Enclosed, painted, wired and ready for some finishing touches

The final "look" is just about ready.  A bit of landscaping and the outside picture will be complete.

Outside is about ready...  needs a good clean though

The bricks still need a clean. The whole site is going to get cleaned before hand over.  I'm not sure it's possible to clean away that white line down the middle of the front wall.  A little bit disappointed that it's there. It looks like the house had open heart surgery.  I can't find anywhere that says it's absolutely unacceptable.  The closest info is that the cut bricks look better placed at the end of the walls, not in the centre.  I've also found that a brick wall should be aesthetically pleasing but that's subjective.  I can understand how it got that way, but still, it's not random enough to be called  "character", and everyone I've shown the picture to has noticed it.  I'm waiting for them to come back with something.  We won't be rendering any walls.



We've had a few looks at the inside and are relieved that our choice of paint has turned out OK.  Tiles and carpet go down over the next couple of days.  When that's done we'll have some inside photos to show.

Handover won't be until next year.

External Claddding... taking forever.

This on and off rain means that the bricks are taking a long time to get up.

First set.

Scaffolding needed to go above this height

Scaffolding up.

They can't make the next progress claim until it's all "enclosed", but not everything is waiting for the outside to be finished.  In the meantime, they've almost achieved fixing stage inside with sheeting, cornices, architraves, skirting, doors, cabinets, wet ares... everything nearly completed.

Finishing, painting, fitting, flooring and cleaning... then in.  We are a little excited. 

More (less spectacular) progress

Roof tiles delivered

Roof tiles on (mostly).  Doors and windows in too.

Not only that, but some plumbing, electric cables and bathtubs in too! (no pics of inside... sorry)

A lot of "carbon captured" in our timber Frames and trusses... not sure it makes up for the all steel and concrete.

"Carbon capture" is my after-the-fact justification for having timber frames, the cheapest option... Steel frames were a premium, and I felt that the cost-benefit was not in steel's favour.

First floor

I was wrong about the frames delivered earlier.  All those frames were for the first floor.  The blue wood indicates that it is treated pine.  I think it is coloured blue to make it easier to distinguish it from untreated wood.

They have used a long, thick LVL beam above the garage door.  There are steel beams that actually hold the second floor above the garage.  The LVL would only be to hold up the little roof over the garage door.  Peering through to the back, it seems LVL is used for some of the longer lintel spans as well.

Second Floor

They actually spent two full days on the first floor.  At the end of the second I drove past and a "Buildsafe" guy was fixing a safety barrier for the second floor.  Didn't want to make him uncomfortable by taking a photo of him.  This photo is on the afternoon of the day after.  Safety barrier in place and some second floor frames up.

Floor trusses vs I-Joists

They've used a combination of "posi-joist/spacejoist" trusses and regular nail boarded timber trusses for the first floor sub floor.  When I was looking at owner building, I-joists seemed to be the choice for floor joists and rafters.  My friends recent renovation had used I-Joists.  So why has Coral used trusses?  Google says, I-joists are better for designs that need to be "customised" on site but not so good for running services through.  Floor trusses are better for running services through but are difficult to correct if they are the wrong size.  Coral homes builds a lot of this design, so  as long as the slab is the right size, there is no need for on-site customization.

Roof trusses

Two days of second floor work and some (not all) of the roof trusses are on. 

The next day they are finished the trusses and the "Buildsafe" barriers have been replaced with some new ones for the roof.  I waited until the Buildsafe guys left, and light is not so good this late in the afternoon.

I haven't seen any cranes on site.  There is no brightly coloured tape on the overhead power line for the crane operator to avoid.  Maybe they didn't need one.  The "pay up" email will be coming soon.

Digest, From 15 to 24 days in

 Concrete piers, temporary power pole and slab reo delivered.

Within two weeks of the start date there is a temporary electricity pole, concrete piers have been poured and some steel re-enforcing has been delivered to site.

A few people I've spoken to say the soil where we live is "suboptimal" (they use a different S word).  The engineers must agree, and have specified 41 450mm diameter piers of depths more than a meter.

The site supervisor said the slab would be down about 3 weeks after the start date.

Pipes in

 All in order too... no missing wastes for the downstairs shower.

Slab form work started.

A lot of wafflepods.  You'd think they were building my house out of Styrofoam!

A hole heap of sand as well... You would never have thought sand would make a good material to put a concrete slab on.

Slab form work ready to go.

Got a call soon after taking this photo from the supervisor telling me the slab would be poured the next day.

