Decision Day

I remember buying our first house in Wellington, just under 5 years ago. It can't have been 5 years because I was still pregnant with Tori. The 2 bedroom house we were renting was no longer going to be suitable and the time seemed right. It was a scary prospect, as well as being really exciting ... we were living the kiwi dream. Married, 2 kids, owning our own home, and the dog ... well the dog didn't arrive till Tori was 6 months old but you get what I mean.

Well, that dream is now coming to an end, and once again it's a scary prospect as well as being exciting, but there's a tinge of sadness as well. We made a phone call this evening to begin the sale of our place in Wellington. Granted, we haven't lived in it for over 2 years, and there was never the intention that we would move back to it but... once upon a time it was really important to us. So I'm a little sad.

But now we're living a different kiwi dream ... we're going to build a house. Today has been a busy day; we (Jack, Claire, Terry and I) have agreed on how we want to do this, and with whom we want to do it, so it's now a matter of making some phone calls tomorrow and getting the ball rolling.

Baby steps. The steps might be little but they are getting us closer to the goal.

Storm in a Teacup

For most properties the issue of access shouldn't be a concern... you drive up the driveway. Easy.

In rural areas, tracks, gates, fences, sheds, yards... all these things are added over time and they are not necessarily in the right place, or even not allowed to be there at all.

The property we're building on is 25 hectares of one paddock and it is surrounded on 3 sides by Lowburn Station (crown owned but leasehold) and the 4th side by the road up to the main farm. There is a gate into the paddock, and a track to connect the Lowburn Curling Club to the Curling Dam, which is situated in the corner of the paddock. Sound complicated? ... Well it's about to become more of a handful.

Apparently, power is important when building a house (unless of course we decide to go fully solar and wind powered... mmmm... not sure about that). Anyway, to get power to the paddock is proving to be a bit of a problem, because the side of the road between the road and the fence is actually crown land. The Curling Club has access but only as long as Lowburn Station remains as crown land, if it was to be sold privately then the access would be gone, and the gate into the paddock shouldn't actually officially be there as access to the property for Jack and Claire.

Great! (heavy sarcasm)

So, we're looking through files and come across the LINZ report for the farm - YAH! there is access... sort of. Well, there is an official, above-board entrance to the paddock, however that access is currently blocked off as there is only a fence and no obvious way of figuring out exactly where on the fenceline the entrance should be. But it does exist! Great, problem averted. We'll be able to apply to have resource consent, building consent and whatever other kind of consent is needed because officially we can.

Of course, the Curling Club and Jack and Claire are going to try and move the access to the actual gate into the paddock and begin the process of making that the only official access to the farm paddock whether or not Lowburn Station is privately owned or crown owned. The process will take about 4 months but it shouldn't stop us from starting anything. It's amazing the things that you discover when you start digging.

Should be the end of the story, right? Well, not really. Completely happy that things are above board I'm doing the grocery shopping this morning with Ryan, when we look up into the roof of the supermarket to see the Power man we've been talking to. Recognising us he waves me over to deliver some disturbing news - DELTA the power people who will be putting a transformer in for us and connecting the power bits have had their lawyers looking into the property and as far as they are concerned there is NO access to the property at all.

I can see that you need to roll with the punches a bit when you're building a house because it's all a storm in a teacup. There is access to the property, and it's just a matter of everyone looking at the same piece of paper. A family friend, who is also a surveyer, has the matter in hand and no further problems regarding access should eventuate.

We'll see...

A New Direction

“But I don’t want to live in the paddock with the sheep.” Tori is not too impressed with the prospect of moving. What she fails to see, not surprisingly, is that a} we are planning on building a house, not actually going to live in the paddock and b} some would say that we are currently living in a paddock with sheep anyway. It’s an interesting dilemma for a 4 year old – she can’t see how us walking around a paddock measuring the distance from the boundary fence (we have to be 25m), the distance from the water race (10m), and talking about moving the existing track could possible become a house. But that is the plan.

Early discussions have ensued regarding getting power to the site, getting an easement across what was, before now, believed to be public access, but is actually crown land, figuring out where the actual access to the land is, working out who could give us a quote for the drilling of a bore (actually there is only one outfit that does this in Central Otago so the quote will probably be high), and having a draughtsman come out and take down our requirements. By our requirements, I mean the requirements that Terry and I expect from a new house AND those which Jack and Claire (Terry's parents) expect from a new house going on their farm. It’s an interesting dilemma – however we’ve got rats back in our current abode (I hesitate to call it a home) and after discovering a rat nest of shredded plastic bags in the wall of our kitchen after a suspicious sound coming from the plastic bag cupboard, I can put up with whatever anyone decides!

We've been living in the second house on Terry's parents farm now for 2 and a half years, and it has been a struggle. Rats, stoats, a leaky roof, no inside toilet or shower or laundry for six weeks, holes in the walls, around the windows and doors, and numerous other housing disasters. Things that should have sent me screaming from Terry's family farm down here in Cromwell and escaping back to the North Island to my family. Instead I've stuck it out and only complained to my family and a few close friends, while also bursting into tears and confronting Terry about how I just "cannot do one more winter in this house." We've suffered Terry losing his job, and the stress of starting our own business just so we can keep ourselves afloat, but we haven't had to pay any rent... which is why the initial move into this 100 year old house (which was only ever going to last 3 months) has elongated out to almost 3 years. On top of this we moved in with two children aged 1 and 2 and have since had 2 more children - but it is now looking up...

If I think too much about managing a building site as well as looking after 4 kids under six years I might freak out so I'm taking things slowly. Little steps. And it's a new direction.

The great thing about the living in a small community is that invariably you end up being friends with builders, plumbers, painters, and plenty of people who have gone through the process themselves. So calling on some favours I've now got a time line of the process and my aim is to be living in a new house before next April because I am NOT living in this house through another winter.