hole in the wall) and start living here like normal people. Hoorah!

Good news and bad news

2010-04-05T18:37:00.000+12:00

Well, the good news is that sometime yesterday (Easter Sunday), the scaffolding guy came and took down our scaffolding, so we have our house back, and it looks AMAZING.

It was too good to be true. Things inside were wrapping up rapidly, late last week the plasterer came and filled the bathroom walls, and sanded them back so they were lovely and smooth. All that remained was to apply two coats of lovely white enamel and we could send everyone packing, close the door and enjoy our house.

For the first time in months I was feeling like there was actually going to be an end to this process, albeit temporary (there will always be more to do).

Then on Sunday morning, after we had woken and showered and gotten ready for the day, I found this:

The bad news is that that's the floor of our living area. Directly under the bathroom. Looking up, we could see drips of water coming through our beautiful wooden ceiling. Not exactly a torrent, but drips.

It's taken me over 24 hours to come to terms with it, but we have some sort of plumbing issue. the worst part is that the only way to even investigate is going to involve removing the wood panel on the side of the bath, and potentially opening up a hole in the wall of the bathroom (yes, the wall that the plasterer has so lovingly prepared for painting this week).

So, it's back to showering across town every day (thanks Mum and Dad). Hopefully someone is coming tomorrow to have a look. Hopefully.

The front door

2010-04-05T18:13:00.000+12:00

Turns out I didn't have a very good 'before' photo for the front door, but it had been painted a sort of faecal/chocolate colour. I took the above photo after the painters had sanded it back.

We left it up to the decorating company to recommend a door colour, as they have been painting Warren & Mahoney houses since they were first built (we even heard a rumour that they may have been contracted to paint our house originally!).

They went for something called "Sepia" which is a shade of red, but in certain light can look brown, or crimson, or even black. It is super glossy and wet looking and we think it is ace.

The Aluminium Sliding Door

2010-04-02T12:07:00.000+13:00

When we first saw our house, we assumed that the aluminium siding door in the living area (on the left in the above photo) wasn't original as aluminium joinery generally isn't a common feature in house built in the late 60s. However, the original plans showed that they were in fact intended, and a discussion with the original owner confirmed that they were part of the design.

Apparently, the door never worked particularly well (things were still being fine-tuned in the NZ ranchslider industry), and at some point the door had actually been riveted shut entirely. This resulted in no ventilation in the living area, and some years of condensation then contributed to the disintegration and rotting of the wooden frame.

Water could seep through underneath the frame, and what you can see above is the insidious tendrils of ivy which also grew around the door and into the living area.

Given that the door wasn't particularly functional, we decided to replace it with an oregon timber sliding door, in keeping with the doors in the dining area (which you can see in the photo above). We had the joiner all lined up to make them, he had come up with a pretty lovely design. Then Matt got a senior architect from Warren & Mahoney to come and have a look.

I wasn't witness to the exchange, but I understand that all it took was for the architect to say that we shouldn't replace it, for Matt to put a halt on the new doors and set about finding an aluminium door reconditioner (yes, there are such people).

Apparently, the doors were meant to look as much like a large window as possible (like the one on the adjacent wall), whilst providing ventilation. The only way to achieve this was to use aluminium joinery, as the edges could be very subtle and thin, and give the impression of a window - particularly from outside.

So, a couple of days later the aluminium guy shows up. He takes one look and shakes his head and says "no way". He explains that the door is not only very good, it is now stuffed as the tracks it runs on have been damaged by both ivy, and the irregularity of the rotten frame.

Despite explaining that even with several hours of hard work, the door would never function well, Matt insisted that we push on. He wouldn't consider a new door (wood or aluminium), nor a window. Needless to say, the aluminium guy was fairly unimpressed, and I have to admit, I was also considering it foolish to try to restore something that was never going to be very good.

Anyway, the builder and the joiner came along a couple of weeks ago now, and took the door out:

And removed the rotten frame:

And the glazier took the frames away and reglazed them with safety glass.

Then the joiner built a new frame, which the builder installed.

He then replaced the doors until the aluminium guy could come yesterday to create new tracks to make it slide.

And now it works.

Kind of.

It certainly looks nicer. Except the aluminium is really sort of corroded, and dirty looking.

Winding down...finishing touches.

