I spent a fortnight in Roslyn last winter, staying with an old university friend who’d just bought a 1910 villa up the hill from the shops. First morning, I woke up in a bedroom that was, no exaggeration, colder than the frosty street outside. That’s Roslyn for you: gorgeous old bones, elevated views over the…

I own a rental up in Newlands, on the Wellington hills, and every autumn I do the same walk-around before the weather turns. The first year I owned the place I skipped it — figured winter was winter — and by August I had a blocked spouting overflowing down the weatherboards, a slippery deck the…

Every summer for a few years now the drive up from Palmerston North to Mount Maunganui has ended the same way: my sister finds me a job before the jandals are even off. Last summer it was rebuilding her pergola after a nor’easter tore into it. I’m a DIY bloke by habit and tight with…

A mate of mine from my old building crew shifted out to Owhata a couple of years back, chasing that classic dream of a lifestyle block on the eastern edge of Rotorua — a few sheep, a big veggie garden, room to breathe. I’m a builder based in Petone, on a section so flat and…

My name’s Ross, and I’ve spent decades on building sites — these days running concrete crews back home in Dunedin — but I’ve got family in Terrace End, so I’m up in Palmerston North a fair bit. Every time I’m at a barbecue there, someone asks me the same thing: “Ross, what should we actually…

I’m Hemi, and tree work around the Hutt Valley has kept me busy for years — Upper Hutt, Wainuiomata, all through the flat at Petone. Petone’s the one that still catches me out, though. A mate who’s lived his whole life on Jackson Street put it better than I ever could: “You’re not standing on…