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Description
Our home is a 1970s/1990s villa on a hillside overlooking the Kapiti Coast and its fabulous sunsets. The half-hectare property is about half protected native bush. The villa itself is a huge and gloriously mad pastiche of styles: Mediterranean. Japanese, British, and Kiwi. The previous owner, Norma, died last year aged 100. We bought the place in a tired condition. We have done a lot of work to start restoring the gardens but at age 66 I could use a hand with clearing and landscaping.
Note: We live in the house full time and the gardens are our personal gardens. We are restoring it after decades of neglect. Our Workaway project is separate from the BnB that we operate in one third of the house as a small contribution to help fund the renovation. You will live in the BnB but you won't be working on it.
We are a professional couple who do international management consulting, mostly in Vietnam. My wife, Cherry, is Vietnamese (and a great cook). I'm fulltime now on restoring the property . We have an ancient and adorable dog, Astro. The property is full of native birds and a troop of quail. Two of our adult kids live in Wellington so they show up occasionally. There is a friend of ours living in the separate cottage (a grief councillor in her sixties).
We are atheists. I am a skeptic. We are mildly left-wing politically: socialist/capitalist - we like NZ pretty much the way it is. Neither of us have any interest in conspiracies, mysticism, or alternative medicine. We are fully vaccinated and hope you will be too. Cherry has a PhD in public policy and a business and training career, and I am a failed electrical engineer who worked in IT for thirty years. We both do yoga.
Types of help and learning opportunities
Help with Eco Projects
Gardening
DIY and building projects
General Maintenance
Interests
Yoga / Wellness
History
Blogging
Books
Farming
Technology
Culture
Writing
Plant care
Languages
Drawing & painting
Gardening
DIY & crafts
Cooking & food
Nature
Mountain
Hiking
Cultural exchange and learning opportunities
We both love gardening. Cherry is mad about roses and dahlias, and any grown food. I, Rob, like natives, vegetables, and bonsai.
Cherry cooks Vietnamese dishes as well as an international fusion of others. She loves sharing the cooking. She turns her hand to many creative art projects.
I am an old-school conservationist - I have been visiting the mountains and bush of NZ since before I was born. I'm a handyman: I'll try to make or fix things.
We have an extensive library of fiction and non-fiction. We don't use the TV at all, nor watch movies much, but we spend a lot of time on YouTube and social media.
Help
We are looking for a couple of workawayers to spend a couple of weeks here helping out. We are taking the property from overgrown to civilised: restored native environments with paths; fruit orchards, vege garden, flower gardens, and terraces. Lots of roses. I'll have most of the blackberry and gorse killed already. We need to clear residual rubbish, cart soil and gravel, kill weeds, build terraces and paths, plant natives, and develop a wet area.
We will be working together. I'm a handyman as so many Kiwis of my generation are: jack of all trades and master of none.
We may do some landscaping, gardening, painting, concreting, blocklaying, paving, 12V lighting, and maybe even a spot of woodwork and welding. We will learn from each other.
The development of the villa is costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the BnB makes very little, so we can't afford to offer payment sorry, just free food and accommodation.
Languages spoken
English: Fluent
Vietnamese: Fluent
German: Beginner
Spanish: Beginner
French: Beginner
Chinese (Mandarin): Beginner
Accommodation
We are already running a BnB in one end of the villa, so we can provide a comfortable lockable room for free any time in the off season from May to October.
You will have access to a kitchen, dining room, lounge, work area, bathroom, and laundry, all separate from us. There is an outdoor spa bath, bbq, and multiple seating areas. The view is awesome, with great sunsets.
We will provide breakfast materials for you to help yourself. We will cook dinner for us all. You're welcome to help or take a turn at cooking. We are sociable, so we can dine together whenever we all feel like it. Lunch is informal, we will grab something each day, we tend not to have a meal.
The villa is central to the large town of Paraparaumu (15 minutes walk), and the nature reserves and beaches of Kapiti, It is a suburban commuter train ride from Wellington.
What else ...
We live quietly. I don't like music unless I'm really listening to it. Being mildly autistic (don't worry, I'm high-functioning) it wears me down to have music in the background.
Cherry likes the occasional drink, I medically can't drink. You're free to drink as you like. Other drugs are still illegal in NZ and we would like not to attract the attention of the authorities, so although we aren't against them we prefer not to have them on the property. The property is non-smoking indoors or near the house - as a reformed smoker I really dislike it.
The property is not safe for children under 13. We don't let our BnB guests have pets, we make the one exception for old Astro our dog until he finally shuffles off (he is 18). So you can't have kids or animals, sorry.
The internet is good. You have unrestricted use of it (with the usual proviso that you don't do anything that attracts the attention of the authorities or the internet provider). There is no phone line: mobile reception is good.
A little more information
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
Can host families
Can host digital nomads
Fast fibre broadband with wifi mesh on the property and a direct ethernet connection in the home office. An assortment of cameras, mics, monitors etc
How many Workawayers can stay?
Two
My animals / pets
Astro (18 years)
Scruffy old foxy/bichon/spaniel. Everybody loves him. Quiet now, almost blind and deaf, but still full of character .
