Another few weeks gone by…

The last few weeks continued to fly by, and I am now writing this post as we are sitting on our long (11 hour) flight headed to LAX from Auckland.

Since our last post, we have continued to keep busy. We went to see our friend Kim’s art displayed at the annual NZ Art Show. Her pieces are amazing, it was a shame they were not more prominently placed. It was also not a good time as the economic climate does not make for loose wallets. All of the artists at the show felt the lack of spending.

We also dropped by Wellycon- the local tabletop game convention in Wellington. It has grown quite significantly since we last attended in 2014/2015. Fun to catch up with several friends.

We also celebrated the Weta Cave’s 16th anniversary of operation. The Cave is the unique retail space attached to Weta Workshop. Richard and Tania annually greet fans, share stories and cut cake to commemorate the occasion.

We have been trying to clean up the house messes from the various projects so that it is tidy before we go and when we get back. We didn’t want to start any more long projects and have to stop midway through. 

We finished setting up our office, unpacked the 40 boxes of books and made some lighting upgrades in the dining room and lounge. Eric is enjoying the new Phillips Hue light bulbs. He can control them from his phone, allowing him to dim them remotely when lounging in his chair, and they turn a myriad of colors. It’s a bit silly, but fun.

That is the old “basket” light fixture. Now gone and replaced with very basic but nice whit fixtures that also match the ones in the hall. 

Side note- Bunnings is the local hardware store. Similar to HomeDepot or Lowe’s in the US.  We frequent it often and at move-in we did a major shopping. We actually maxed out their register system and had to make our purchase in two transactions. Friends asked what the maximum was. For the record, Bunnings can only ring up a maximum of 58 unique items per transaction. That was a first for the sales clerk too. lol!

We have been enjoying more TV with friends. Managed to get 16 people to fit on our lounge to watch the first two episodes of Star Wars Acolyte. We watched the new Dr. Who episodes. Fun but a bit hit or miss. Episodes 3-6 were good. Also really enjoyed the final season of Star Trek Discovery. Still so many more shows to catch up on…

Overall we are both doing well. Winter is settling in here and with it colds and flu. We have gotten the latest Covid booster and our flu jabs. 

Been taking some extra precautions as we really didn’t want to get sick just before our travels. 🤞 Several of our plans got canceled here, as friend fell ill or were exposed to others. 

We are arriving in good health and hopeful we will remain so throughout the visit. It will be a very quick pass through this time and we are sorry if we miss some of you. Looking forward to seeing family and friends, as well as some warm sunshine (apparently just missing a bit of the heat wave). Of course we can’t wait for some In n Out burgers and good Mexican food too!

Where did the month go?

Wow I can’t believe it has been over four weeks since our last post. I guess we have been busy. This is King’s birthday weekend (holiday Monday) so we are coming up for a bit of air. 

Looking back at the calendar, we certainly packed a lot in. Most importantly, we have carpet throughout the house now!!! So happy to have that done.

Eric has finished the build-out of the linen closet, and the painting and closet build-out in the second room that is our office. It took 6 coats of paint to cover the old purple wall! 

See previous blog for work in progress. This is where the original hit water cylinder was. 

    

We are enjoying moving into the space and continuing to get rid of boxes. The room is smaller than the one we shared in Seattle but we are making it work. 

We have been socially busy too…

We hosted our first dinner in our house with dear friends and had a few movie nights at the house as well. We watched the new Ghostbusters movie and in anticipation of Furiosa, watched Mad Max Fury Road - could not believe it was released 9 years ago. We also saw The Fall Guy, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Furiosa. I personally loved The Fall Guy. 

May 10th/May 11th here, it was possible to see an Aurora from many places in the world. Wellington (much like Seattle) is often covered in clouds. We did manage to get a brief peak before the cloud cover obscured it. We also went down to the beach the following night as it was clear, but only saw a stunning sunset. 😁

We checked out “Light Cycles” at the Botanical Gardens. We managed to get a nice dry evening with minimal wind. The lights music and effects were great. I was only sorry it was not longer. I would have liked a bit more. 

I attended the opening night of the new Dr. Who exhibit. This is the first time this exhibit has been shown outside of the UK. It was a fun evening with friends and there was lots of great props and displays from all eras of the show. If I’m being critical, I was disappointed that there was not a display featuring all the Doctors in their outfits. They only had the original costume of the first doctor. I also wish there was more with the companions, River Song and Captain Jack. Without the more recent companions and River Song it felt very male-centric. Small showing of Jodie Whitaker and just a photo of the newest Doctor Ncuti Gatwa. Definite missed opportunities. 

Eric and I also enjoyed a Chocolate Masterclass at the Wellington Chocolate Factory curtesy of my brother, Erika and niece Casey as a holiday gift. We both made 70% dark chocolate bars. That is 70% pure cacao and 30% sugar. I made plain, salty caramel, and one with pretzel bits and Eric made one each of, coffee, ginger and apricot. We also got to taste many other flavors of chocolate and learned more about where it comes from and how it is processed. Quite impressive. And delicious!

I guess in hindsight - that certainly explains where May went - poof!

Work is going well and I am enjoying it. Eric got another couple of days at Scale Studios and is still happy working on the house. 

June is going to be another fun-filled month - stay tuned!

Work Continues

 

But it’s important to take a break and get out of the house, especially when the sun is shining! This is Breaker Bay in Wellington. 

We (by we I mean mostly Eric) has been working hard. 