Slab done next day.

I turned up in the morning to see them start pouring...  Didn't take any photos as I was in a hurry for work.  In the afternoon, on the way home, it's done.

It's quite a tall slab.  300mm of waffle pods and 100mm (minimum) of concrete on top of them.  My 650 high retaining wall is only 250mm higher than the floor level.  You probably can't see in these photos, but the left of the block is higher than it was.  Finished ground height on that side will be only slightly lower than the neighbors.  Previously there was a brick retaining wall there.  It's also probably not clear that we dropped the garage by 300mm.  The finished ground height at the garage is slightly higher than the neighbors on the right.  Minimal retaining... yay.

The next day, dirt's been pushed up for better drainage.  Now it doesn't  so it doesn't look so high

Stuff on site

Supervisor says the frames will be up in 9 days.  A whole heap of material has bee dropped off.  There is a lot there.

I can't fit it all in one picture

My guess is that the frames on the concrete are for the ground floor (they look 2700mm wide).  The big pile of frames is for upstairs.  There is also various steel beams, (painted the same colour as the frames?) particle board for floors and other bits and pieces.

T plus 6 days: Site cut, retaining wall done.

I arrived at the site 7:30am on the start date to meet the supervisor. The toilet was already there, and it looked like they had nearly finished the site cut.

Talking to the neighbour it turns out they'd started just after 6:30am.

Once the house pad had been cut, the site was handed to me to erect a retaining wall. It took four days of solid labour from me, and a couple of days from my mate Paul to build.  We had no machinery, and 8 hours of that was spent digging holes with a shovel and another 16 digging and moving dirt. Without Paul's help I probably would never have finished it.

It's only OK for DIY...  A little untidy up close, but it should last a few years.    Total cost in materials was under $1000.

After expending all that effort, it'd be shame to knock the retaining wall down... but that's my plan.  I was going to spend big up-front and get a massive concrete construction straight away, but thought better of it at the last minute.  There is a clause in the builders specification that said if they damaged the retaining its my responsibility to fix it.  More importantly, when the house is finished I'll have a better understanding of how it will fit in to the other landscaping.

Countertops, Carpets and all the other surfaces

There are a lot things to choose.  Roofing, cladding, flooring, paint, taps etc etc etc ... heaps of stuff.  For a large builder like Coral Homes, you get sent through their "Colour Selection" appointment to pick everything, and for Coral Homes' this is only half a day. We got an indication of what the standard inclusions were before we'd even paid the initial deposit, and we spent a bit of time researching and picking just before the appointment. It was still a bit too short if you ask me and we went over time by about 20 minutes.

Here is a photo of some outside stuff...

We only took photos of the outside stuff as they let us take home samples of everything but the bricks and the roof tiles.


An interesting observation I've heard from others is that when you build with a large building company, the house is not yours, as you only get to select from the things they are prepared to put in your house.   Others had said it's just an up-sell session to get more cash out of us.  It's correct that they had a limited range but I was glad we were not burdened with too much choice.  You could spend years selecting exactly the right things, and still not be 100% happy.  I also didn't feel any pressure from the consultant to "go big".


After we'd finished the "Colour Selection" we went straight to an electrical appointment where we chose switches, lights, fans and fittings and the places they would go.  We've gone for down lights in the lounge/family room, but that's it.  Everywhere else is a pendant, batten or a fan light combo.  By the end of it, we were under the amount of money set aside in the contract, but just before we signed, we realized we needed outside electrical connections for air conditioners. These pushed us over quite a bit.

What are we building?

We are getting Coral Homes to build their Bahama 37 design for us, with some minor modifications. 

Standard top floor (http://www.coralhomes.com.au)

Standard ground floor (http://www.coralhomes.com.au)

It was not our favorite to begin with.  In the standard Bahama 37, their are two outdoor living areas and you have to walk through the en-suite is to get to the walk in robe.  Wifey was immediately turned off by these, but I felt it was a very practical design.  Looking at it now, it is similar to an American Foursquare (minus attic, dormers and massive front porch).

Coral Homes' 2013 design book had an invitation to change things around and it had a couple of pages of tracing paper at the back that we could pull out and experiment with. I had a go, and this is what I came up with (Computer enhanced).