2010-04-02T09:57:00.000+13:00

Although we are not yet finished the first phase of restoration (hopefully everything will be wrapped up on Wednesday), the only things left to do are to paint the bathroom walls (white) and the bedroom cupboards (undecided).

All of the tradesmen have left, excluding the guy who's plastering the bathroom wall, and the painters. Such a relief.

This week, the internal frames were finished, including the black negative detail around the downstairs frames:

They look sharp. I'm gearing up to do some epic 'before and after' photos soon.

Before the scaffolding came down, I thought it best to take the oportunity to clean the upstairs windows on the outside, so one day after work last week we got Matt up there with the Mr Muscle. It was a beautiful sunset, and now our windows sparkle (Mum and I did the insides the following day).

We are so so close to everything being completed.

Spouting

2010-03-31T14:34:00.000+13:00

Well, it took three weeks longer than expected (partly because we had a few issue finding the most discrete brackets we could), but yesterday we tore down the old spouting and installed the new.

There was never any doubt that they needed replacing, you could see the sky through parts of them:

And rust was obvious throughout.

However, we didn't quite realise how bad they were until they were taken down and we could see up close:

Hardly any of the original metal was functional, they were warped and full of forty years of debris.

But no more! Now we have lovely sturdy new continuous spouting, in a matching colour and profile. The regulations regarding brackets have changed, and they have to be much closer together than back in the day, which means more of them, but it still looks pretty good.

We also made sure we replicated the way in which the original spouting extended past the wall (exactly 8 inches) and wrapped the lip around the end of each section, returning it to the building. Details, details...it's all in the details.

And with the final coat of silicone sealant applied to the roof today, we thought that would be the end of the scaffolding, but then I realised that the new gutters didn't have the leaf-guard thingamee jig that we had organised to be installed, so we have another 24 hours before it can come down. Ah well. At least the end is in sight.

L'orange...

2010-03-29T16:24:00.000+13:00

Once we decided last week to tackle the toilet and bathroom, we had to figure out a match for the orange in the toilet (which is also the orange on the chimney in the bedroom, and was the original colour of the master bedroom cupboards, before they were painted purple). Matt initially picked a colour on Friday morning at 6.30am, in the dark. Unsurprisingly it wasn't right (it was some sort of fluoro safety orange).

We ended up scraping some small samples from a strip of the original paint inside one of the cupboards and getting it matched.

The colour we were after was "Rock Spray". The painters applied the first coat last night - looking great already!

We're still debating whether we go for the same colour on the cupboard doors - there's a fine line with restoring a house to it's former glory and recognising that some things (particularly colours) do date, and the last thing we want is for our decorating to be described as 'retro'...

Before and After - the shower tiles get a new life

2010-03-28T11:56:00.000+13:00

The bathroom walls are tiled with small brown tiles, which are a bit dated, but pretty cool, and far too fun to consider replacing right now. When we moved in, they were covered in scale as were the taps:

In the past six weeks, I have scrubbed them with Janola, Handy Andy, Chemico, Jif, and some fancy Harpic "scale remover". None of it has budged (the 'before' photo above was taken yesterday morning).

The tiler was here yesterday (yes, on a Saturday - he got some fresh chocolate cake to take away with him as a thanks for working on a weekend), and he gave me some stuff called 'Nano Scrub' which finally made a difference:

Apologies for the blurriness of the above 'after' photo, but you get the general idea.

After cleaning with the new super cleaner, I have sealed the tiles to make them a bit more waterproof and protect the grout for a few more years.

We are really hoping that this next week is the last week of tradespeople. The guttering is taking weeks longer than scheduled (due mostly to a change in mind on our part) and getting the aluminium door reconditioning has also been postponed a couple of weeks. Hopefully both will be sorted by Easter, the scaffolding can come down and we can live in a proper house rather than a construction site. Fingers crossed.

The painters move indoors

2010-03-26T15:21:00.000+13:00

The painters have finished the exterior of the house today. We ended up needing three topcoats instead of two, as the leftover ivy was still showing through after two coats. We figured it was best to do it properly now, while we had the scaffolding up.

So this morning, the painters moved indoors and started the painstaking process of prepping and painting the window frames and the black recessed detail around them.

