The Artist

In between building and landscaping I have been painting (that’s the arty kind) it's something that I have been doing on and off as long as I can remember, but this is the first time I have treated it like a job.
Total commitment is a must when I am painting or drawing and if it is not working 'right' to stop and start again, and keep on doing it, until you get the spontaneous look to the brush strokes, color and the layout.
I think you can liken it to an actor learning their lines.

Last week I sold my first painting…

I sketched it 3 times to get the layout correct and painted it 2 times to achieve the color balance correct, our son was over from the UK acted as art director (his job in London)
It was good to have someone I could trust to be a honest critic – not an easy job.
Family and friends can be very bad critics as they can say things that you want to hear.

Completed!

The house was completed, the end result a 3 double bedrooms plus upstairs office studio attic and 2 bathrooms.

It now has been finished for 18 months, all the planting around the garden have made the house look as if it's always been there.

Would we ever 'do' a relocated house again?
The answer is an emphatic No!
With what we needed to do to bring it up to current standards it would have been cheaper to build a NEW house.

Reconstruction

The house had a new bay window and a veranda installed, the interior seriously remodeled, with the ceilings put back to the original height, all the windows removed and french doors installed.
The house was insulated under-floor, walls and ceiling

Doors

During the 6 month wait I made all the Windows and French doors that I had incorporated into the design, yes, I had also done all the architectural drawings with a little help of a friend who was a architectural designer.

I had never made anything quite like these before, I needed to buy some woodworking equipment, drop saw and a thicknesser, the models I chose were made by RYOBI, big mistake both items were not up to standard.

I couldn't get a straight cut on the saw, it wasn't until much later in a fit of desperation that the machine was pulled apart – the cutting guide was not straight and the bolt holding the saw was loose on the bearing, both manufacturing faults. The thicknesser worked but after stripping it down during the blade change I found the pressure rollers were made out of centre , which made getting a perfectly smooth finish impossible.
The lesson: don't buy cheap RYOBI equipment made in China!

I completed all the doors and widows made from Red Cedar, all painted and glazed ready for installation, this exercise saved about $9000.00.

Moving Day

The House arriving in the village 5.30am -
All other road users beware...

The Building site

The site before planting, tree cutting and house arrival.

Permits, Approvals, Resource Consents and Settlement

6 months went by waiting for the title and plans to be approved; we had a double challenge as it was a new title the approval takes at least 6 months. The building permit was complicated because it was a old house and needed resource consent as well as a building permit.
At last it all came together, the title, building permit, settlement of the sale and delivery of the house all on the same day!
It was all a little to close for our nerves and blood pressure, a bit risky, much later, we found out how close to disaster it could have been. As well as the timing I found that the contractor moving the house didn't have any insurance!!!
The delivery route - 37Km trip up and over a 500 meter summit.

In the begining

The story so far…
After 20 year I closed the doors on my very small advertising production company,

• Offered and accepted job in an small IT company.
• Small IT Company purchased by a Large multi national,
• Made manager, then
• 12 months later, made redundant. (8 weeks salary! )

It was decision time - I needed to have something to do, another job looked difficult as I was past my usebye date, as far as employment consultants and HR departments and I didn't feel like starting another business all over again.

We must have some money as the redundancy payment wasn't going to last long.

My wife had just started her own business and was going through the growing pains of being busy one moment and then thinking the phone and email would never work again.

We decided that the only thing we could do was start again, I would build a new house, I had proved I could be fairly handy in the DIY area and so...

• Sold the house to clear mortgage,
• Moved into rented cottage
• Bought small block of land in close to a village that was within commuting distance of the city.

This is where the DIY really started in ernest, we bought a old house to be relocated to the land we had bought and start some very fast work to bring it to a living standard, and have somewhere to live and call our own.
In New Zealand you can buy old wooden houses for relocation they are usually in bad repair – Ours, was an old 90 year old wooden farm cottage, that had been very badly modernized about 1966 it was a mess.

When we first saw our new home, it was in a contractor's yard sitting up on 44 gallon drums, looking very sad with its roof sagging down, looking like a beached wooden whale, surrounded by other old tired houses waiting to die. (It was love at first sight!)

The cost included delivery to our site on pile foundations
So we paid the man some money to be deliverd to the site in due course.

But first we had to get planning approval - to be continued!!!!