The bottom line

Well the tag-line for this blog is "Great house: small budget: big ideas", so you could always see that we were heading toward difficulties along the way, and I think we've just ploughed straight into 'the money problem'.

You'll recall that we have two potential builders in our sights, Dan and John. John said up-front that he thought it would cost at least half a million dollars to build our house and Dan thought it might be cheaper. John doesn't want to do a costing exercise but Dan has just finished his, and the bad news is that even he thinks the house - not including the studio - will cost half a million dollars to build, which would be OK if we had the money...

The economic situation isn't helping. Importing anything now costs a lot more owing to the fact that the dollar is weak, and the raw cost of materials for building our house has increased by something like 40% in the last twelve months. While we're trying to use local products where possible, such as sustainably farmed timber from local forests for example, the overall cost of materials has gone up as suppliers have increased prices across their product ranges.

Dan has also pointed out that we have expensive tastes, which probably won't be a surprise to most of you! Mind you, I don't think we've gone overboard with things. If I was being snobby about it I would suggest that our European mind-set simply means we're interested in quality products rather than shoddy stuff. We're not interested in gold-plated taps; we want taps that will work for 20 years and more without discolouring, and with the right sort of ceramic disk technology that will work when the water supply comes from a rainwater tank rather than a mains system. We don't want architraves and a decent plasterer costs more than a bodger who uses skirting boards, architraves and cornicing to hide the defects in his workmanship. We could just build the whole house from cement-rendered brick, but we don't like the look, we don't like the associated environmental issues, and we don't want to be patching cracks for the rest of our lives. We could skimp on insulation but it seems like a false economy, especially when we'll be on a solar electricity system that won't allow us anything in the way of electrical heating or cooling. Spending money up-front on appropriate insulation for walls, floor and ceiling is the only sensible answer... and so it goes on.

I'm not quite sure yet how this leaves us. Michael and I haven't really sat down and done the hard work of reviewing our cash-flow, looking at different mortgage options or trying to trim costs. Our Plan B had been to postpone the office/studio building until later, using the second living room as a temporary workplace until we could afford it. We've already ditched the idea of a swimming pool until much later in the proceedings. But as Dan's costings - and we've been through them properly - mean we can't afford to build the office/studio yet anyway, we're going to have to think of a very difference Plan C, and an extremely creative Plan D as a backup.

Funnily enough I'm not despondent. Things haven't got to the stage where I'm seriously worried that we won't be able to build anything at all: we just have to review things and be creative. Often I find that when I first think of something I can't see how to change it, but after a period of reflection it usually occurs to me that there are more options than I had previously thought. What it might mean is a further delay, although hopefully not a huge one as I think it was a condition of our avoiding Stamp Duty on the property that building work had to commence within two years of purchase of the land, which would take us to the end of March next year. More news when we've come up with some ideas!

Progress

We have development approval! We have development approval! We have development approval!

Well, clearly we don't have it in our sticky mitts yet (too much to hope for, we're only 6 months into the planning process...) but we have been reliably informed that it was being typed up on Monday to be posted to our architect, scanned and then passed on to us. So we spent a couple of hours down at the Council offices yesterday filling in forms and paying over outrageous sums of money to get the whole Construction Certificate process underway. For the uninitiated, Construction Certificates are a way of progressively inspecting and certifying the build once it's underway, so that it can be said to conform with bye-laws, planning constraints etc.

On a slightly LESS enthusiastic note, we also have the proposal for a Coffs Harbour by-pass which, if the relevant legislation goes through and the land is bought up and so on, will pass within a kilometre of the bottom of our block, although it will be partially hidden by trees. I suspect we'll get some noise from it; eight lanes aren't quiet, after all. However, it isn't even going to be started for another decade and Australians seem generally quite sanguine about living near big roads so I doubt if it will have any effect on the financial value of the land. And it's so far into the future, who knows what will happen?

Another day, another builder!

Well, one more builder, Dan Duffy, to be precise. Perhaps Michael should be blogging about the meeting as I had to run off to a Focus group meeting half-way through, but he's busy trying to fix our Media Centre which died last night so he's off rummaging for spare parts!

I find it very interesting how different people are in their approach to things. Dan's been involved in some fairly 'green' buildings in the past, including for the local Steiner school in Coffs Harbour, which is about as whacky as buildings get locally. So he wasn't at all phased by our ideas. We want a timber frame? No problem. Want a square set finish to the interior? Fine. Double glazing? Expensive, but a good idea and it will pay for itself if we're in the building for long enough? But the really great part of the discussion (which, of course, I missed) was that he reckoned on a brief look at our plans and a lengthy talk to Michael that it might be possible to do the house and the office/studio for around $350,000 which is much more like the size of our budget! I'm not going to hold him to it, mind, and he needs to go away and do a proper costing of things, but it is a figure that gave us renewed hope in a week of major depression about the fact that we have to leave here and we might not have enough money to build ourselves a new home! And that is a large difference in price: $350,000 works out at about $1,150 per metre square instead of $1,500 per metre square...

Michael and I have been feeling quite stressed out about having to move. Again. Into our third home in two years and with all the associated cost and sheer inconvenience, just when we were relaxing into thoughts of Christmas around the pool! It's crap, really, and we are very upset about it. The rental market is difficult round here at the moment: apparently some houses have thirty or so people going to see them, and agents are holding 'open days' for rentals which is something I've only seen in big UK cities before. Now admittedly we might be looking towards the top end of the market in order to find something sufficiently large for us both to be able to work from there as well as live, but even so it isn't good news.

It's been amusing in a slightly embittered way to talk to the two agents who will be trying to sell this house. Our landlord is clearly aware that he's treading on eggshells with us at the moment and he has taken some trouble to ensure both agents realise that they must NOT, on ANY ACCOUNT, annoy me! So anyone being shown around will have to be pre-approved, to deter sticky-beaks (a lovely phrase!), and I'm to understand that viewings will be at my convenience. I must say it's nice that he's taken the effort to say all this. Of course he's also saying that he'll ensure a long settlement period so that we can rest assured we'll be able to stay here until after Christmas, but frankly I can't see that happening, and I can't rely on it being the case because it is out of his control. Who in their right minds is going to pay $840,000 (who indeed!) for this house and then say, yeah, fine, the tenants can stay in it until next year? More likely the place will sell just before Christmas and we'll be out on our ears just at the worst time of year when any family that's going to move moves because it's the long school holiday and they can get their kids into school at the beginning of the academic year... and it's also peak holiday season so houses are snapped up on short-term lets for families holidaying in the area, and other houses that might become vacant aren't because the tenants understandably don't want to move house over Christmas.... I know I'm being really whiny, but the situation just feels grim, and I am SO fed up with it!