Modified top floor (the design still belongs to Coral Homes)

Modified ground floor (the design still belongs to Coral Homes)

My modifications aren't too major.  I fixed the walk in robe situation easy enough by removing one of the small bedrooms and making the retreat another bedroom (I don't know why they bother with retreats, there is no escape from the children).  Filling one of the out door living gave us a rumpus like area. The Flexi/Study is now a guest room with en-suite. It also needed a proper sized double garage instead of the oversize single one . After these changes, wifey was no longer put and off and, as I've said in a previous post, now more enamored with it than myself..

The runners up (in no particular order) were:

• Plantation homes, Sahara
• Simonds, Harcrest
• Metricon, Phoenix
• Ownit, Sorrento
• Clarendon, Fairmont

Things we can't have: Swedish concrete (Husqvana Hiperfloor)

When I was researching materials to use for our new house I thought I wanted polished concrete.  Swedish polished concrete.  Boral even has this glow in the dark aggregate you can add to it .  Press play on the youtube video below if you want to watch paint dry, I mean concrete being polished. (It's not my video by the way)

Why can't we have this you ask?  Well the builder says no and they don't have to give a reason.  My guess is that it could be because the concrete needs to be 32 hards (32 MPa) for polishing otherwise it may fall apart while being polished.  This is over and above the minimum which volume builders tend to stick too. Curing time may also have something to do with it.

There is hope of retrofitting a polished concrete look by laying a small layer of 90 hards concrete over the top of the cheap stuff and polishing that.  At $120 a square meter for 13 Hiperfloor polishes and then the price of the 90 hards concrete on top of that, it's a bit too much expense at the moment.  Maybe when we hit the jackpot on the pokies we'll re-consider.

The house removal debacle.

Where did it all go wrong?

It all started with a $500 deposit taken from the middle man house remover, but I'll get back to that later.

I thought it was a good idea (it wasn't) to get a temporary power pole installed.  If everything went smoothly it was going to be cheaper than paying the builder for one (things didn't go smoothly).  I asked the house removal guy if it was OK if I put one out the front of the house as close to the side fence as possible. "Yes, should be no problem" was the answer.  But, when he arrived on site for what had to be the third time, and saw the power pole he said "That pole is in the way, it's gotta go".  $400... wasted.  This should have been a warning sign.

Stage clear!

Unrelated to the house remover was the screw up by or electricity retailer.  I called them up and asked them to cancel the temporary pole and just disconnect the electricity. "Yes sir, that's all booked in with Energex!".   Energex has 20 business days to do a disconnection, but the experience of others was that it was usually done within 7.  15 days later, it wasn't done and  I called them up to see if there was any issues.  Luckily I did check up on them, because there was.  "Your order to disconnect was cancelled due to the existing order to move it to a temporary pole".  WHAAT? The disconnection date on the sale agreement was less than 20 business days away.  If we had to re-request the disconnection, I wouldn't be able to live up to my end of the contract I had with middle man house remover (not that it mattered in the end anyway).  I made it clear to them that a large amount of money could be at stake.  They went through their phone call records and worked out they had indeed screwed up and said they wold pay for an accelerated disconnection (they didn't offer by the way, I demanded it). A month later I get my final bill and the accelerated disconnection cost is on there (malice? incompetence?).  I call them up again, and again they go through their phone call records, and again they admit they were wrong and then re-issue an amended bill for the correct amount.. Whew, SOLVED! That was minor.

Back to removing the house...  As I said in a previous post, we couldn't get trees trimmed in our street and re-negotiated a lower price for the house, and then down to a dollar in exchange for clearing the block.  In hindsight I really should have ended it with this guy and not re-negotiated.

Now we are back to where we left the house removal story hanging, before we got distracted by the building story.  A small amount of concrete was left over after the initial site clean up.  I called the house removal guy at least twice a week for 2 months asking when it will be done.  The excuses I got were  "They were supposed to be there yesterday" "They'll be there tomorrow" "Rain".  Excuses like this for two months!   Just before I terminated the contract I called him again and asked would he pay for it if I got it done?  " As long as it's less than $500" he says. He continues "You took that $500 deposit and you'll keep it as cream won't you."  He purposely left $500 worth of work and mucked me around for TWO MONTHS.  We could have sorted it all out if he brought this up TWO MONTHS EARLIER.

Not that it is any kind of win, but I got the last bit taken away myself in the end, for less than $500. 

Lessons learned and things to try if we are silly enough to do it all again.

