It’s that time in a holiday when you start to think that you should really set the alarm in the morning to start to retrain the body into the way of the world of work. Only kidding!

I’m still making the most of the time at home away from the realities of work but today has been very much about taking stock of where we are with house stuff. As they say…things are all heading in the right direction.

The current status is that the inspection by the council of the land as part of our resource consent has concluded that the application should be approved when we have title. This is indeed good news as it could have been a real stumbling block to be moving earth around and wanting to build a slightly larger than normally permitted cottage on the plot.

There is a pile of drawings ready for submission now for building consent. Only thing awaiting is the engineers report on how many piles we need to drive into the earth to hold up bits of the house. Subject to final drawings and calculations we expect all the paperwork to be with the council imminently and these should be approved when we have title.

Now what is this title you might ask? It’s the bit of paper we need from the land registry to say that the land is now a separate plot and recognises our ownership. According to the lawyer there is one more signature required by the electricity people to confirm the power to the land and then it can be submitted for the title to be issued.

Although things are heading in the right direction it feels like a ticking bomb as we wait for the housing industry and the administration of New Zealand government departments to do their stuff. I know that the next month will be as frustrating as we wait for all the bits of paper to fall in to place but fingers crossed and a fair northerly wind 2007 might actually be the year that we get our 6 acres and a house with a walton’s porch and two turrets!