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November 8. Obama has been elected as President and the world breathed a sigh of relief. The weather has been uncooperative this winter to say the least. Going into spring it hasn't been much better. Our builder has had to contend with many days of rain. In addition to the rain he's had to put up with stupid requirements by the building codes. The number of piles he had to put in for our veranda are outrageous. We have more piles for the veranda than we do the house. In any case he managed to get them all in and next week he should be starting the roof! YAY!!!
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We have a very old tree trunk...we have many. But this one sits next to the drive way and Seb decided he'd make a seat out of it. This is a little photo diary of his handi-work. The colour of the wood was amazingly red!
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Well we have framing...that's the same, no? On October 24 we discovered our builder kicks ass. We knew he was pretty awesome but we were blown away by how fast he got the framing up. It's very pink but it goes great with the backdrop of green forest, don't you think?
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We have a very wonderful and helpful friend, David, who came to stay with us for the weekend. He was our first official guest of honor and we treated him well by keeping him busy and well fed. While he was there for the weekend we walked half the length of our stream and discovered we have a few waterfalls and even better...little swimming holes! Fantastic!!! It was a glorious weekend.
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On October 4 we were thrilled to discover we had a new dance floor. The dance floor became our picnic area, running and jumping area, and viewing platform. We could see the sea (when it wasn't raining) and we were thrilled. As usual we spent more time working on the windows. :-)
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Oh happy day!!! The builder finally broke ground and the weather was on his side. He was able to get the ground ready and then concrete in the piles. We were very excited! We spent a lovely sunny (thankfully) weekend on the land doing various jobs and I took my cello to serenade (torture) Seb. :)
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With our new builder things have really started to move. We had the water tank and the clear water sewage system installed in the ground. We had no idea how enormous these monsters were going to be but James Drainage did a great job of squeezing them in between the big trees. They dug the water tank low into the ground so it doesn't look nearly as ominous.
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During August and September we had some pretty horrible weather. It seemed our days of lovely sunny weekends caught up on us and now we were being punished with torrential and unending rain storms. It was miserable. There was mud everywhere, on and in everything. The large tree that loomed over our tipi and shed had to be cut down because unfortunately the roots had been damaged. It was a real heart breaker but it came down to the tree or us...and well we just couldn't take that chance.
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It's been 3 weeks since we last visited our land. We were afraid to find the tipi down from all that wind the week before. What a joy to come up the driveway and discover it up and standing! A good start to the 3 day week-end were we did the shed flooring and many other small improvements...
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While we are waiting for our new house to be built we needed a place to stay. We thought about a caravan but then we thought it would be great to have a tipi! What should have taken a couple of hours (so the manual says) took us five and we finished just as the sun was setting. I don't think we'll be taking it down any time soon.
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Who doesn't need a shed or a man cave? Naively we thought we would build our little shed in three days. Four days later we still have at least one more days of work ahead of us. It's taking far longer than we had imagined but it's really cool to see our progress.
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These are the house plans drawn by our drafter Trevor. This was the point where we got extremely excited about our vision. It was really starting to come together and now it had substance!
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After the earth movers and numerous weekends of downpours the driveway was off limits to everything...even 4 wheel drives. The guys that were going to put gravel on the driveway were waiting for the rain to let up and finally we had a couple of days where it was mostly dry. They got up there quickly and put down load after load of gravel. It still needs more but the cool thing was that with all of the rain we were able to find kiwi tracks on our property. We were thrilled! We have a kiwi!!!
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After Seb's dad returned to France we had a couple of weekends of rain which kept us home in the city. Finally a clear weekend appeared and we so we went back to Mahakirau to do more work. Seb dug a trench for the power cable for the shed and I did my best for moral support in between dragging large pieces of wood over to the wood pile.
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When the earth movers came we were so excited. I took an enormous amount of photos of the digger coming down the street. I'll try not to bore you too much with them. It was a great day though. They dug a meter deep trench in the driveway for the power and phone cables and cleared a whole bunch of the land before the day was done. We also met our architect, Trevor for the first time and went over our ideas with him.
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In April, Seb's dad, Daniel, came to visit us from France. Seb immediately put him to work but for the most part he seemed to enjoy it and certainly enjoyed his time on the property. Seb's enthusiasm spread like a virus. In these photos we spent the weekend on the land doing more clearing work before the earth movers arrived. There's also photos of the kauri forest that is on the way to our place.
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After a few weekends in a row at Mahakirau we decided to spend some time at home in the city. Ziza, the cat, was thrilled to have some company. We spent the weekend working on the windows and doors.
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Negotiations with the previous owners of the land seemed to drag on for ages but finally after about six weeks of back and forth we came to an agreement. And then there was the issue of the missing power transformer...but that's another story. We celebrated with the most delicious champagne and silly grins. In this series you will also see Seb's plans for the house. I think he could have been an architect if he really wanted to.
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In our fury to buy the windows we found at the demolition yard we made the mistake of not carefully checking out every single detail of the wood. We knew there would be work but once Seb started getting into it he realized there was going to be a lot more than he anticipated. He spent hours stripping, sanding, re-puttying, and painting the windows...not to mention replacing broken glass.
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We toyed with the idea of getting a kitset mainly because they are affordable. We also thought maybe we could buy a old villa and have it transported but that idea died a quick death when we saw the driveway at Mahakirau. There was no way in hell a huge truck with a house on it was going to get down that drive so while we were in Wellington for Webstock we went to visit a kitset place. While we didn't go with the kitset in the end, we did take inspiration from their design and another house we saw in the same area.
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To be honest by this point I think we were pretty much set on Mahakirau. This photo set shows our second trip there. We stopped off at a local demolition yard to look at windows. We ended up buying a whole bunch of them. No house, no plans, but we had the windows and the French doors. I took photos of the trip there for no other reason than it's really a nice drive and we weren't tired of it yet. When we got to the land we cleared a whole lot of the 150 meter driveway...which is crazy since we didn't own the place yet, but what the hell. In the process I cut my leg with the trimmer. I recommend against doing that as it's fucking painful.
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We first visited Mahakirau Estate in February '08 and were incredibly impressed with the place and its aura. Honestly I (Karen) wanted to be near the sea. Seb was enthralled with the mystery of Mahakirau and from the moment he first visited it, it haunted him. The final decision was really made when he thought about how horrible he would feel if someone else bought the property. It was then that he knew. By that time I had fallen in love with the land too and we were finally on the same page.
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