• Sell the house for money with a sales contract. Don't exchange the house for services.
• If the house is not gone by the "gone by" date, give the deposit back, and sell it to someone else.  Ensure the contract of sale clearly states that this is what will happen AND they are not entitled to payment for any work they have performed in preparation (asbestos removal etc).
• Warn the buyer when the "gone by" date is coming.
• Make sure the money is received before the house is taken away and remember, a cheque can bounce.  
• Engage a demolition contractor for removing what's left of the house separately.  Use the QBCC demolition contract if possible.  If not, check the proposed contract against it.
• Engage a builder as though everything will be completed on time according to the contract.  You're only entitled to costs incurred due to late completion, and if you dilly dally, their will be no costs, just wasted time. (you've also got ensure unnecessary costs are not incurred)
• The council needs an asbestos clearance certificate for the SITE, not the house.

A relationship built on trust. But not reflected in a fair and balanced contract

If you come across the "standard" HIA QC1 new home contract, just sign it... it's standard.  Whatever you do, don't ever read it... and for the proverbial Peter's sake, don't give it to a solicitor.  (*end sarcasm*)

After receiving the HIA QC1 new home contract ourselves, the first thing I did was waive our right to "cool-off" by passing it to a solicitor.  According to the laws that govern building contracts in Queensland, the act of getting a lawyer's advice about a building contract has this consequence.  AS IF you'd sign a contract worth that much money without getting legal advice.  I found out later that this is most people.

As for the contract itself, I thought a big building company, with thousands of customers (most of them happy enough) would  present us with a fair and balanced set of terms.  Why would thousands of people sign if they weren't?  The solicitor (a close friend of mine by the way) quickly corrected me by presenting me with nearly a book worth of commentary on each clause.  It became blindingly obvious, the consequences for not paying the builder on time are extremely heavy but there is little consequence if they don't meet their agreed deadlines.  You would be mistaken (I was) if you thought this imbalance could be fixed by negotiating better terms. With a threat of price increases if I didn't sign within two weeks and their flat out refusal to change anything during those two weeks of attempted negotiation I was convinced that nothing is negotiable and it was take it or leave it.

After my initial bout of despair, I calmly considered my solicitor's advice.  I found that I only had a couple major issues with the contract.  The biggest was how the builder chose to use late completion damages.  Late completion damages are a per day amount the builder has to pay if they don't finish your house on time.  It was pre-filled it with the lowest amount possible right above where it says "a GENUINE pre-estimate".  In doing this, they actually PREVENT us from claiming genuine late completion damages.  My solicitor friend said it happened all the time in the commercial contracts he had worked with and all volume builders probably do it too.  This is the reason everyone moans on the internet when their house is late.

Don O'Brien (CC By 2.0)

Anyway, even with the concerns over late completion damages we signed.  I've had a roller coaster of emotions, plenty of buyers remorse and I've lost count of how many times I re-read the contract.  I can see how some parts are there to prevent us from "punishing" the builder over petty disagreements but these push risk on to us.  (What if the bank is late with a payment, or it makes a mistake. WE are liable).  Having said that, the builder is at risk as well.  It's a fixed price contract and there is some protection against unreasonable variations.

Now that we are committed, I may as well share it with you...  we are building with Coral Homes.  Their motto is "Built on Trust" and they still have ours, despite the rocky sales process and this perverted contract.  Fingers crossed that they keep it.  Soon to appear on this blog will be, THE HOUSE to end all houses.

Find a builder like an idiot.

When deciding to knock down our house and rebuild, I set myself some rules of engaging a large volume builder.

1. Don't fall in love with a design
2. Negotiate extras before handing over ANY money
3. Get everything right before you sign a contract

Two large volume building companies were our front runners...  For this post I'll call them C1 and C2.  Their designs and their inclusions really suited us. C1's design was bigger than the other, but the C2's came with more appropriate inclusions.  Both designs needed some changes for us to be happy with them.  The display homes of both were reasonably good but we knew that their finishes didn't reflect what we were going to get.

C1's salesperson was very professional. He guided us to make specific decisions up front before we paid  an initial deposit.  I disagreed with a few of his recommendations and I don't think he was up-front with reasons for making them, but he was pleasant and responsive to all our questions.  I sent him a request of changes by email and when we arrived to get his price indication he had everything accurately drawn up ready to go.

C2's salesperson had been in the job six months and I got a gut feeling that this guy could be a problem.  He didn't guide us at all and he could hardly answer any of my questions.  He said some really weird things about being a good salesman and that having a good salesperson was the most important thing about building a home.  We managed to get a price indication from him, as well as some roughly sketched drawings, but it was no where near as smooth or professional as with C1.

