Bedrooms and Tree Turkeys.

When we moved in we knew one of the first jobs we would tackle would be the children's bedrooms. Our house is designed on three levels, with bedrooms on the ground and second floor. The main living area is in between. This means that the bedrooms on the ground floor can be a bit dark.
So we decided to tackle these first and make sure they were nice cheery places for the kids to play.

Someone who previously lived in our house obviously liked the colour orange. A lot of the house is orange and blue. Interesting combination I think you'll agree. It made the ground floor appear even darker than it naturally is. So we decided white was a good way to go.

Being progressive parents and wanting to encourage our children's creativity and individuality, we allowed them to choose one colour for one wall in their rooms. The other three walls would be white. Well my youngest daughter chose "pea green". Okay it's not actually called that on the pot, it called something much more seductive like "spring meadow", but it is essential pea green. Lovely! We couldn't go back on our promise to allow them to choose, so we came back from Bunnings (NZ equivalent of B&Q) with a lovely pot of pea green paint!

Also rather riskily, we allowed the kids to help paint the rooms too!

Rather surprisingly once the "pea green" was put on the walls it actually looked rather nice.

My other half also got rather inspired and decided to paint a tree and what is apparently a bird of paradise in its branches. Me and the kids decided it looked more like a Turkey! However I think the end result has really cheered and brightened up the smallest bedroom.

The Tale of the Treehouse

So our lovely new home came with an existing tree house built on top of an existing tree stump. It was covered with spiders and dead leaves and numerous insects so was not fully explored by us or the kids when we moved in. And most importantly it was not examined by our structural engineer.

About a week after we moved in our friends came round with their kids and three of the girls decided to be brave enough to climb up and explore the tree house. After the main cobwebs and dead leaves had been swept out by Mum.

The parents had withdrawn to the kitchen for a cuppa and chat when we heard what sounded like a tree collapsing. With our stomachs well and truly in our mouths we ran out to see what I fully expected to be a scene of carnage.

Well the tree house had completely toppled over and slid down the bank. The three girls had been inside when it fell. One of them had been thrown out and had was lying half way down the bank. My eldest emerged from the remains unscathed and my youngest had to be retrieved from the wreckage and sustained two bad knocks to the head.

Following a panicked trip to A & E thankfully no one was badly hurt. However a lesson was well and truly learnt that day. Do not let your kids climb tree houses without thoroughly examining their structural integrity first!

Lessons learnt on the theory of house buying in NZ.

Buying a house in New Zealand is a bit of a different experience than buying in the UK.

I will not attempt to give you a complete guide to house buying in NZ (as I am no expert!) but will share our experience.

Firstly, and most importantly, it is a lot easier to be nosy and view far more houses than you can in the UK, thanks to the wonderful world of "Open Homes". On a Saturday or Sunday hopeful home sellers will allow their castles to be viewed by nosy neighbours and the odd genuine potential buyer. This is a brilliant idea as you can view many properties in an area that you are interested in and get a really good idea of whats available. It also means that you can view a property without being scrutinised by the anxious owners desperately trying to gauge whether you are genuinely interested or just come round for a bit of a jolly and a good old nose around!

The other confusing thing for us was the way in which houses are advertised. They are not all priced clearly. Some have "open to tender" which means that you can place a sealed bid on the property and the owner will accept the highest bid or the one with the best conditions. Others are advertised as "offers over" and you are open to offering an amount above the one stated. This is a silly idea as we found out when we offered the amount stated and were told they were looking for 30 thousand more. Well why not state that to start with!

Other properties go to Auction. We did not consider these as the whole idea of making a purchase for that amount of money on the spur of the moment just seemed a bit to scary for us. However other people I have spoken too have bought they houses through Auctions and apparently it is actually not that frightening on the day!

Once you have chosen your future dream home you can put in an offer (if it is advertised as "offers over") and you do this by contacting the Real Estate Agent advertising the property. They then take your offer to the owners and get back to you, much the same as in the UK.

