D.I.Y. February
Kia ora,
Welcome to our very first blog - we can’t believe February has been and gone and with it the end of summer!
February has been a busy month of home D.I.Y (Do it yourself) projects as we made the most of a somewhat more settled weather up here in Northland to complete ongoing projects and also start new ones.
The biggest D.I.Y job which started in early December 2025 was repainting the exterior cladding of our home as it needed some major TLC. The house had not been painted by the looks of it since it was first built back in 2004. When we moved into the property in early last year, we discussed the idea of hiring someone to do the painting as two sides of the house were quite high due to it being built on a slope. We knew hiring scaffolding would be expensive, knowing that we likely couldn’t get it done quickly and using a ladder didn’t seem efficient or safe.
After a lot of procrastination, thought and reasearch, what ultimately made us decide to D.I.Y. the exterrior house painting was the need to save as much as we can because surrogacy, including IVF can be very expensive. In New Zealand, from what we’ve looked at online, the estimate is around $40 - 50k+ for our first round.
Intending parents - We found the “Fertility Plus” private charges calculator simple and easy to use, to give us an idea of what to expect: https://www.fertilityplus.co.nz/funding/charges-calculator/
Back to the exterior house painting - after doing some research, we purchased an at home use scaffolding set that could reach the high parts of the house and a height adjustable A frame ladder. With the help of a friend who was very generous with his time and not afraid of heights, we managed to get half the house painted before Christmas 2025, and a few weekends later, we finished the rest of the house in February this year! We now know why most people would probably pay someone to paint the exterior of their house - it’s a big job, especially when you throw work and other commitments into the mix. The next big job to tackle are the decks and underside of the house!
Other smaller D.I.Y projects that we complete was the letterbox which required a few redesigns and probably cost more in the end than buying one from the store - we think it looks pretty good! Also, our sheep needed to be sheared in February as they were quite wooly, so we ended up building a makeshift pen after finding out how much it would cost to build those permanent wooden ones.
We can see how people can get hooked into D.I.Y as there is nothing more satisfying than building something yourself, with the added benefits of building resilience as you figure out the “how” and spending less time being glued to our screens! With our new found love of D.I.Y, Nann has also decided to help his parents out and repaint the exterior windows at his family home in Hamilton, which has not been touched in over 20 years!
