One nail at a time - renovation progress slow

We're still working 7 days a week, so pretty exhausting. It's too much trying to keep up with our fulltime jobs and 6 year old daughter with her ballet shows and school trips and birthday parties - and write a blow by blow account of our progress. Basically, we're progressing very slowly. On top of that her grandfather is now terminal with cancer and some of the family and his housemates seem to be losing all their christian spirit pretty quick at the prospect of walking off with his share of the property... all adds to the stress and tiredness. As if that isn't enough, we've been given notice to move by the 15th January - real bad timing.

One break - we picked up a secondhand kitchen off Trademe for only $380 which includes the wall oven, electric hob, rangehood and dishwasher. Our draughtsman told us we didn't need to do a new kitchen, but this was cheaper than buying a new stove. The kitchen walls are finally being closed in and the new kitchen, with some trimming, is going to fit just fine.

The plumber, who we found on this great new site http://www.builderscrack.co.nz/ should be finished this week. Metrowater needs to install a meter box at the road and then hopefully we'll finally have water on.

The Council inspector wouldn't pass our electrics this week, so we may have to switch tasks and lay some concrete to get the power on. The cable outside the house is, apparently, not laid deep enough in the ground.

A mate is helping us out with scraping the exterior of the house getting it ready for painting.

An opening has been cut into the wall of the bathroom to form a laundry out of some of the old kitchen alcoves. That's all framed up. The nails and staples have been pulled out of the nice wooden flooring in the kitchen and we're 3 nails short of completing the pile fixings (which was a real work out on the abdomen - laying on your back under the house drilling and nailing!) 

Goal is to be finished by mid-February - to do that, we'll be working right through the xmas/new year break. We're going to have christmas day off.

Working 7 days a week a blogger does not make

Been too flat out working or sleeping to post our progress on the house. It seems to be going so slowly and I now seriously doubt that we've done a wise thing. We still don't have power and water on.

The photos of our progress shows the drainage at least has now been laid, but we still haven't found a reasonably priced plumber to finish off the job.

The roof is done, ceilings are nearly all back up inside and half the insulation is in the roof. The insulation is under the floor; the pile fixings are half done.

The main bedroom is almost ready for plastering (if that's possible after our terrible wallpaper stripping job).  Then the second bedroom can be decorated.

But first, we've got to find a plumber.

We weren't ready to do the fencing yet, but we got to the section on Saturday to find a broken pane of glass in the front door at the bottom of the door. Probably the kids at the back - they've almost completely destroyed the back fence. Time to fence the house in to try and protect it from further vandalism. Still, I feel grateful that it's lasted this long without more damage from vandals and snot-nosed-poorly-parented-kids.