The dream house is starting

Well its been a long year of indecision & uncertainty but we have made it through.

We have explored every option, resolved all issues  & the DREAM HOUSE has begun!!!

We are tackling this as owner builders with the Dream guy doing most of the work himself.

He is kind of clever like that.

It will be a long slow process, painful for you guys to watch, I'm sure.

We do hope to be in for Christmas next year.

So here is a little reminder of what we are building.

I am super excited to be finally moving forward, so please celebrate with me & enjoy the ride.

I'm sure there will be some funny stories to tell along the way!

CHEERS!

Trish xxx

Building the dream house, an update

Hi- Dee-Ho peeps!!

 

I know I have certainly been absent from my blog of late.

My excuse.....

 

Well aside from this new 45hr a week job eating up all of my time, my laptop was hi jacked by a

 Mal ware virus, it literally was a virus that hijacked my start up menu, no fun!!

 

 

 

Any way our fabulous tech guy, Gary, put us onto a FREE scan to download.

Its called Mal ware bytes.

 

www.malwarebytes.org

 

I highly recommend you get this one on your computer ASAP, you run it alongside your normal virus scan, it picks up the things your usual scan misses.

 

 

 

 

 

Now onto the good gossip.

The dream house is back on....YAAA HOOOO!!

 

As you know, we couldn't build until we sold our 4 investment properties in The Blue Mountains & after having them listed with the same real estate agent for 3.5 years & not selling a single thing we really gave up hope.

Well, decided to give it one last shot & changed Realtors.

 

 

 

Our new agent sold the first property within a week, we are now 7 weeks into it & have 2 bidders vying for another property & an interested party looking at a the 3rd one. We still have one home to list, it has a good tenant & we had considered keeping it but what the heck, lets list it & see what happens.

 

 

This new guy has shown more people thru our houses in 7 weeks than the old agent did in all those years, I think its time for him to find a new day job, he is a little slack at this one.

 

 

 

So we will start building in 2013.

We will be owner builders,the dream guy is very clever at building things & has done alot of project management in his job as well.

 Its going to be a slow but steady pace & will give me plenty of time to seek your advice along the way.

 

 

 

I'm very very excited!!!!

 

Have a fabulous week bloggers :)))

 

CHEERS

Trish xxx

A dream house Update

contemporary family room design by Toronto interior designer Jennifer Brouwer

Those that read my blog regularly would know that recently we suffered a devastating blow from our builder, where after months of telling us he could build to our budget, he came back to us with a quote

 ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS OVER BUDGET!!

After much thought & discussion we have decided to do some research & planning toward becoming owner builders. The only part of building this house my dream guy can't do is the slab,brick work & plumbing. He is very clever like that. 

traditional living room design by new york architect Austin Patterson Disston Architects

The savings we could make would mean we wouldn't need to sacrifice those beautiful timber floors that I covet. My dream guy has laid timber floors before using the hidden nail method, Perfect!!!!

In order to do this we  will be spending the next 12months working towards ridding ourselves of any debt, we will also use this time to plan & research & we are allowing a 12 month time period to build.

Well, that is the plan at this point, things could change, but there is nothing to lose by looking into these things & taking time to save a little more.

Our neighbor is a draftsmen who went owner builder on his home, except he acted as more of a project manager. He didn't do any hands on labour & says he still saved money. His house took 9mths to build. My dream guy helped him out with a lot of things on the house site so he is more than happy to sit down with us & walk us through  the process, as well as draw up our plans. This is great!

Any advice or website recommendations on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry I haven't been around much this past week, my family & myself have been taken over by a monster virus & we are all very unwell, not much fun for the kids as it is school holidays here in OZ.

Have a lovely week everyone!

CHEERS

Trish xxx

All images via houzz