Today we finished the floor in my room, I was SO happy to finish hammering in the last nail! We are busy this weekend but on MOnday we intend to sweep and vacuume the floor and then varnish it. I want to get this done as soon as posible because sometime during the week a bird got in and pooped on the new floorboards!

This is looking up from our kitchen, you can still see me peering through the floor, I can’t wait till we are finished!

03.09.19

Today we started on the floor in my bedroom, I was SO excited! First there was only a couple of boards, then a few more! Finally there was enough to put my little couch on!

Mum and I made some raised garden beds, we used wood from an old deck and corrugated iron from an old roof, we made them so they juuussstt fitted into our trailer, we have put old cardboard under them and filled them with old stumps like they do for hugelkultur swales, but smaller, the idea is that the logs will act like sponges in the bottom of the beds and we won’t have to water the plants as much. Now we just need to find some dirt!

We have lots of trees to plant so we need to hurry up! Below I will list all the trees we have so far, if you can think of any others we need please leave a note in the comment section at the bottom of the page or in the contact page.

Citrus…

Lemon, Myre

Lime, Kaffir, Bearrs, Tahitian

Orange, Blood

Pip fruit…

Apple, Discovery, Liberty, Pink lady, Early strawberry, Tristen late.

Plum, Greengage, Cherry plum, ox-heart

Avocado, Hasst.

Persimmon, Fuyu

Pear, Nashi.

Nuts…

Walnut

Macadamia.

Other…

Fig, Early green, Russet.

Icecream bean.

Mulberry, Red, Wilson’s early.

While we wait for the barge plates, and because we needed a house-break, we decided to start getting our orchard established. We need to get the trees in the ground soon or it will get too dry and they will die before they become established. So to start with we planted willow wathes from home to create a shelter-belt.

Mum and I managed to get the three smallest windows in by ourselves, but we realized that we probably wouldn’t be able to lift the bigger ones because they were so heavy with the double glazing, let alone get them in to place, so we called on the girl team again, Steff, Blossom and Imogen came to the rescue and in one day we carted the windows down, lifted them up to the top story using ropes and then fitted them in place.

It took all day! I was tired at the end, Mum took a photo out of the kitchen window of the sun setting we worked so late!

Because we are waiting for the barge plates, we started to get other things done, like the windows! The house came with windows, which we had to drive to Whangarei in February and get out of the container because we were afraid, they would break. After all this time we got them out and took them down to the house, the first (and smallest) on we put in was the deck window!

Our roof is finally, mostly on. YAY! It was harder than we thought, took waaay longer than we thought and nearly drove us mad!

We had friends come help us put the roof/ceiling boards up….the girl team again, they were awesome and helpful, we couldn’t have got it done without them!

Then, finally we started to get some iron on! Uncle John came to help, he has put roof’s on before but he didn’t like our one much because it has quite a steep pitch. Then mum’s friend who lent us the safety gear came to help too! Things started to go faster!

BUT we had a problem! More than a year before mum, Nan and I had decided to make a trip to Niue (see My thoughts), mum had booked the tickets for July! Of course, back then we weren’t even THINKING about building a house! So, on the 7th of July we worked as hard as we could till we had no more time left and then we zoomed down the road to catch a plane and tried not to think about our house only having its roof half done.

We had been in Niue for two days when mum woke me up in the middle of the night to show me a picture that had arrived on the dodgy motel WIFI, of our house with its roof on! They had kept on going, even though we weren’t there. When we got home we saw they had stuck a cross to the apex, we think they were having a bit of a dig about the roof being so steep! Now we are waiting for the “barge plates” to arrive, those are the bits that go on the ends and hold the iron down…I hope they get here soon!

ROOF!! 03.07.2019

On the third of JUly we started roofing, it had taken FOREVER to get all the toungue and groovw roof boards up, we spent an entire day finishing the deck roof so we could start putting iron on.

Mum and I had worked SO hard in June it seemed to run through our fingers like sand, it seemed like a blure of boards, paint and nails! We were desperate to get started on the roofing iron and get the house water tight, for two reasons 1) winter had set in and it was raining more and more which was making the roof boards wet and causing mildew. 2) We were leaving to go overseas on the 8th of July, a trip that had been booked over a year before…when we had not even thought about building a house!

SO! We called on friends and family to help, prayed for good weather and got stuck in!

The iron! 21.06.2019

We are excited! The other day when I had to go to the Dr (see “my thoughts”) we got back and the iron had arrived! We still have about two thirds of the roof to put tongue and groove boards on but I’m hoping that we will get time to do that in the next few days!

The Iron is “pioneer red” coloured, I like that name, I think mum and I are a bit pioneering!

