The truck had some difffculty getting back out again. My neighbour had to help with both his tractor and digger. It only just worked.
We got to know the first half overnight.
Saturday, 12 April 2008
10 - The Move - Day 1
The movers started to prepare the house on Thursday the 3rd of April. By the Friday afternoon it was cut in half, roof collapsed, on trailers and ready to travel. It then stayed put like this for the weekend. We traveled up to visit friends and check it out.
The truck had some difffculty getting back out again. My neighbour had to help with both his tractor and digger. It only just worked.
We got to know the first half overnight.
The truck had some difffculty getting back out again. My neighbour had to help with both his tractor and digger. It only just worked.
We got to know the first half overnight.
Friday, 11 April 2008
9 - The Hold Up
Before too long it dawned upon us that April would be arriving soon ready to move a house and we still had not received the go ahead from the council. We had a call from them enquiring about the waste treatment report accompanying our application. In the report we had stated that we would like a waterless composting toilet and a grey water system similar to a normal septic system. This was fine. They just wanted to see the spot where the septic application area (trenches) was going. Since the report was prepared we have had over 820mm of rain falling in just 2 months. All of sudden we discovered a spring right where the application areas was to be. The council man noticed this swallowing his boots as I pointed out the area in question. He said we would need to choose another area. The report would need an amendment done by the mob who prepared it. Fine. I rang the guy and he came back out to choose another spot.
We decided we would pump the grey water over to the existing application area we use now for the shed. We were happy with this because it will be cheaper and not close to the house. He went back to write the report and send it on both to the council and us at the same time. We politely stressed the need for a little haste with all this. We should have dropped the politely because he didn’t apply the haste. He sat on the report for two weeks despite two reminders. This made it impossible for us to receive a formal approval from the council before our deadline. We were starting to worry. The planning consultant we commissioned to smooth this kind of thing over was no help. Not sure what we paid him for now, perhaps the ink in his pen as he filled out our application.
We were concerned for a few reasons. Firstly the movers were booked in for the second week of April. They are very busy people. If we did not take this booking we would have to wait about another month. They required council approval to start work on the house a few days before the move. Secondly we thought the house had to be moved from the block by early April or, as you may remember dear reader, we would be hit with a further $10 000.
Turns out we didn’t need to worry. We had layers of cushioning step up under pressure. Firstly the house now did not have to be off the block until the end of the year. Developers are slow like that. We rang the council and discovered that they had the required amended report and everything was set to go. It would take a few weeks to be formally approved but they pretty much gave us verbal approval. We passed this on to the movers. That was good enough for them. Full steam ahead, no…full noxious carbon monoxide ahead, no…behind. Either way, let’s go.
Wednesday, 9 April 2008
8 - The Preparation
Once the development application was done and the major contracts with the removers and the stumpers sewn up, we had about two months to wait and prepare. The house was vacated a lot sooner than we were told it would be. We were under the impression it wouldn’t be until a few weeks before the move in April. It wasn’t. The house had been emptied of people and things just before Christmas, which means we could do things there, like take the photos you see around these words. 
Asbestos Removal
The first thing to do was to have the asbestos fibre sheeted ceilings throughout the house removed. The Tweed Shire Council will not allow any asbestos product to enter its boundaries. Fair enough. We got a couple of quotes. They were between $2500 and $3000 - licensed asbestos people charge big money. We went with the cheapest. Because the asbestos sheets were mostly on the inside of the house, their removal would hopefully not leave the impression that the place was being taken apart or something. We were a little concerned about leaving the house unattended for 4-5 months in the city. We feared looters or squatters or arsonists or historians or wood fanciers or claw foot bath fanciers or nice deck fanciers or pretty much everyone else in the world would somehow notice the house was empty and strike.
The ceilings have a lot of decorative wood attached to them in different patterns for each room. We asked for this to be kept if possible as some of it may be able to be used for the same purpose afterwards.
