Goodbye Our Wee Farm, hello Spindrift

Officially we don't leave the farm until next Friday, but over the last few weeks we have moved everything out. It was absolutely exhausting. We have done about 15 tip trips, donated a van load of stuff to charity, sold furniture and given some away. Moving from a farm with the equivalent of three houses to one smallish house is no mean feat. And we did it all ourselves. No moving company, no moving truck, just us and our wee trailer!

We have just moved into the new house and are simply loving it. Waking up to the view every morning, being close to all our friends - its amazing.  We still have to go back to the farm every couple of days to weed, mow and make sure everything is safe, but because the move has been so drawn out I haven't felt the sadness I thought I would. Perhaps we're simply too exhausted to feel much right now!

We worked very hard on the new house for a few weeks. We painted, ripped carpets out, laid a new floor, redid the kitchen and lots of other bits and bobs. It was all very good fun.

So prepare yourselves for lots of photos!!


Here's our new view - gorgeous.

This was the first day of work. The carpets were all lifted, then the underlay, then about a million staples were removed from the floor.

The kitchen floor had cork tiles which had been glued down with the strongest substance known to man. It took hours of hard work to get them completely off.

Once that was done it was cleaned and swept in readiness for the new bamboo flooring being laid.

While that was going on inside, a fence was being put around part of the garden outside. We've moved to an area where there are a lot of kiwis and we need to keep them safe from the dogs. So, fence it is! 

Here it is all finished. Nice wee gate leading down through the native bush to the reserve at the water. 

Kitchen being hauled out. The design was good, so we kept it, but got it all resprayed. We also extended the island part, put in a new sink etc and new worktops.

By this stage it was all looking rather chaotic! But very surprisingly none of it was stressful at all.

We'd taken off all the skirting boards so that we could lay the new floor properly. I had to paint 120m worth of new skirting. It took a long time! We also repainted the whole inside of the house and new flooring in the bathroom.

The bamboo flooring had been held up, but finally arrived a couple of days late. This guy was a total star. This stuff weighed 1.5 tonnes!

We laid the whole floor over 2 days. We had a bit of hassle with the edging trim. When it arrived in NZ MAF found some weevils in the packaging, so the whole shipment had to be destroyed. Which was somewhat of a nightmare for us! But the company were able to send us up enough wee bits so that we could insert them where we needed so at least we had the right measurements to work from.  Lloyd and Ali look like they're praying to the floor gods for inspiration!

The bamboo flooring looking like it's almost finished.

The kitchen arrived back all beautifully painted. A new glass splash back was put in. New cooker and dishwasher. And this amazing new light!

 No idea why Lulah is tired - it's not like she helped or anything!

We look at this most evenings.

 So now we are in, and the inside is finished. We are waiting for the plans for the outside work to be approved by council. Once that's done that work will start. It's a biggie, but we're not doing this ourselves!!

We LOVE it more that we thought we could in such a short time. I think we've never been so bone tired in our lives. ( this might have something to do with the fact that we're sleeping on a mattress on the floor!)

More later!