Building progress - part 10

More paint on the walls... and some painter's stilts.

















And we finally have a kitchen!! It's going to look great. Heaps of storage and plenty of drawers. The feature color we chose for the kitchen wall is called Spice, a warm brown color. But apparently a 2x2cm color sample gives you a different impression than a complete wall. It looks more purple-brown to me than expected, but it' still nice.

Heavy machinery arrived on the plot to dig a hole for our septic tank. Luckily only the green lid of the tank will be visible in the end, so no need trying to hide the flashy purple color behind plants. This tank recycles all our waste water. The quality of the recycled water is more than 99.9% germ free and it would be a shame not to re-use it. Not for drinking water of course but it's perfectly fine for flushing toilets.  The two black tanks will be stored under the roof and be fed with the recycled water from the septic tank.

The linea weatherboard already has a first layer of paint. Unfortunately the plasterer takes his time (probably already is in holiday mood) and still hasn't finished. Not much will happen in the next two weeks as NZ is sort of closed down for Xmas and summer break.

Building progress - part 9

During the last two weeks the inside walls were prepared and the painters could finally start doing their work. It's great to see how a building site slowly transforms into a future home. The ceilings already have their final coating of paint. So far we are still on schedule, but Xmas break is ahead and hopefully this will not slow down the progress too much. The painters were even working on Sunday.

The outside walls have a first render. They still need to be painted.

During the last couple of days we had some Nor'wester winds. (Foehn). Sometimes it looked liked the sky was on fire. I will never get used to those crazy jumps in temperatures.

Building progress - part 8

The drain layer was on site last week and sorted out our drains - no idea what exactly he has done and where the drains are buried. I sure hope he will indicate to us where we probably shouldn't dig in future....










They painted sort of a protection skin on the windows and also wrapped them in order to protect them from damage of the plastering which will hopefully happen next week.

 









3 different types of Gib boarding were used in the house: yellow for standard, green for the bathrooms and blue one in the kitchen. Quite an impressing sight when the whole garage was filled with the Gib boards. A week later all the pink insulation has disappeared, the rooms look a lot lighter now.

There are regular inspections by the council and so far so good. Here are some more photos of building material. The one with the flies is for Esther's mum - she knows why :-)

Building progress - part 7

Another week has passed with a lot of progress on the building site. All the insulation is in place- the whole house is horrendously pink - thank god this will soon be covered up with Gib boards.

The roof is finally finished. You can already see where the tubes for the Solar Hot Water installation will be placed. Of course they are on the North side of the roof - this in contrast to the Northern Hemisphere were the sunny side is South. The brick layers also finished their work. This will be plastered in the next couple of weeks.












The two gable roofs and all 7 posts will be covered in so-called Linea weatherboard. It's made of fibre cement and compared to timber it's very low maintenance. It's not the cheapest material so we kept it as a feature.

Building progress - part 6

A lot has happened on the building site last week. All the windows are in and we have a front door.

On Monday morning we walked through the house together with the electrician and decided on the location of all power sockets and lights points. 5 days later shows that he has been really busy - all the cables are in. Unlike in Europe, electricity cables are not protected by a PVC tube but hang loosely in the wall and ceiling spaces. It will be a challenge to drill into the wall for the first time when hanging up a painting and try not to electrocute yourself.

Unfortunately, the roofer is not that fast. The roof is still not finished and he certainly leaves a mess. Somehow a red roof tile has found its way into our stack of ironsand colored ones...

The gas pipe for the hob is only about 1cm thick, much smaller than we expected from European builds. The path of the pipe is also slightly different than expected, it sort of takes the touristic tour along the ceiling before winding down to the kitchen...

The bricklayers made a start as well. They built the wall to about half way, than had to stop and wait for someone from the council to pay a visit, inspect and hopefully approve it. As soon as they get the green light from the inspector, they can finish the brick laying. This is a council regulation to make sure the structure is decent.

Building progress - part 5

Northeast side

 Southwest side

It starts to look like an actual house. The walls are wrapped in "building paper" - sort of a breathable plastic membrane.

Roof tiles - sheet of metal

Holiday on Rarotonga - Cook Islands

After 2 years in New Zealand it was time for a quick holiday abroad. We spent last week on a pacific island called Rarotonga, the biggest of the 15 Cook Islands. It's only a convenient 5h direct flight from Christchurch.

George enjoyed snorkeling and I walked miles on the beach with my eyes fixed to the ground scanning for rocks, coral and shells. Unfortunately I couldn't take any of my findings back with me due to the strict custom regulations of New Zealand, so I had to take pictures. I'm sure my dad wishes there were some similar strict regulations in the Swiss mountains as he must remember all the kilos of stones I used to gather when I was little but than he had to carry them downhill for me.

One day, we hired some bikes to explore the island. There is one main road along the coast and it's only 32km until you're back at your starting point, that gives you an idea how small the island is. As it is all flat along the coast, this is the perfect way of sightseeing and getting some exercise.

We also joined two organized tours: The first one was sort of a safari with Landrovers taking us inland and up the mountains, very informative with a BBQ on the beach at the end. The other one was on a Glass Bottom Boat (so even I could see some of the beautiful fish) with plenty of time for snorkeling, again a BBQ lunch on the beach and a very funny demonstration about what you need to know about coconuts.
We hired kayaks twice to explore the lagoon. It's very relaxing to float above the coral reef and look for Nemo and his friends.