Waiting…waiting…

On the third of June we started painting…we only had the eaves to put on the house but we had to wait for the special screws we had ordered to attach them onto the house, meanwhile we were quite worried that the damper the weather got the less chance we would have to paint the house so while we had sunny weather we got going.

We had chosen an oil based timber stain called Red Rata, I think it looks cool!

The disaster!

At the end of May, overnight a storm struck, the wind blew so hard that it lifted all the tarpaulins off our remaining stacks of wood! Most of the tongue and groove flooring got wet and we had to spend days stacking it inside the house and covering it again.

I can imagine….

I can imagine, that first day,

waking with the sun rising, a-shimmer on the lake,

the peace of the stilness broken only

by Mum screaming at the Pukeko’s through the kitchen window,

followed by a thud as she falls through said window

onto the deck we have yet to build.

The sparkling waters will reflect ripples

of light onto the ceiling above my bed.

The scent of burning bacon

will waft into the loft,

my eyes will water at the familiar smell

though it will do nothing to blot out the

loud,

swearing,

below.

The puzzle! 30.04.19

We have found that to finish putting up the beams on the top story we first have to put the beams up for the lower story, or at least some of them.

We have sorted out a system where we have two ladders so we can carry the bits of wall up together and get them in place then we lift the beam up on my end first and I hold it in place while mum puts the other end in place.

This sounds easy but the beams are heavy, the wall wobbles till it is “locked in” and going up the ladder is frightening, I hate how it creaks!

Each time we get a bit of wall up I can’t help thinking that next time I will have to rech up that little bit further to get the next one in place.

BIG THINGS! 29.05.19

Today we moved tone of the biggest beams into place, we have been worried about these beams for a while, mum was talking about getting some help but she was thinking that we could put a whole lot up on one day and make it worth while, however wwe have to paint them all first and then they go up one at a time like a puzzel so we had to figure out a way to do it ourselves.

There has been quite a bit of a ballancing act going on! First we move the beam up so we reach it’s ballance point, then we manovour it in to place bit by bit.

It doesn’t look like much but this beam took us ALL DAY to get up there…we are very tired and proud!

MOVING IN! Not us…Haha!

I’ve noticed there is begining to be quite a bit of moving in going on, it seems our house has already ticked a few boxes for the locals and they are getting in first! Here are some pictures of our “house mates”

The funny bits…

It’s not all hard slog, sometimes there are funny things that happen, here are some we got on camera…

25.04.2019 FRAMED!!

This is my window frame…in my room…in our house…that WE are building!

25.04.2019 Safe as houses!

Today we put the window and door frames in, mum went to visit our neighbor to borrow some gear off him, he used to be a rigger in Australia, he worked on huge building sites putting up scaffolding.

Now we have saftey harneses, if we do fall the harness will catch us before we hit the bottom. It’s still scarey to walk out on the beams though!

18.04.2019 On top of the world!

We have begun the top story walls! I can sort of see how the veiw will look out my bedroom window, mum is not happy though, she thinks things are very un-safe, neither of us like going out on the “floors” I keep thinking I’m going to accidentily step into the abyss!

14.04.2019 The stuff up!

Today was one of those days, it started out a bit grumpy and arumenty and then mum decided she would put in the edges for the floor to go on in the up-stairs landing. There was quite a lot of yelling and some bad words that I’m not supposed to use arround nanna’s, then there was silence….”Oh dear” I thought, “that can’t be good”.

Mum had managed to put the bit of wood in place at the wrong hight, if it was left there we would “fall” out our doors rather than stepping out!

I had to assist mum to take the wood down again and then put it back at the right hight…she sometimes says horrible things to her drill.

09.04.2019 Up-stairs and more!

Today we put the ladder up! Woohoo! It was exciting climbing it for the first time, you can see the ladder from the top of theill too.

We have started building the up-stairs walls, these are the walls in our loft-bedrooms, I’m excited to see them go up!

We have started to place the floor beams for the second story in place, they will also form the ceiling in our kitchen, bathroom and toilet. We are also putting the roof beams for our deck into place.

First we paint the beams with oils which will help protect them,. Then we lift them in to place, this was fairly easy to start but as the walls get higher and higher it gets harder to lift them up all the way!

After we have them in place we knock them down tight on to the beams below with a wooden mallet we call the “donk” and a small chunk of wood we call a notch pin, which fits exactly in to the notch at the end of the boards. Then we are ready for the next layer of boards!

Today we got lots done, we built a whole layer on the interiour rooms, mum made edge bits for the floor to go on eventually (but just pallets so we can stand ladders on them for now) and moved our site toilet in. we also managed to place an eight meter beam in place which ties the whole building togeather from one side to the other, ALL BY OURSELVES!

