Andrew's blog

We've spent the last 6 weeks impatiently waiting for this day, and finally, the day has come! Today is the day the earthworks began. Yippeeeeee!!!!

The earthworks had to wait until the weather improved and being Wellington, that was waiting until after Labour weekend. Then there was a process of putting some of the work out for tender, receiving the tenders, and decided one of the contractors for the job, which took some time and a bit of negotiation.

The big digger arrived onsite today.

It dwarfs the bank it's cutting down, which is reassuring. It'll take one week to get the site prepared, including mulching the vegetation and setting up sediment control measures to ensure that the nearby waterways aren't polluted from the dust emissions.

The health and safety officer hooked us up with some safety gear so that we could go out onsite regularly.

Tomorrow, our surveyor will set out the site, which means he will peg out where the digger should be cutting into the bank. After that our engineer will come to complete what we hope will be the final soil testing on our site. But first the digger will need to create a path for our engineer to be able to access the top of the bank.

So in about two weeks time, our section will be transformed. We won't even recognise it. How super dooper exciting! After 7 or so years, it's finally happening, woohoo!!

In the meantime, we've applied for building consent, which should be granted any day now. Fingers crossed it will come through before the earthworks have finished so that it doesn't delay the build. If granted, it will be on the condition that the Engineer certifies our foundation design, which he can't do until after he's seen what the earthworks uncovers.

While we were waiting for the weather to improve, we met with the electrician. Despite having set aside over $2,500 more than the PC Sum for electrical work, we still came in $2,000 over budget. Yikes! So we've made the most of the sales and now have a wardrobe full of lights and 2 bathroom heaters. The search is on for the cheapest decent heated towel rails.

While we were shopping, we stumbled across a swing set that a shop used to entertain it's customers children. Naturally, our children loved it. So we took the liberty of asking if we could buy it. Turns out we could, at a very competitive rate. So we are now proud owners of 2 swings and some monkey bars. Who needs a security system anyway. They are so over-rated. Besides, the children's swings are much more important.