Auction fever

On Friday Michael and I went to the buyers' preview of some 'home maker's' items at auction near Coffs Harbour and came away with a list of a few things we might want to buy if we could. So this morning I nervously went to the auction - my first - and came away the proud owner of three brand spanking new toilets!

There were almost 200 bidding cards given out and the place was heaving. It seems to be a bit of an outing because people brought along their children, parents, friends, neighbours... lots of people milling around and surprisingly few of them actually bidding.

Once things got under way it went very fast. The auctioneer spoke so fast it was hard to understand and to keep on track with the lot numbers in the catalogue. And I didn't realise how it worked with the top two bidders: where there were multiple identical items the lead bidder won the right to decide how many of them they wanted and if any were left the second bidder got first option on the rest.

The shower cabinet, vanity unit and tiles we were after went for silly prices. The vanity unit went for more than it would have cost brand new! People definitely get carried away with the bidding process, and I can understand why; I didn't even bid on these items because the starting prices were high and the prices went up very quickly.

The toilets I was interested in were in the second lot sold; the first ones were 'sold up' up as being quite expensive and accordingly went for a higher price, but the lot of six toilets I was interested in wasn't highlighted in that way and I got three in the end for $377 each (a significant saving on the $549 each for the ones quoted by Warren's bathroom people). They're nothing special: white porcelain toilets with your standard behind-the-seat cistern. Nothing fancy, they're not wall-hung or with concealed cisterns or anything. But they have a 4* WELS rating and dual flush system which means they're very water-efficient (for a toilet), which is great. These three will hopefully grace our family bathroom, the separate 'powder room' as it's known over here, and the toilet in the studio. We'll get a matching toilet/bidet set for our en-suite but at least the other three will match.

So there you go. I understand why people get carried away: there's a 'buzz' that's to do with anticipation and anxiety and the thrill of 'beating' someone else for the prize. Winning the bid is easy: all you do is keep sticking up your bid card for the auctioneer to see, so that you bid more than the opposition. And it's so tempting when you see the one thing you'd have liked disappearing out of your reach! Being sensible requires planning and a bit of discipline. I could ill-afford the time to research the recommended retail prices of the auction items, but I looked stuff up on the web and came up with some figures. Then I calculated how much I would be prepared to pay, added the 11% buyers' premium charged by this auction house and evaluated the result and, if it seemed reasonable, that was my top price. All I have to do now is pay the balance (after leaving my deposit) and work out how we're going to transport them up to the shed on our block.

Five months later...

And we have a builder! I won't bore you with the entire saga of builder 3 and 4. Lovely people, both of them, but we just couldn't afford number 3, and number 4 could build us a house for the right price, just not the right house! If we'd been happy to do it all the way he wanted i.e. cornices and architraves and concrete floors on the inside, and rendered brick and a tiled roof on the outside we would have been fine. The trouble is that we don't want rendered brick walls, tiles on the roof and bloody fussy detailing around every skirting board, the ceiling and every door. No, no, NO!!!!

Then, amazingly, builder number 5 - Warren Macdonald - came charging in on his white horse to save us. Previously he's been the builder's builder, the one others referred to but said we wouldn't be able to get him because he was too busy working on a smart local development. In fact the owners of the smart local development had warned us off, saying Warren was theirs and not to be contacted except for general advice! But in the current financial situation it seems that people aren't buying into smart local developments and so Warren has less work on with them than anticipated, so although we'd only asked for his advice he offered to do a full costing. Et voila it came in at a price we can - just - afford.

The next hurdle is the bank... Once we've finalised things with Warren and come up with a contract we can go to our bank and ask if they'll lend us the money. If we're successful there is a chance we could be starting the build in June or perhaps July... which gives us an outside chance of being well and truly moved into the new house by this time next year.