Category Archives: House

As if to tease me, we had a fairly sunny day yesterday. If it weren’t for work, I might have been able to coat the front door, and even get a second coat on. Today, we have more rain, and … Continue reading →

There are only good two aspects to the last week of rain, the first is builders generate a lot of wood chips – rain washes them away onto the grass. The second is we don’t have our gross meter installed, … Continue reading →

Our builders have finished with the cladding, and the changes are very noticeable. Some of the existing bits and peices just look out of place, for example, the drive way gate is a rotted brown painted timber fence, collapsing under … Continue reading →

In just one day, massive amounts of progress occurred. We had the demolition people out to remove all the fibro and eaves, they took a good 5 hours. They did a good job of it, there remains some flakes and … Continue reading →

No, I didn’t just rush out in a last minute rush to buy Windows – Ubuntu can be annoying, but it *works*. Our new windows arrived, and so we are inching closer to the builder booting up, clicking his start … Continue reading →

We now have our solar hot water system in, so far so good, first night it used 6kW of off peak, and nothing since. We are still keeping tabs on it to be sure (as I’d rather spend 40c heating … Continue reading →

Today, we dug out the trench for the new pipe to go to the cabin at the back for the new solar hot water system. We managed to get the trench dug out, I thought it’d take most of the … Continue reading →

Now we are committed to the work. The price jumped from our expectations by another 7500 for the Invisigard security screens we decided we’d stick on. They seem to be worth the money, rivalling Crimsafe products at a cheaper price, … Continue reading →

I love a good day, when everything falls into place, there’s no real problems / difficulties. And, after previously deciding to tell CBA to shove it, I’ve since changed my mind and took up a Personal Loan with them for … Continue reading →

We have some funds in redraw we can put towards the renovations. The new mortgage paperwork arrived today, and I’ve thought about it in detail after seeing the final figures and having some questions raised. I contacted our Loans rep … Continue reading →

What lunatics do we have elected in our federal governing body? I’ve had a look at the Environment Minister’s website tonight after hearing a news article about the Insulation / Hot Water rebate being scrapped. Immediate disappointment struck as our … Continue reading →

The valuers thought Weathertex would be a better value. I asked my partner to ask the builder whether he would do weathertex, and what it’d come in at. His indication was ‘it would be cheaper’. The builder operates rather differently … Continue reading →

And the current value is under the previous real estate’s ‘market appraisal’, but then real estate isn’t always consistent. The valuers claim that for the money we’d outlay, only a 50% increase in value would occur (meaning, we’d be sinking … Continue reading →

Back in December, I wrote: Our key obstacle will be getting the hot water to the granny flat. New piping will be needed, and I’m sure it’ll have to be insulated in some way, so that we can remove the … Continue reading →

I’m impatient, waiting annoys me. We had waited weeks for the quotes from the builders to come in, of 4, 2 have so far quoted, and the trend is looking higher than we anticipated. Looking back, my estimates only included … Continue reading →

We had an assessment of the house done in November, this allowed us to determine where and what we could improve around the house. As expected, Solar Hot Water was a key recommendation. It was something we were considering eventually … Continue reading →

.. so it happened a week or so ago! The entire process seemed smooth now I look back over it. We selected the place we liked, we went to the bank, had a chat about what’s possible, and then put … Continue reading →

The house we have decided on is progressing settlement. There has been no hiccups in the process just yet that we couldn’t handle. One of the hiccups was my name, which isn’t a problem for any one but the OSR … Continue reading →

We took one of the largest pre-settlement steps towards owning the house – we placed the full 10% deposit, and now are awaiting for the settlement time frame to pass. This leaves us to wait / pack up for 30 … Continue reading →

We’ve identified the house we would like to purchase, it’s a very comfortable price, good location (better than we are now from a comms angle), brick, roomy, large yard. Now, we’ll have to find the finance. Overwhelming, due to the … Continue reading →

I’m trying to do the math on buying a house. There are a few interesting calculators online, that try and work out how much you can borrow. When supplied details, the Commonwealth Bank’s response seemed to be $200,000 on one … Continue reading →