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.