Here's the plan

This is what it should look like in a year's time.

Rain Rain go away.

This rain has got to stop now... our neighbours are complaining about the run off shifting plenty of silt down the street. 

Maybe this will save us some Demolition bucks - there'll be definitely less soil to move when the sun shines again so that's gotta be worth a discount!

Thought we might get to Week 2 or 3 before the complaints started though.

Goodbye Red Brick Home!

There one minute, gone the next - or at least, gone by the next week.

We’re really surprised how quickly you can rip down a house.  The Demo Team moved in last week and spent Friday toying with the house, pulling out random windows and hurling a few hundred tiles onto the driveway.   They couldn't do much more until the gas meter was disconnected.

But it was Monday’s efforts that really impressed.  With the Gas guys on hand to dismantle the lines, the bulldozer/tractor/thingy ripped down the satellite dish and air conditioner, and smashed through the walls and windows - much to the neighbour's kids' delight.  Demolitions really draw a crowd! 

My oven was smashed to smithereens (something I would have loved to do myself many times in the past 3 years) and I took pleasure in watching the bulldozer/tractor/thingy (must find out what it’s really called) use it's pointy bit to pulverise my kitchen cupboards into matchsticks.  How satisfying must that job be… just smashing stuff all day?

We left feeling really excited – our house was coming down and it felt great to see something finally happening.  Good riddance to the Dump!

Now all that’s left is a big pile of rubble …. But the rain has started so no movement at the site today.  Hopefully this is the last rain we’ll see in 8-9 months.  Fingers crossed (Yeah right).



Friday





Monday



Tuesday



And while the house comes down, so does our bank balance - had to pay the Council today – a sweet $8000+ for bond, certifiers and the Long Service Levy.  The LSL is our contribution to every builder everywhere who ever wants to take Long Service Leave.  Give me a break!

We have a building site!

Fence went up today … very exciting.  No sign of life on the property @ 2.30pm on a Friday but at least is looks like a building site now.

Still don’t have our CC yet though.  Or the gas meter removed.  Builder told us that we needed to arrange that as the demo company no longer organised.  But we were only told this 2 days before demo team moved in.  AND AGL has other ideas – it takes 10-15 working days to remove a meter so may hold up the demo somewhat!

So as there may not be any more entries over the next few weeks it may be a good time to reflect on how far we’ve come. 

We’d only intended to live in The Dump for 6 months while we sold our duplex.  We were forced out of the Duplex by our drug dealing, non-stop-partying, spa-users-at-4-in-the-morning neighbours.  Life became Hell so we moved out as we tried to sell.  Then the market crashed and it took us a year to finally get rid of it.

For over 2 years we looked at property after property and couldn’t find anything we were all happy with (or in our price range).  In fact, our price range started around $800K and eventually stretched to $1.1m – and still we couldn’t find anything.  Even $1m didn’t get a nice house in our suburb.  Maybe building was the answer.  So we started to do some research and decided to buy The Dump and have a go a creating our dream house in the Burbs.  

Although The Dump was awful and cold, it was in a beautiful leafy quiet street, with great views.  If we went up a level, we may even get a water glimpse.  And it was directly behind the Little One’s school.   I wasn’t sold on the block as I thought it was too small (570sqm) but Hubby and Friend convinced me that we could move the house forward a bit and I’d have a reasonable size back yard - except for the giant gum tree that I was convinced would drop a bough onto us at any time.  So Hubby called the owner and made him an offer.

After a bit of negotiating back and forth, and some unknown rush by the seller to have it completed by Xmas, we settled in December 2009 and The Dump was all ours.  Now we just had to decide what to build.

Lots of visits to HomeWorlds, Housetowns and Housing Villages left us dazed and confused.  None of the standard project homes would work for us because of our slope and small size of our block.  And very few of the construction companies wanted to build 'outside of their square'.

Finally we found Home Quest @ Bella Vista a liked a couple out there.  One in particular - Horizon Homes – interested us.  We started chatting to the builder only to find he was from out our way and had built my sister’s townhouse.  HH gave us a quote to work with and we were on our way.  After a few comparable quotes from Corrion & Quest Homes, we settled on the one that came with the trusted testimonials.

We decided to engage our own Architect though – just in case we decided to go with another builder.  At least this way we would own our plans.  Word of mouth again and soon we’d engaged an architect.

The planning stage took much longer than we anticipated.  Getting the house just right took loads of time and changes and I still don’t think it’s exactly right.  But who can tell on paper?  We went back and forth over four months to get the plans just right.  We then handed them over to HH to manage the DA process.

Just as we thought we were ready for Council we were told we needed a Landscape Plan (didn’t we ask earlier if we needed one?)  So a few week’s later we had the plan but the Landscape Dude told us to get rid of the giant gum tree in the backyard as it was termite-riddled.  But to do that we’d need an Arborist Report.

Two weeks later we had an Arborist Report to submit with Landscape Plans, house plans and DA.  So to Council we went!  We lodged our DA in November then got our first raft of changes just after Xmas (when everyone was on holidays).

Our house was too big, too tall, too forward on the block – even our Garage door was too big.  With a bit of creative squeezing from the Architect and some juggling of the numbers we finally conformed to the Council’s request.  Didn’t help that they’d changed some of their requirements AFTER we submitted our plans. 

Our smaller version of the dream home went back to Council in March and we finally got approval in April …. Or so we thought.  Approval was deferred which meant we still had some changes to make.

The entire house had to be dropped 30cm to comply with the 2^nd storey eave height restrictions.  The roof of the house was well under the height restrictions but the eave wasn’t…. go figure!

So mid May, 6 months in Council, we finally got our approval-approval.

We're Out!

We have a start date – yay!  The demolishers move in on Wednesday and the giant Gum is coming down too.

We’ve been out of The Dump for almost 2 weeks now and we’re loving the new HUGE rental!  The door handles stay connected to the doors, all three (yes, three) toilets flush when you press the button – and better still – they stop flushing.  The oven works – both of them.  I made a pavlova AND a potato bake at the same time… just coz I could. 

And it’s toasty warm … mmmmmm!  This house doesn’t feel like a fridge when you walk in.  We’ve only had the air cond on once and it’s great.  We love it here so much that we might even buy the place – after all, we bought the last rental.  And in a weird twist of fate, we have moved next door to the family we bought The Dump from.   We’re avoiding eye contact in case they ask us why we’re here – they won’t understand why we’re demolishing their family home.

I was so happy to move out though. The wall behind the wall unit was covered in green mould - Yuck!! The wood was rotting away from the window frames - it was gross!  The move went really well but it's such a long day - you think it's done then you have to put the beds together - it's like torture.

Two weeks later and most of the boxes have been unpacked - even the ones that sat in The Dump's garage for years.  It's like Xmas! Lovely!