Mathias Erhart (CC BY-SA 2.0)

I drew up an Analytic Hierarchy Process (a spreadsheet) to help wifey and I decide between the two. C2 came out on top.  They were a definite winner with my wife, but only by a nose with me.  My experience with the sales consultant had brought their marks down quite considerably but not enough to make them lose out to C1.

The reality was, we had fallen in love with C2's design.  Now, anything else we looked at would not  work for us.

The first rule was broken.

And, in quick succession, the second rule was broken.

Excited by our new love interest, we paid the initial deposit to C2, without negotiating hard enough on extras. We really should have played C1 and C2 off each other a little more.  Paying this initial deposit made us more committed to C2 but by no means wedded to the decision. The amount paid was small enough that if we wanted to go back to C2 we could call the expense "research".

After this point our sales consultant's performance deteriorated further.  He was never clear about the process, he gave us strange unnecessary forms to fill in and sign, and he really couldn't manage the extra changes I wanted to make to the windows.  In the end, I did all the sketches myself and held his hand while he punched the list of changes into his computer system. I (with limited assistance from the sales guy) got everything perfect and he submitted a tender request for us.  He said he had been aiming to get the price indication to be around the same or more than the tender.

Two weeks later, the tender came back and the site costs had doubled.  $16k more than what he had estimated.  A very large sum to swallow.  Our block was still not clear (and it still isn't) and I figured we had time to start the process again.  I reconsidered C1, and also a looked more seriously at a third builder.  I realised the deal we had with C2 was still going to be the best value for money and we should stick with the devil we know.... nah that's BS...  We were still in love with the design.

The C2 sales consultant was pressuring us to go to contract.  If we wanted the price on any further changes we were going to have go straight to contract.

Then we broke the third rule.

Our block is still not ready to build on, but we've ordered a contract, which will be subject to another soil test and survey.

The contract has arrived I've nearly had a mental breakdown stressing out about it.  The next post will be entitled "Get the Vaseline ready!"

Is it gone yet!?!?

As I said in the last post, the house was off our block one day after it was supposed to be and the block is still not clear.  What are the consequences for construction industry people not doing what they are contracted to do?

Thanks to the Queensland government there is this great website where you can look up the reputation of your licensed builder or tradesman.  The Queensland Building and Construction Commission (previously  known as the QBSA) allows you to punch a tradie... no no no... I mean punch in a tradie/builder/company name and out pops a report.  This report has their turn over, their bad deeds and their rectification record. House removal mate's record showed his turn over was small time but he'd been around for 15 years.  His bad deed record was clean.  Completely clean. The names on the truck weren't matching up with my house guy, and I realised he is not actually a house remover.  He just buys and sells removal homes, subbing out removal work to another company.

The trucks have a different name on them.

After the house was gone, I rang him up every three working days (on average) and asked "When is the rubbish going to be taken away?".  He would say in a couple of days or next week and once mentioned that it had been raining so it was taking a while.  I was getting weary of nothing happening but if I was unreasonable or too disgruntled, he might walk away. Wifey was telling me to calm down.  I was pretty busy at the time and didn't want to deal with sorting out the mess.  I'd previously studied up on this construction agreement stuff and worked out that I should allow reasonable time for rain (it had been quite rainy).

Two and half weeks like this!

Two and half weeks after the "gone by" date (reasonable enough time for rain), I consulted with a solicitor, made a call to the removal guy and spoke the phrases "reasonable time", "in breach" and "recover costs".  He seemed upset (as you would) and told me, that each time I called him, he would call his sub contractor who would then make promises to him.  The very next day (a Saturday) a machine was on site removing rubbish and digging out the old slab.  The following Monday, the machine was gone, without the job being finished.  Of course I made another call and asked politely... "It's not finished, the machine is gone, what's happening?".

Yay!  Machine on site. Nearly finished!

The answer was "The machine sunk in the wet clay... It's started raining, the ground is too wet and nothing can be done until it dries. There is no way it can be surveyed, and there is no way a soil test drill can safely enter the site."

"How long do you think it will take to dry out?"

"Weeks."

Awww... Where did the machine go?

I went and had a look at our land myself... he was right, and here we are... still not ready for our new house.

What's a house worth without land underneath it?

What's a house worth without land underneath it? Not much!

My wife and I have been buying and selling second hand goods for as long as we could read the trading post.  Furniture, cars, electronic goods, baby stuff, you name it, we've bought and sold.  Selling goods second hand can be a really random experience.  Some things go in seconds, like the deck and the fence for instance.  I thought they would sit there forever but they were sold the day after advertising them.  I literally had multiple buyers on my property trying to outbid each other over the deck.

