Welcome home, Margie. While you were away ... we made over your house

WIDOWED suddenly, Margie Reweti found herself raising three children alone in the rundown home she and her husband had just bought to do up.
The home, a former Waihi goldminer's cottage built in the 1920s, had grown so cold 15 years after their purchase that in winter Mrs Reweti was forced to go to bed at 5pm.
But thanks to donations and manpower of members of Mount Mosaic Church and local businesses she now has a carpeted, draught-free home, filled with colour.
Brimming with joy since her arrival home on Sunday, Mrs Reweti has spent the time walking from room to room taking it all in, discovering more each time she looks.
"It's like a dream," she said. "It just looks like a different house."
The project was headed up by Mosaic pastors Deby and Grant Sowter who were at the house at lunchtime on Sunday, waiting to tell Mrs Reweti they had gone far beyond fixing the back door and doing a bit of gardening.
"They said they'd got a little bit carried away, that one thing led to another and they hoped I didn't mind," Mrs Reweti said.
An earlier conversation with Mosaic members had alerted them to Mrs Reweti's need for assistance to make her home more liveable and Mr Sowter said the idea for a makeover grew from there.
In about 1200 labour hours, and within the four-day schedule, the interior was completely painted, laundry room lined and tiled, property landscaped, new bed linen and curtains installed, a new bench and cupboards put in the kitchen, and more.
A small victory came on Saturday night when one of the volunteers started chipping at the glue stuck to the rimu floorboards in the kitchen. Mrs Reweti's husband had pulled up the floor covering shortly before his death, at work on the wharf, and at first the makeover team had considered it too time-consuming to tackle.
It took eight men with hand scrapers a satisfying 40 minutes to scrape and oil the floor.
Yesterday, Mrs Rewiti was still slightly shell-shocked and said she had been totally oblivious to the transformation going on at home. "It's like you can't really find words to describe it," she said.
"It's just amazing, I've got new steps out the back, the laundry, just everything," Mrs Rewiti said.
Mr Sowter said the project, "just captured everybody" and it was an "incredible thing" to watch Mrs Reweti discover it all.
Mr Sowter was amazed at the response from local businesses.
"It's a lot of people doing a little thing," said Mrs Sowter.
Mrs Reweti said she would be making use of her new front deck and remodelled front yard to host barbecues to say thank-you to everyone who helped.
At church on Sunday, Mrs Reweti said some of the volunteers thanked her for providing them with a project.
"(For them) it was really good to be able to do something for someone else in their community. I'm just so grateful to them," she said.