The job was done. However, in our desire to go with the cheapest quote, we failed to notice that ‘nail removal’ was not mentioned. As a result they weren’t. The other company had stated they would remove them, but the one we went with did not. So in many areas there is a ten cent shape worth of asbestos sheeting surrounding the nails. We will have to bear this in mind when working on the house later. The total cost was $2750. Substantial - though not too bad.
All the wood was left in piles in the room it was removed from. There was a lot of it and some of it had split. If we do not use it for the ceilings then I’m sure it will be used for something else one day.
The Removal of Part of the Front Verandah
In
The verandah section in question here is a little tricky. It has its own piece of peeked roofing perpendicular to the main entrance peek.
We first thought we would need to hire someone to take the section apart and then travel two hours down here later on to put it back together. Finding someone to do this in the current busy building climate would turn out to be near impossible. After ringing a few people, we decided the person taking it apart does not have to be the same person who puts it back together again. It is not that complicated. We could take it apart, hire a truck, move it in bits, store it until after the house is all put back together and then get someone to work on it, or maybe I'll give it a crack.
A friend of mine in Brisbane, who does a bit of cabinet making and has a lot of tools and things, agreed to help pull the section apart. He would charge me for his time but at a very cheap rate. So I took a few days off work and went to work.
We had to remove a lot more than just one and half metres because we did not want to cut the nice balustrades, or the great silky oak fixed shade louvres, in half. The dismantling was not too bad. The two 200mm by 200mm hard wood posts were very heavy and tested our sheer strength and endurance. We passed but only just. The process introduced me to a new favourite tool, the single handed demolition hammer (insert growl sound here).
In the end the cost for the verandah removal was about $695. Twelve hours of my friend’s help was $300. It was $250 to hire the truck and the rest was eaten up in extra tools and things.
Placement
One of the largest issues leading up to the move for us was where exactly to move the house to. Our 15 acre block has lots of undulating hills. Together they sort of make up a basic bowl shape with a dam at the bottom resembling the few spoonfuls of milk left after cereal. The shed we live in now sits on top of the hill that mostly faces south. There is a small part of it that travels down the north from the shed to the boundary. This is where we grow food at the moment. The hill we chose for the house mainly faces east. It runs down from the road and west boundary. This hill was chosen because it feels like the middle of the property, it has great views of Wollumbin (Mt Warning) and it has gullies on either side that add both north and south aspects for growing various things. The hill choice was easy. We would face the back deck towards the east to soak up both the thawing morning sun and the great view. This leaves the living areas of the house facing the north, which is ideal.
We want to surround the house with veggie gardens, fruit trees, chooks and some ornamental trees and shrubs. Because of this we decided to place the house more to the south side of the hill as it opens up the north side to grow more things on.
We figure that one day we may want to build a room under the house. Thinking ahead is rather handy for this because houses are heavy. Before the house arrives we thought we would get my neighbour, who owns diggers and things, to cut into the hill a tad. It would just be enough to open up the space under the back deck and maybe one day we could build in a room there. I wasn’t keen on the house looking really high from the ground.
All these considerations proved a little hard to make room for. We got back in the site surveyors so they could peg out ‘solar north’ (about 12 degrees off magnetic) for one side of the house. This gave us a starting point. The pegs suited the sun but not quite the view. We compromised by swinging the house site slightly back towards the south. I read on the home technical manual site (link to the left) that variations in site orientation were alright for passive solar orientation as long these fell within a 15 degree difference. We made sure of this, swinging the house pegs about 10 degrees back.
Saturday, 22 March 2008
7 - The Process Begun
Where do I begin in unpacking this mixed bag of fun and adventure? Well the first thing we had to do before paying the rest of the deposit on the house was to get a building inspection done. This involves an ex builder, now inspector, walking around the house and kicking its tyres - so to speak. For this we paid 260 clams. He said the place looks fine now but who knows what it may be like after being cut in half and moved? Cheers for that. Along with this we also had a pest inspection done by the same company, it cost $240 and revealed no unwanted guests or things that eat houses.