I thought I was going to die! We had begun lifting beam 2-7 up onto the outside of the building when suddenly the far end slipped off and nearly crushed me where I was holding it, up on top of some scaffolding. It waggled in the breeze making terrible noises! It creaked, snapped and popped, it sounded like it was going to split into bits and come crashing down on me!

Mum was stuck at the other end, stopping the whole eight meteres from tumbiling down while standing on top of a ladder, she shouted at me to get off the scaffolding! I don’t even remember getting down! The end of the beam was drooping so low it almost hit me on the head as I darted through the window hole to get a long poll. I poked at the drooping end of the beam and managed to get it to stop creaking! Then bit by bit we manovered it back up and got it secured. We will do things diffrently next time!

After that we used the poll to move the beam bit by bit accross to where it belonged and then, standing on ladders we wriggled it into place. It looks great!

We had double ice-creams on the way home! They cost $5.00 are reserved for VERY important days when things go very well. I had chocolate and mint-chocolate chip.

We have had a new Head-Stockman start on the farm recently, he has two dughters, Blossom and Imigin, their mum has brought them to the house site to help us a few times, I really like it when they come because they are really nice, they are helpfull and they are a bit taller than me and can reach higher, we get SO MUCH done when they visit!

We needed to get some beams for extra support on some of the cabins walls, we can’t afford to buy 4×2 so we while the weather was wet we went looking in the old wool shed to see if we could find any.

I climbed right into the rafters to look, it was high, filled with spiderweds and dust and there were mumified rats! But I found several bits of wood and we dragged them down and put them on the trailer, these bits of wood were milled from kauri by my great grandfather, I wonder if he knew they would be used to build his grandaughter and great grandaughter’s house?

But we didn’t stop! I did some school work while mum built a “prototype site loo” This is the type of loo we will eventually have but the propper one is quite a bit cleverer. It will “flush” when you wash your hands and it is going to have cool tongue and groove wood and be varnished.

Today we painted the last of the window frames and put them in, then we added another layer of wall. We are having problems reaching high enough to put the new bits of wall in, it’s getting too high!

We are thinking up ideas to make it easier, a friend of mum’s says we can borrow his scaffolding which will be great but we need to think about somthing to do on the inside of the house or I won’t be able to keep building the inside walls by myself.

Mum and I have been sick, we got the flu and then we had to go to the doctors and get antibiotics for strep throat infections.

last week there was one day when I just lay under the “house” and tried to sleep, I felt horrible!

But we ARE getting there! We have taken all the doors out of their door frames and instaled them and we have started putting the window frames in place. Having the frames in place help to keep everything linned up.

These walls seem to take forever! WE have to paint the wood with oils and stuff before the planks can go up…it is getting there, just SLOWLY!

We started with the sub-floor, all these bits locked together so we had to get the right ones for the right place, once they were in it was almost imposible to move them!

Mum was going to build the platform for the cabin to go on but then she changed her mind and hired some builders.

They seemed to take a long time but they finally got the job done!

We were aware when we unloaded the cabin that there was a cyclone heading our way so we begged and borrowed tarpaulins from our friends and family and wrapped up our cabin as best we could.

We were so worried that it might get wrecked before we even built it!

But when we woke up on “the day” The weather map said the cyclone had gone and all we would get was rain!

YAY!

What a day!! We were at the site when the first truckload arrived, it was so exciting! There was a funny, old fork lift which helped unload. Then we all went back to Greg’s depot and loaded as much on as we could, mum and I had the trailer full of window and door frames, there were two utes full of planks and other bits and then the truck…it was loaded so much it looked like a truck from india where they overload them so much it’s scarey!

Off we went down the road, I had to open the gate and wait for the last vehical, I got a ride up in the overloaded truck……there was a big bang! and one of the packets of planks fell off into the paddock!

Thankfully there was an excavator on site which went and collected that load and brought it down.

The container has been un-packed! How exciting! But they sent mum pictures of the windows and how they had stacked them on pallets with some “glad wrap” round them.

We decided to drive to Whangarei and pick them up ourselves, whew! what a trip! We didn’t get home till midnight!

Five months ago Mum told me she wanted to build a house, we couldn’t afford to buy one and we couldn’t afford the timber to build one. We looked at tiny houses on trade me but nothing was right. Then one day mum found a place that would make you a kit set home that we COULd afford!

The only problem….it was in China!

So we ordered a house made from Baltic pine that was built in China and then came to New zealand on a ship called Soochow.

Today our house arrived at North Port!