We weren't going to even think about doing anything in the bathroom and upstairs toilet this time round, but these guys are working so quickly and getting things done to such a high standard, that we figured we'd just keep going, so we are tidying up the bathroom walls and roof.

Today the roof got sanded back and the first coat of Sikkens (a German wood treatment) was applied. It looks so so so much better, just like that. Unfortunately I didn't get a decent 'before' photo to compare it with.

And in case you're wondering, yes that is a hole in the new glass in the bathroom - it is for the extractor fan which is being installed on Monday. Neither of us are that keen on getting one, but the bathroom needs some sort of active ventilation, and we felt that a window fan was the best option because it was the least invasive (we hated the idea of cutting through the tongue & groove to install a ceiling fan, and there is only a very small ceiling cavity anyway). We figure that if it is just too ugly and horrible, all we have to do is re-glaze the window and it will be like the fan never existed.

Matt nearly wet his pants yesterday

2010-03-25T09:00:00.000+13:00

When we first purchased our little house, we attempted to make contact with a number of people involved with it in it's first twenty years or so, including:

the original owner,
a senior architect at Warren & Mahoney who was a junior in the office at the time the house was built,
the architect who acted as project manager during the build, and
Sir Miles Warren - the architect principally responsible for the design.

Matt was brave enough to telephone the owner directly, and he has since visited the house. With regards to Sir Miles, Matt posted a letter, letting him know what had happened to one of his small pixie houses and inviting him to visit if he was interested.

Yesterday Matt received a reply by post.

It really is remarkable how well (and how fondly) he remembered both the house and the client. I can't help but feel that we really have 'rescued' what is a very special house from what could have been an unfortunate demise.

The wood at the front door..

2010-03-24T13:31:00.000+13:00

As you can see above, the wooden fascia at the front door was a little worse for wear.

But as of today we have a shiny new piece of wood up there. All it needs now is some paint.

Things are coming along nicely - see how glossy and white the walls are now.

New window sash..

2010-03-24T13:27:00.000+13:00

Goodbye old rotten spare room sash..

Hello sparkling new sash:

Oh, and hello mess:

The sash and frame colour debate update.

2010-03-22T16:26:00.000+13:00

See. They look awesome.

The sash and frame colour debate.

2010-03-22T14:54:00.000+13:00

Most Warren & Mahoney pixie houses from the same era as ours have a similar colour palette - pure white concrete block with grey frames and rust red sashes.

At sometime in our house's history, someone has applied a chocolate poo-brown paint to most of the windows, destroying the original, well thought-out colour scheme.

As the painters are here this week, we have had to really sort out what was supposed to be what. We knew that all opening sashes were originally the rust red surrounded by a grey frame, but there are a couple of windows which don't open (like the really large one in the front room shown above), and these ones were difficult to decide whether to go for the red or grey.

To help sort it out we went for an evening wander on Saturday to this house down the road.

The original owner was at home and happily chatted to us about how we are supposed to do it.

As a result, we are painting the unopening windows back to the original grey colour, rather than rust red.

The most exciting part is that they are being painted right now, as I type. And they look really good.

Our first casualty...

2010-03-22T11:58:00.000+13:00

We only had a couple of things on the 'to do' list this weekend - we have decided to try and tone it down a little as it was becoming a bit overwhelming spending all of every weekend on the house (not to mention exhausting).

One of the things on the list, was to clear the particularly entwined and stubborn ivy to the right of the entrance (which was growing around the stump of what would have been a very large tree):

I went out and left Matt + Dad + chainsaw to do the deed. As Matt put it when he phoned me a couple of hours later - there was some good news and bad news. The good news was they did a splendid job of clearing the fence:

The bad news was that Matt was calling from the hospital as Dad did a splendid job of cutting open his knee with the chainsaw.

Oops. Several stitches later he was all patched up. Until sepsis set in that night. And now he can't walk for the next four days and has to have a nurse visit daily for intravenous antibiotics.

True story.

In other house news, the painters are working hard on the exterior - as they say, it's 90% preparation and 10% application so there's lots and lots of sanding, hole filling and primer application going on. The block work has had an undercoat, now all the sashes and frames are being done. These guys are awesome.

We have paint.

2010-03-18T14:22:00.000+13:00

Nearly the whole first coat has been applied to the block work - it looks so much better already. And there'll be more to follow tomorrow...