After paying for the house we started gathering all the necessary reports required to accompany our Council Development Application. Because we had a deadline of April we felt a slight sense of urgency around this back in November. We assumed, perhaps wrongly, that we would need the help of a planning consultant to put the application together and sort out any issues with it throughout the approval process. We were a little nervous about the whole deal, and felt like we had to get it right from the start to minimise delays. So we hooked up with a consultant and started gathering the reports he advised were required to accompany our application. In hindsight we probably could have put the application together ourselves and saved about $1000 in consultancy fees, but as I say, back then we were a little anxious.
The reports we required were a soil test, a structural engineer’s report of the house, a contour survey of the house site, an on site waste treatment design report and a floor plan and elevation drawing of the house. We set about setting these up. They all got done but they took a bit longer than I would have liked, falling over into the new year. The cost of each is listed in the “Money Spent” section. We saved on the floor plan because my partner drew it up herself and the elevation drawings could be substituted for photos of the house.
The application was lodged in early January. Part of the cost was a $1400 bond for moving the house via the council’s roads. This will be returned if no road signs and things are damaged by the trucks on the way.
Apparently, the house will be sawn in half by the house movers, taken down in the middle of the night and placed on temporary stumps exactly on its proposed site. The stumps will be quite a lot higher than the permanent ones will be. The house movers then depart as the stumpers come in and match up the new steel stumps to the house and put them all in place. Then the house movers return and lower the house down to rest on the new stumps. At some point in all this they also join the house back together again.
The House Movers
Following the purchase of the house, Drake referred us to a separate house moving company. The first step in making things happen was to find out if the house could be moved to our block. This simply involved a quick reconnaissance mission to ensure the route was acceptable for moving half a house - twice. It was. We were relieved, remembering we only got the house in the first place because walk in deposit man owned a hard to get to block of land.
We booked the house move in for the end of March or early April 2008. This was really the only time they could fit us in, and it happened to suit our deadline, but only just. All we had to do before then was to sign the contract they sent us. Easier said then done. It contained the odd strange clause, some of which we were not prepared to swallow. We just took to it with a pen and made a few changes, such as completely deleting the clause stating that we were responsible for removing and reinstating overhead wires along the truck’s journey. We nervously sent the contract, laden with scribbles and ruled lines, back to them and were pleasantly surprised that they accepted all of the changes. It was as if the contract was the same standard document that they have been pulling out and dusting off for years. They seemed to recognise this fact and were quite prepared to update things. This was a wonderful relief because since receiving the first contract we grew a bit dubious about the house movers. After the contract changes were made, and many silly questions patiently answered, our faith was completely returned, with interest.
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
A Picture Break
The site for the house, looking to the east.
Looking at the house site hill from the north
Looking to the north from the house site back over to the shed we live in nowWednesday, 5 March 2008
6 - The Blog
Reading back over the story so far it becomes slightly apparent to my occasionally self deprecating slant that it is a tad opinionated. There are a few almost pompous assertions regarding, say, the wonders of wood, the gloriousness of separate kitchens, the difficultness of kit home company employees, and just how shit hot we must be for scoring a house that matches everything we wanted. With this in mind I feel a qualifier or two needs to be thrown in here.
Before I started writing this blog I knew that we had decided upon the house, it is to be moved in another month from today. This fact may have unconsciously played a heavy hand in editing the telling of the tale. When given the opportunity I think we all have a tendency to become happier with our current lot. Certain aspects of it tend to be held in higher and higher regard as time goes by. We get used to things. For us in the beginning, we really did not know exactly what we wanted in a house. I remember us wanting all sorts of things such as half the house buried in a hill with grass and meadow flowers growing on the roof, walls of glass taking in every view, a completely outdoor kitchen, a tree or two growing up through the middle of the house, and a series of separate buildings for each room with a courtyard linking them. There were so many things that we wanted to incorporate into one house that in many ways we were paralysed. It was kind of like the hundreds of salivating shoppers pushing through the door of a Boxing Day Myer stocktake sale and all getting stuck.