With our property this involved a very anxious wait whilst at a 6 years old's birthday party and then having to sit on our hands for a few hours to prevent us ringing back immediately with our slightly higher offer. We did not want to seem too keen.

Once your offer has been accepted you then have to actually sign a conditional contract. This is obviously very different to the UK were you are free to drop out at any point if you change your mind on the purchase. In NZ you sign a contract stating you promise to buy the house providing certain conditions are met. Normally these conditions will include getting a LIM report done (the equivalent of a local authority search in the UK), a builders report and possibly an engineers report.

Unsurprisingly Kiwis have a very different and relatively relaxed approach to making the biggest purchase of their lives. Some friends I have spoken to did not bother getting a LIM report on their property, never mind a builders report! This horrified me as the thought of purchasing some of the wooden shacks and interestingly designed buildings around here (in an earthquake zone!) without getting them thoroughly checked seemed bizarre and mightily risky. However perhaps this more relaxed attitude it something I could do with occasionally.

We put a LIM report and builders report and an engineers report in our conditions. These are not cheap but as our house is somewhat unique and standing on very long poles we thought it would be a good idea to get it thoroughly checked.

All the reports came back okay. The builders report came back with a fairly long list of things highlighted in red (indicating they were things we really should consider carefully!). Luckily none of the things they highlighted were items that we hadn't already spotted as potential problems.

The Engineer thankfully said that the house was not going to go anywhere and that is had already been earthquake strengthened but the garage could probably do with a few extra strengthening struts. The very nice Engineer appeared to be in his sixties (every other one was currently in Christchurch working on the reconstruction) and very kindly climbed down a very dangerous slope to view underneath the house. I felt very guilt making this fragile looking man slide down a muddy slope on his bottom just to reassure me the house was not going to collapse in the near future.

Once all the conditions have been met you then sign a unconditional contract which if you back out of requires you to pay the owners your deposit in full. So do not sign this one unless you are absolutely certain this is the house you want.

Once you have decided on a date for completion and moving you will find that the estate agent will actually deliver the keys to you personally and usually with a gift of some sort! Estate agents make a lot of money over here and are therefore very grateful to the purchasers! When we complered our estate agent appeared on our doorstep with the keys and a big box done up with a beautiful bow. He had bought us a rather beautiful woolen blanket. A friend of ours recieved crystal glasses when they moved. Very surprising, but very welcome tradition!

So this was the house we wanted, despite the scary poles and dodgy looking roof. It is our shed in the wood and will hopefully be our family home for a long time to come. All we have to do now is put our own stamp on it. Give it the love and care it needs and bring it back to being the family home it once was.

Our Own Home

Five years of not living in a house that you own can drive you slightly nuts! Five years of having to watch your kids like hawks when they want to paint, use play dough or do anything slightly messy can lead to very fraught nerves and high blood pressure. Five years of trying to hide that melted crayon in the carpet every time you have a house inspection by the letting agents can get very trying.

So we finally took the plunge and have brought our own home in the land of the long white cloud.

We loved the little suburb we rented in and tried to find a property in that area but after a grand total of two weeks (yep we have no patience) we decided to widen the search and ended up in a suburb 10 minutes away but, most importantly, within walking distance of the sea!

Our new home is nestled amongst the trees and stands on long wooden pylon's that look quite frightening to someone who grew up in the brick semis so common in the UK.

We discovered our new adventure. We have brought a house that won an architectural design award when it was built way back in 1977 and now is in need of a bit of TLC. It is structurally sound, as our structural engineer and builder have confirmed, but it is a wooden house and needs some attention and probably a new roof in the near future. It also has some interesting 70s design features which although I may grow to love, may need to be updated slightly so that I can happily live with them.

It is surrounded by woodland and as my grandad has said, is essentially a "Shed in a Wood". Hence the blog name! So this will be a chronical of our attempts to make our new family home in our architecturally designed Shed in a Wood.

During the four weeks we have been in our new home my kids have already made it feel theirs. When asked to stop using felt pens near the lounge carpet they responded "Its alright Mummy, its our carpet now, it doesn't matter if we get pen on it"! Not quite my point!