Could it be?

2010-03-18T08:09:00.000+13:00

See that - that's a painter. At our house. Getting set up to start painting. Incroyable!

The spare room cupboards: Part 3

2010-03-17T17:17:00.000+13:00

Finally, I've finished the spare room cupboards. We're happy with the colour, if anything it's a bit boring, but it's a huge improvement on the buttercup yellow that was there previously. The photos make it look more washed-out than it is - it's much more of a rish sage green. I've done the other spare room in the same colour, and polished the handles.

We are missing a handle, so I have spent a few days calling round trying to find a replacement - turns out they don't make any handles in that length anymore (quelle surprise!), but some guy in Wellington had a box of them 'out the back' so I have ordered a couple of them. I won't know for sure if they're okay until we get them, but I'm optimistic.

We still haven't decided on what colour to paint the main bedroom cupboards - Matt is keen on the original bright orange, but I'm not so sure.

ps it has been raining here today, so no painters, but apparently they will be here first thing tomorrow...

Good painting weather? Apparently not...

2010-03-16T14:43:00.000+13:00

As you can see, it is a glorious day here today, which you would assume would be perfect weather to commence painting. However, it is forecast to rain later this evening, and as our first coat needs a good 8 hours dry time, it seems that we cannot start today....

Hrmph.

Clean clean house

2010-03-15T16:02:00.001+13:00

Another busy weekend, with Matt spending hours and hours on the scaffolding scraping the ivy off. Then this morning the nice man came to waterblast the rest of the walls in preparation for the painters tomorrow. He reckoned that Matt's (and Sam and Ang's) work with the ivy saved him a couple of hours, so that was nice to hear.

Being indoors while he worked was a bit like taking your house through a car wash...noisy and wet. Fortunately I'm getting used to this and so had sheets and towels laid down in front of the windows to catch any leakage.

The results were impressive:

Clean clean clean walls. All ready for lovely fresh paint. Hopefully starting tomorrow (I am quickly learning that just because you set a date for something to happen, it by no means necessarily goes ahead. There is always a reason to delay things another day).

Scaffolding

2010-03-13T11:06:00.000+13:00

This week also heralded the construction of our scaffolding. Erected over three days (the access to the site isn't great when it comes to lugging steel up from the road), we now have access to every inch of the walls.

So now Matt is spending this weekend trying to remove the remainder of the ivy (you can see the demarcation in the above photo) which he couldn't reach last weekend.

I, on the other hand, am finishing painting the cupboards in the spare rooms. Turns out we chose the wrong green. What old Karen Walker named "Beryl Green" should simply have been called "Mint Green". Urgh. It looked really bad. I tried a patch with a test-pot prior, but somehow you couldn't really tell the full effect until the first whole coat had been applied. Now we're going for a shade called "Washed Green", which looks much better. I will post photos when it's done.

The window sills

2010-03-13T09:50:00.000+13:00

Finally, back with broadband! Some updating to do:

Although things felt like they were moving frustratingly slow, we have had a very big week. It took four days, but we have the sills re-tiled. After washing them all last weekend, when the tiler arrived on Monday I spent the day cracking old grout off the tiles.

Then the backs were ground down with an angle grinder to remove old adhesive and clean them up.. this process alone took the poor guy helping the tiler over eight hours (actually, there were two guys - the first one on Monday did about five hours, but couldn't come on Tuesday because he got heat stroke - true story, last week Christchurch got it's whole summer jammed into five days).

Finally, the fronts of all the tiles had to be scrubbed with turps to remove paint splotches that had gathered during some slap-dash paint job in years past. I don't have a photo of this, as I was the one doing the most of it - it was about 30 degrees outside, my ankles swelled like footballs, my hands were shredded by turps and scouring pads and I got sunburnt. Don't need a photo, as I'm sure you can imagine how attractive I looked.

This took hours and hours. About three hours in I really started to question why we didn't just buy new tiles. They don't make them anymore, but they make ones that are very similar....

Anyway, while we were prepping the tiles, the tiler was sealing the sills.

And then the real action started:

Finally, at the end of day three, tiles were laid.

And on day four, the grout was applied..

New sills! Hoorah!

The best news is that that's not all we achieved last week - more to follow shortly!