Deciding to relocate a house provided much needed relief. We could focus our interest on one style of house and make it work, intellectually, for our purposes. All the other ‘dream’ houses would remain as such. Our limited budget and circumstances have dictated a housing direction that we have fortunately become very accustomed to and that accustomedness provides the optimistic thread holding this blog together.
So all the elements that I have passed critical judgment over such as plasterboard, aluminium framed windows, carpet and the rest are not really to my taste but if pushed, I could make them work for me. The most important thing is achieving the correct house orientation and including other power saving devices and features. Air conditioning is a big hate of mine and I make no apologies for that. It is unnecessary, when accompanied by good house design, especially for the climate we enjoy here. If I was in the tropical north things would be different, but we chose to be in this climate so our heating and cooling requirements would be minimal.
Monday, 3 March 2008
5 - The House
As I have already mentioned, the house is in great condition. It has housed only two owners since it was built in 1926 by a man for his wife. Fifteen years ago it had enjoyed some restoration and renovation work. One of the results of this was the bathroom being relocated from its original position on the back deck to one of the three bedrooms. This gave the house only two bedrooms and a large but lovely bathroom. The old deck bathroom became a large laundry and storage area.The Kitchen
When seeing the above layout, some friends of ours suggested knocking out the wall between the kitchen and lounge or at least cutting a large opening in it. This got me thinking. I like the idea of the separate kitchen. There has been quite a push lately in house design circles to open everything up. The dining area is merged with lounge, media, entertainment and what not and over to one side, as if on stage, is the kitchen ensconced in island bench. Perhaps the thinking is that the cook or dish washer can stay part of the party as they quietly toil away piping up occasionally with witty observations in tune with the topics at hand. For all other times those in the kitchen can talk with family as they watch TV in the other corner or watch it themselves or simply discuss various matters of everyone’s busy day as the evening meal is prepared. I guess all this is a nice idea. Here comes the ‘however’ subtly signposted by the ‘I guess’. However, I kind of think you lose the purpose and function of rooms this way. A separate kitchen complete with an area for dining is a very nice thing. It is the kitchen – the place for creating meals, storing food, sprouting sprouts, rising bread, learning about flavours, imparting a sense of interest and passion within children and lots of messy experimentation. To be able to sit right there and eat in the place that the food was prepared, with the leftovers bubbling away on the stove at arms reach, the smells of dozens of herbs and spices wafting around and the sights of jars and jars of dried beans and the like, gives a nice understanding of the origin of the meal and contributes to the richness of its eating.
So the fact that the small kitchen in this house has a little dining nook, with a view to the prospective veggie gardens, is perfect for us.The walls will act as vertical storage, like a library of culinary delights. The kitchen benches will need some work as they are fairly minimal. The previous owners had a large rustic looking stand alone bench in the middle and a cupboard on the back wall. We are hoping to simply have a bench and cook top on that wall and no bench in the middle, the room is too small.
The Living Room
Having a separate small living room works for us too. It will become the centre of the house and a place for relaxing, talking, reading, playing and creating. The name ‘living’ sums these activities up nicely as there is an active element to them. We will have to place the computer somewhere in this room though there will be no television. I have recently welcomed a new TV free chapter in my life. Not that it made up a large part before but it was there and it didn’t feel right. Its absence is producing things during a time usually devoted to passive consumption. This blog is an example, so to the collection of hand made clothes worn daily by my daughter at the hands of my partner’s busy hands.
The Bedrooms
There are two and this is fine for now. Should the need arise to fill a third we will move the bathroom back to its original location and convert the space it was in back in to a bedroom. The one issue with bedrooms in an old house is the lack of inbuilt cupboards. We will have to come up with solutions to this. For us it will probably be a combination of old stand-alone wardrobes and maybe some clothes racks hanging from the roof at eye level.
The Bathroom
This will be half in the laundry, marked 'toilet', and half in the house as in the design. The claw foot bath that comes with the house will stay where it is for the time being. However, we are going to install a composting toilet in the laundry which will probably become a bathroom in the future. Having the composting toilet out there will make it easier to get in under it to replace the full chambers. Also it seems nicer to get down to that sort of business away from the more delicate living areas of the house.
