Mortgage madness or "pressure, what pressure?"

Two photographs from slightly different angles, showing you the strip footings of the main house with, at left, more or less of the concrete pad that will form the floor of the lounge/TV room! The roughly circular patches of grey in the photos are crusher dust, laid as a foundation for two 34,000 litre rainwater tanks that will sit behind the main house. They, combined with a tank off the office/studio roof and one off the shed at the bottom of the block, will give us over 100,000 litres of rainwater stored on site - hopefully plenty to cope with drought conditions and/or top up a swimming pool, if we can ever afford one. Plus there will be a header tank up the hill behind the house of 20,000 litres, for use by the Rural Fire Service in the event of a bush fire on the block.





























And two more photos showing the reinforcing that's going into the concrete pad for the office/studio building. Isn't that a great view? That's what Michael and I will see from our work spaces once it's all finished - what you can't see because it was hazy this morning is that there's a view of the ocean along the horizon. Fantastic!

Meanwhile, the mortgage... The second mortgage company has finally managed to get the correct valuer up to the block and complete a very satisfactory valuation. This now has to be sent to Head Office and approved, then there's paperwork to sign and Title Deeds to hand over. All this can - allegedly - be wrapped up before I go away in 10 days' time. Or at least, that's the plan.

It would be good if it all went well because today I got the sit-down-while-you-read-it invoice for the second stage payment: all $138,000.00 of it and unless we get that mortgage sorted out, I can't pay the invoice! (Warren, if you're reading this, don't worry...)

I'm doing something very unusual for me: I'm trusting that everything's going to be OK instead of worrying myself into an anxious frenzy. After watching what, 7?, series of Grand Designs I am inurred to the thought that building anything is an extremely stressful activity and I'm trying to ameliorate the rising levels of stress hormones by practicing calmness and my Zen 'beginner's mind' techniques. I'll let you know how I go.

While I'm meditating Warren is just getting on with the job. When I asked today how far he thought he'd have got by the time I get back he thought for a moment and then said that he reckoned he'd have got everything to lock-up by then. WOW! At this rate we could be in the house by my birthday, never mind Michael's.

Foundations

You can't have a house without foundations, can you? Well yesterday the piers were drilled down through the house pad onto the rock below, steel rods were inserted and the whole lot was concreted in place. At the front edge of the house the piers go 2.5m down in some places, which is one reason why the front of the house doesn't sit right on the front of the pad: it would be a very long way down to the rock! As it is, we've used 79m of concrete instead of the 43m we'd estimated, which puts us around $3,000 over budget - not the sort of news you want to hear right at the very start of the build, but it isn't exactly optional, is it?














I climbed up the benching at the back of the pad to take a look down onto the whole of the house pad to take this photo. You can see Michael talking to Warren, our builder, and Warren's colleague Josh who was cutting to size the wire cages for the strip footings that will rest on top of the piers. To the right of the photograph is the bedroom end of the house, and the larger rectangle to the left of Josh is the main living space plus pantry. Just out of the photograph to the left of the living space is the TV lounge, which will sit on a concrete slab (unlike the rest of the house): you can see the start of the wooden forms that will form a template for the slab when it's poured next week.



















It's strange seeing the ground peppered with the holes for the piers! Only a week ago it was plain earth and I took up some friends for a visit. Now things are really starting to happen...

Today we suffered slightly from a strange spatial mis-perception that afflicts owners when they go and see their house being built: suddenly everything seems really small. The bedroom end of the house seemed far too small to accommodate three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a walk-in wardrobe, and similarly the living end of the house seemed tiny and cramped. Warren assures us that this isn't so! I think our perceptions will shift around during different phases of the build. I know that I went to see a friend's extensive renovations and quailed at its miniscule size, and yet once it was painted and fitted out it seemed huge. Doubtless our minds will play the same tricks on us as the building goes up. Meanwhile I'm going to carry on feeling really excited about our house!

Mortgage woe... for the moment, anyway

Ahhh... it's apparently very hard to join up the dots and do things sensibly, at least this seems to be the case in financial offices around the country. Mortgage lender one says, "yes, yes, yes, yes, fab house, love the plans, we can lend you $xxxxx because we valued it at $yyyyyy, yes, yes, yes, just doing the paperwork, oh. We can't lend you anything because your block of land is more than 3 hectares. Bye!" Second mortgage lender (BTW, wholly owned by mortgage lender one) says, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, we'll send out a valuer.... {SILENCE - always worrying}... oh sorry, sent it to the wrong valuer who couldn't read the paperwork anyway, yeah, we'll let you know when we've sorted it all out."

Meanwhile, we've decided STUFF IT! And we've started the foundations. See next post for photos!