Gumtree, the greatest Aussie invention.

Selling the house to be removed off our block took seven months.  The removal home companies make more money moving a house directly to the new owners property but only after all the approvals have been granted and bonds paid.  Straight after signing up with a removal company  there was immediate interest, then nothing for two months.   In hindsight I think we were never going to what we wanted fro the house. None of the companies said "you're dreaming" when they probably should have.

So the house was not selling, and I began scheming up ways to get money for it.  One scheme was to buy some land out in woop woop, move the house there and on sell it ASAP.   I did the sums and worked out it wasn't going to be worth it.  We may have made, 20k or we may have lost 20k and it would have taken a lot of time and effort.  Also, most regional councils require a bond if you are going move a removal home on to your block. This is to make sure it's actually going to be a real home and not just dumped there.  We gave up on the schemes and decided to try and sell again.

The house still made it to woop woop.

Gumtree had been good to us, so we advertised privately on gumtree and got a good offer from a small removal home company.  It was subject to permission for tree trimming in our street,  BUT... the council guy said no.  The house could still be removed, but the house needed to be chopped in half so the offer was halved. I got some quotes for clearing the block after the house was gone and realised that the money we would get wouldn't cover the cost for site clean up. It's pretty standard for these removal home people to buy the house for a dollar on the condition that it was gone and the site cleaned up by a certain date so we negotiated down again... to a dollar, on condition the site was cleared after the removal.  We got a contract saying so.

I had completed all the disconnections by the agreed disconnection date.  There was some trouble with the electricity and the plumber took a week longer than he promised, but they were all done on time. I called the removal guy up and asked when the house would go.  He said by the "gone by" date.  I then asked what the likelihood of it going earlier was.  He said "not likely".  The house had already been on sold and he was going to delay for as long as he could until approvals for it's new location were ready.  The "gone by" date came and I called him expecting excuses.  I was shocked and elated when I was told that it would be gone by tomorrow night and the site cleaned up by the end of the week.  Awesome!!!

The morning of the move day came and it was already on big trailers with the roof being taken off.  In the afternoon it was cut in half and the trailers were ready to go.  The next morning it was gone.  Clearing the site is another story and, as of now, still not finished.

Family getting bigger... Small house too small...

What it looked like when we bought it.

I was always going to do up a blog about our house building experience, so I had better make a start.

Ours is a road well traveled, so I'll begin with some cliches.  My wife and I "got into the market" back in 2009 with this 3 bedroom, high set, semi-modern home in one of those suburbs that "had great potential" and "was going to be hot".  The house was big enough for both of us, my wife's sister and the occasional visitor from out of town.   We knew our family was going to grow, so we never considered it our "forever" house but maybe something we could add to when we needed it.

The outdoor living area

With the arrival of our first child it was getting a bit tight to accommodate out of town guests.  We started assessing our options.  With the arrival of the second child, we had to kick out our long term boarder (my wife's sister) and it was getting uncomfortable to accommodate any out of towners.

With the unique location and convenience to absolutely everything in our lives, renovating was always at the top of my list.  Meanwhile, my wife was browsing realestate.com.au every single day for something nearby we would be happy with.


I was naive enough to believe I could owner-build the renovations myself.  I did the course, got a white card, and researched a hell of a lot of things about how a house is built.  I spoke to building designers, friends who had renovated, plumbers, electricians, and bathroom people.  I came up with two sets of house plans and I even started planning and costing the construction of our renovation.  Meanwhile my wife continued to trawl realestate.com.au every day.


Reality eventually hit the both of us.  I didn't have the time to owner build and engaging a builder to conduct the renovations would bankrupt us. New houses in our area are expensive, small and have no back yard.  Bigger houses in nearby areas are well out of our budget.  Leaving the area meant leaving our friends, family and abandoning our plans for the future.  It was obvious that knocking down and rebuilding was the best option for us.

The deck is gone.

We had sunk a lit of money into our 3 bedroom house and we needed to get as much back as we can back for it.  I put the rear deck on gumtree.  It was sold the next day and taken away the next weekend.  A few nights later I woke up in the middle of the night, sweating and feverish.  There was no going back, we either see the plans through or take a massive financial hit.

I put our picket fence on Gumtree.  Sold the next day.  Then I put our house on Gumtree.  6 months later it was sold and gone.