Orientation
The house is nearly perfectly orientated to suit the need for passive solar design for our site. The house has a longer east west axis and is narrow enough to benefit from cross flow breezes. The verandas at each end of the house will act as a buffer keeping the sun from hitting the house. Of course, bedroom 1 will cop it from the west in the afternoon, however we plan to plant some trees over that side of the house and perhaps insulate the wall. The large windows in the living room will benefit from northern sun and the area just outside these will work as a sun trap in the cooler months where we can grow things that aren't keen on getting cold.
Friday, 29 February 2008
4 - The Decision
For the next few months we kept an eye out for removal houses via a number of companies. A list of some of these can be seen to the left of these words and, as time goes by, above left. All the while we became quite used to the idea of moving a house. It seemed like the ultimate gesture in recycling. The fact that no more new materials would be extracted from an already depleted planet just to house me and mine, sits well on the mind. Of course, there would be resources used, such as petrol to move the house, but these would have been needed no matter what we built. It also feels nice knowing that someone’s unwanted house would be given a new life here with us. We just needed to find one that fit in the budget, suited our site’s orientation for passive solar considerations and wasn’t too rough on the eye. While we were looking we kept on crunching the numbers for the SALA Smart house option. Despite our best efforts at belt tightening we could not squeeze the SALA costs below $170 000 and that was only allowing $20 000 for building and no waste treatment set up, kitchen or carport. We also kept on entertaining the idea of other kits, despite our growing displeasure with their company.
And then it happened. A newly acquired house notification email popped up from Drake Homes. At first we did not give the “ATTO” much more than a passing glance. I’m not sure why. That night though I studied it closer discovering that it was designed perfectly for our chosen house site. Our view of Wollumbin (Mt Warning) is to the east. This house had a great back covered verandah facing that very direction. We wanted the living areas with their larger windows facing the north, for our cool winter mornings. They did. We wanted bedrooms on the South. Check. We wanted a house with a longer east west axis then north south. Mate.
As an added bonus the house looked like it was in great shape. It had some very nice features including everything we wanted from the beginning. The cost of the house was posted as being between 75-100K delivered and stumped. That seemed reasonable considering its apparent good condition. We were getting excited. We contacted Drake stating our interest. The next step was to see inside it. The house still contained its current owners in its original location in the Brisbane suburb of Nundah. The land that it stood on had been sold to developers. So too had that of the two houses next door. In keeping with the unfortunate nature of modern life, a large block of units was being built with the hope of devouring large numbers of young upwardly mobiles.
Organising an inspection proved quite a feat. The owners were busy people and insisted on being there when Drake showed anyone through. We called Drake nearly everyday for the next week. No joy. They could not get in contact with the owners. The last call we made to Drake about an inspection delivered the news that the house had been sold un-inspected by a man who walked in that afternoon with a deposit. It had only been for sale less than a week and no one had seen in it. We were gutted.
We learnt from Drake afterwards that this kind of thing happened in the world of removal houses. People know what they want, they have the money ready, and they pounce. Bugger. We weren’t any of those things. We weren't really sure what we wanted, we didn’t know if we had the money or if it was ready, and we aren’t ones who pouncing comes naturally to. Apparently it was a cut throat industry. We decided to sharpen our cut throat’n knives.
We started preparing ourselves for the next ‘perfect house’, not that anything could replace the ATTO. I enquired about the likelihood of my current bank, nab, loaning us money for a removal house. They wouldn’t. It’s too risky. We discovered that a lot of banks will only lend money after the house has arrived. The salesman at Drake gave me the number of a mortgage broker who he knew had helped people in the past. I rang Otto Dargan from Transportable Home Finance in Sydney and a beautiful working relationship was forged. He understood the situation, and considering the equity in the land would cover everything anyway, said it would be a snap. He suggested a GE loan would be best for us and went ahead with preparing the paperwork.
