Exterior Painted Gives Morale Boost

After so many months the house is at least starting to look almost finished. We got a Pink Bin in last week and piled it full of the building rubbish; the lights are wired and most of them seem to work. Having finished the wiring, we were able to finish the insulation in the ceiling.

This photo shows the house with only it's first coat of paint complete. The WC (water closet) has got it's first coat on also and the wardrobes in the main bedroom have been bogged and undercoated.

We advertised the exterior painting job on Builderscrack but in the end gave the job to a painter who was working on the house next door. He has swooped in with 2 helpers and in one week, sanded, bogged and painted to this stage. They've been very fast.

There's still a lot of fiddly building inside to complete, like building a door frame to give the third bedroom a new door, finishing scotia replacement and ceiling batons, figuring out where to put the dishwasher.

Once the new laundry has been painted, the vinyl layers will come in and do their thing and soon, very soon, one room will be completely finished.

The struggle for us is to drag ourselves their after work and spend more time there on weekends - we've just not been very good at doing that. It's hard to put a date on when we'll be finished because of our being almost burnt out energy and motivation-wise. Looks like we will not get the house rented before the end of the financial year, which means no tax return can be filed and nothing we've spent on it can be claimed back as tax deductible. Capital expenditure, which most of it has been, could not have been claimed anyway.

The overdraft is mounting and we're over budget on the renovations (which we'd only set at $40,000). Friends of ours recently had their bathroom redone and that cost $18,000, so our measly budget of $40,000 was unrealistic to start with. Still, we're sliding fast towards a total spend that may very well exceed the registered valuation we'll get as soon as we're done.

Has it been a good investment? We're yet to calculate that. One advantage of this project is that it's sucked up every spare cent we've earned over the last 8 months. We sold our other house and got rid of the mortgage, which has saved us money. We've learnt that we can rent a house in a nicer area than where we could afford to buy, and hence are enjoying a nicer safer lifestyle. At the end of the project we will have only a small mortgage and great borrowing power, so we'll be able to borrow and buy another rental property straight away. So, whilst we've invested everything in developing this one rental property - actually it will result in us owning 2 rental properties. Sounds unbelievable even to us. Stay posted to see if we can pull it off.

Shoddy work by house movers

We've just passed a pre-line inspection by the City Council building inspectors. They needed to sign off the new laundry framing, electrics and wall-lining before we could insulate and wall in and finish the laundry. That was the good news.


The bad news was the building inspector looked around and informed us that the house is not sitting on the piles correctly! The house movers used packers where the pile didn't quite reach up to the house, and they incorrectly packed with custom board! Duh! Ok we can get under the house, jack it up in places and replace the shoddy packers with slices of actual pile wood. But, worse, some of the bearers are not sitting correctly on some piles. They're off to one side or the other and this is not allowed. We will not get Code of Compliance with it like that.

We need Code of Compliance to get the new title for the land issued and to be able to refinance. So, this is crucial to the successful completion of our project.

Not quite sure yet how we fix the problem. No doubt there'll be more unexpected un-budgetted-for expense.

Our summer building

Nearly every day over the christmas/new year holidays we've done some work on the house. We had xmas day off. Then we had to move from our temporary rented accommodation after only 3 months, so that took out 2 more days.

New photos are up on Flicker showing the baseboards completed, the front steps built, the soffits done. Lots of small fiddly bits have progressed. We decided to replace the rotten floor under the bath because it didn't feel right to leave a gaping hole under there for the rats to get in.

The laundry is progressing. The water is finally on. Watercare however, hit us with a huge bill, some of which was development costs!

The exterior just needs holes bogged up and it's on to sanding in preparation for painting.

Council need to come do a pre-line inspection of the laundry before that can be insulated and finished off.

Back to our fulltime jobs tomorrow, so progress will slow down. We've decided we're just going to have to pay others to come in and do the plastering, quite possibly all the painting, lay the lino and polish the floors. It's a shame to run out of steam at the end, but we just want to get it finished so we can rent it out and move on with our lives.

We've been looking at buying a boat - dreaming of a life of leisure. It's probably something to force us to take the weekend off.

Working under the house

Spiders, webs and dirt in close proximity - yuk! But, the pile fixings are all done, the zed nails are going in and the framing for the baseboards is albeit done.

The power is on, if even to only one power point. At least we don't have to lug the generator back and forth, and it's so much quieter.

New photos up on flicker show the baseboard framing, the new secondhand kitchen going in, the new deck out the back of the house complete and a preview of what the baseboards will look like. We've used 75 x 50 RAD H3 RS for the baseboard framing and the baseboards are 150 x 25 RAD H3 RS (radiata pine tanalised rough sawn).

The secondhand hot water cylinder has been fitted in to it's new purpose build cupboard. Behind which the new laundry has been stolen from the kitchen and will open in to the bathroom.

The back door leading to the new decking out the back, is undergoing repair. It's got a new sill and frame and has been rehung. The surrounding weatherboards still need to be fixed. Once this job is complete the rain will stop running in along the ceiling beam and that'll be the last drip stopped. 

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.

Sunburn means lots of work done

Another productive weekend of fencing. Last weekend and after work during the weekend we completed the fencing down the drive. This weekend, we've pulled down the old fence across the back of the section and started erecting the new fence. We were both praising the benefits of earmuffs today - not just for saving our eardrums from the noise of the post hole borer. We can't wait to block out the screaming kids and the screaming adults who live out the back.

Here's some more pics of some fine fencing work in progress. One more day and we'll have the back fence and corner all done. Then it's on to trying to get the power on, which could take Vector at least 2 weeks or more. We're hoping for 2, it took us ages to find an electrician to help us out, given that we're running the cable ourselves.

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.