The plumber was scheduled to come decommission the 27yr old water cylinder in our upstairs linen closet and install the new one in our basement room. 

This gave us(Eric) about 10 days at most to get the safe step to the room (shared in the last blog) finished and build a new platform for the cylinder and the washer and dryer to sit on. Needed to be 500mm/half a meter off the ground for draining. 

All was completed and installed successfully. We also removed the old toilet and painted the wall behind it, as we got a new toilet too!

There is still more painting and work to do in that bathroom but it is coming along. We were not big fans of the polka dot bathroom. 😁

The electrician followed and got it all working along with a few additional improvements to existing switches and outlets. He will be back again soon to install an extraction/vent fan in the upstairs bathroom. 

What else? We managed to unpack and inspect all the hanging artwork. Only one damaged frame- not too bad but disappointing non the less. We will get it fixed/replaced when we can. 

But getting rid of all those boxes was very helpful. Freed up more space. 

Current project is the linen closet. With the water cylinder gone we have more space to use. Yay!

Carpet for the rest of the floor- where we had originally hoped to restore the wood, has now been selected and ordered. And we hope to have it all installed in the next 3-4 weeks🤞🏻

It will be great to finally have all the flooring done and not have to keep shifting the remaining boxes around. 

Work is going well. Each week I’m getting a little busier. Still meeting new people, and learning more. 

Hard to believe that May is here. Time is moving at a very rapid pace. We have now been in NZ a bit over 7 months. It still feels like we just got here. And we are planning our first visit back to the states at the end of June. It will be a quick trip. Hoping to squeeze in seeing as many friends and family as possible. As well as some In-n-Out burgers and Mexican food!

And The Fun Continues…

So we scheduled the carpet to be installed in the still mostly empty house on the 25th of March with an extra day the 26th just in case they needed more time. 

Our furniture and boxes were scheduled for delivery the 27th and 28th. And the plan was to have the long Easter weekend 4 days to unpack and settle in. 

The carpet installed on the 26th ended up being flawed. There was a missing line/row of yarn through the whole batch! (See photo below- that was not a seam) And it was not “noticed” until the install was completed. So we had to have our stuff delivered onto the carpet knowing it would all have to be moved to remove the bad carpet and then re-installed. 

We hoped that the company would get this fixed quickly but nope- 

Going through all the proper procedures and claim forms took time plus the Easter holiday …the soonest they could possibly get new carpet to us was the 9th 😜

So with the help of generous friends we spent part of our weekend moving stuff around to clear as much of the carpet area as we could. 

A royal pain in the ….

but then on the 9th they were delivered the wrong carpet and then need to reschedule again!

We were beside ourselves with frustration. And we have the plumber scheduled for the week of the 15th. 

After much pushing and some juggling, they managed to arrange for the new new carpet to be installed on the 10th. They were unable to finish it, but enough that we can start to put things where they go. Hoping to have it finished next week. 

And after several appraisals and quotes, we have determined the amount of work and money necessary to keep/restore/redo the wood flooring in the hall and dining room is too much. So we will be ordering carpet for those locations. 

That is likely another 4-6 weeks away. But that is fine, we have plenty of other stuff to focus on. 

As for our belongings…

Everything arrived and is accounted for. Yay! It is still too soon to know if there are any damages. But so far the big items, the items we were most concerned about are all fine. Especially the big screen tv! There are a few other minor breaks, but nothing we can’t fix or live without. 

A huge shout out to folks that packed everything up in Seattle and to the Wellington Allied Moving crew. You were rockstars. I wish I could say the same for NZ MAF- they opened up about 20 boxes to “inspect” and did a terrible job of packing them back up? Check out the gold and black box above.

We did enjoy a fun Easter Sunday with friends. We drove out to Kaitoke Regional Park - where Rivendell is from Lord of the Rings films. Good food, fun games, and the weather even held out for us. 

Eric has been super busy. Working on house stuff and trying to keep me sane.

The space behind the oven now has a wall.

We had been planning to remove the very old gas hot water cylinder from the upstairs linen closet and wanted to go with water on demand (called infinity water here) but along the way the plumber found that we had a gas leak. Not in the house itself, but somewhere between the outside meter and the house. There is a driveway there and we would need to cut through the asphalt to run new line. And to complicate matters that part of the driveway is not actually our property. It is the cities and is shared with our neighbor. So we took the easy way out. We will be shutting off the gas. The water heater was the only use. And installing a new electric cylinder in the basement. Easier and cheaper in the end. 

Eric has now made the steps to the basement room safe and will start building the platform for the new water cylinder and our washer and dryer. 

Original unsafe entry

It has been stressful, but is getting better. Our friends have been an enormous help. Not only with moving furniture and boxes back and forth multiple times but in keeping us smiling and semi-sane. Thank you!

Not our house- A friend is fixing his roof and exterior paint. 

We did get our bedroom set up! So great to finally spend our first night in our bed!❤️ We have not slept in this bed since Aug 27th, 2023! We will be getting new blinds and curtains in the not to distant future.

Really looking forward to making more progress soon. 

And just because…a shout out to my sister who continues to follow her dreams. Congratulations! She was the announcer at Oracle Stadium for the San Francisco Giants opening weekend! We really wish we could have been there. 🎉

We also celebrated Sue’s 81st birthday🎂!

ps- Some friends have been leaving nice comments, please know that they are appearing as anonymous. So please add your name in your comment if you want us to know who you are😁.