Lets build a house in Tonga

There is nothing like biting off more than you can chew ! 2020 we decided to build a house in Tonga and we sent the first container only for the world to go into lockdown.

After sending our first container Tonga was hit by a pretty bad Cyclone. We had planned to build a house mostly out of wood but after see the destruction across the island we decided to switch to a brick house.

Our plan was simple - Source everything from New Zealand and send it over in a container.

I was still making changs to the layout of the house and i had to make a final decision within the next few days as the bricks and concrete had arrived. We had started to source materials when we went into our first lockdown.

Both of us were pretty optimistic that this was a small bump in the road. We have planned to head over to Tonga and project manage most of the build but with lock down extended it became clear to us that maybe not all was going to go to plan.

Luckily with both our jobs we could still work. We continued on and with hubbys job he was still able to collect a few things. It slowed us done considerably as we had planned to send a container every two months. With lockdowns we had to wait until we dropped a level so we could get a container delievered to us.

With lockdowns prices started to rise considerably. I worried more than anything that the containers would get too expensive for us to send.