One step forward...

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

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

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

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

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!!

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.

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.