For the next ten days we forlornly dragged our feet on our way back to the ol’ drawing board. Just as we got there and tried picking up the house search again, I received a phone call. It was the Drake salesman informing me that the man with the walk in deposit had discovered that the house could not physically be moved to his block and as a result it was back on the books and available for us if we were still interested. We were. He had a lot more people waiting in the wings but thought he’d offer it to us first. I hung up the phone and looked across at my partner with the wonderful realisation that I possessed the one piece of news that would bring back the sheer joy and happiness she had when we first realised we wanted that house. I wasted no time in delivering the news. What a wonderful moment. We traveled straight up to the Drake office and paid a deposit for a house we had not seen. The understanding was that we would try and have an inspection that weekend and if the house was not to our liking we could withdraw our interest and deposit.
That weekend we went to Brisbane to look through the house with the Drake salesman. We were greeted by one of the owners, a friendly man who went about his business after showing us in. My partner and I gingerly entered the house and followed the Drake salesman around. He hadn’t seen in it either, only his colleague had. After seeing one of the bedrooms and the bathroom we had a moment to ourselves in the kitchen. I’ll never forget my partner’s face. We looked across at each other mouthing profanities as a way of conveying our excitement at what we were seeing. We couldn’t believe it. The Drake salesman had seen a lot of houses and was amazed at the great condition this one was in. An overwhelming sense of good fortune had fallen upon us. Even though we were buying this house, and it would cost a substantial amount of money, it felt like we had won it. 
And then it happened. A newly acquired house notification email popped up from Drake Homes. At first we did not give the “ATTO” much more than a passing glance. I’m not sure why. That night though I studied it closer discovering that it was designed perfectly for our chosen house site. Our view of Wollumbin (Mt Warning) is to the east. This house had a great back covered verandah facing that very direction. We wanted the living areas with their larger windows facing the north, for our cool winter mornings. They did. We wanted bedrooms on the South. Check. We wanted a house with a longer east west axis then north south. Mate.
As an added bonus the house looked like it was in great shape. It had some very nice features including everything we wanted from the beginning. The cost of the house was posted as being between 75-100K delivered and stumped. That seemed reasonable considering its apparent good condition. We were getting excited. We contacted Drake stating our interest. The next step was to see inside it. The house still contained its current owners in its original location in the Brisbane suburb of Nundah. The land that it stood on had been sold to developers. So too had that of the two houses next door. In keeping with the unfortunate nature of modern life, a large block of units was being built with the hope of devouring large numbers of young upwardly mobiles.
Organising an inspection proved quite a feat. The owners were busy people and insisted on being there when Drake showed anyone through. We called Drake nearly everyday for the next week. No joy. They could not get in contact with the owners. The last call we made to Drake about an inspection delivered the news that the house had been sold un-inspected by a man who walked in that afternoon with a deposit. It had only been for sale less than a week and no one had seen in it. We were gutted.
We learnt from Drake afterwards that this kind of thing happened in the world of removal houses. People know what they want, they have the money ready, and they pounce. Bugger. We weren’t any of those things. We weren't really sure what we wanted, we didn’t know if we had the money or if it was ready, and we aren’t ones who pouncing comes naturally to. Apparently it was a cut throat industry. We decided to sharpen our cut throat’n knives.
We started preparing ourselves for the next ‘perfect house’, not that anything could replace the ATTO. I enquired about the likelihood of my current bank, nab, loaning us money for a removal house. They wouldn’t. It’s too risky. We discovered that a lot of banks will only lend money after the house has arrived. The salesman at Drake gave me the number of a mortgage broker who he knew had helped people in the past. I rang Otto Dargan from Transportable Home Finance in Sydney and a beautiful working relationship was forged. He understood the situation, and considering the equity in the land would cover everything anyway, said it would be a snap. He suggested a GE loan would be best for us and went ahead with preparing the paperwork.
For the next ten days we forlornly dragged our feet on our way back to the ol’ drawing board. Just as we got there and tried picking up the house search again, I received a phone call. It was the Drake salesman informing me that the man with the walk in deposit had discovered that the house could not physically be moved to his block and as a result it was back on the books and available for us if we were still interested. We were. He had a lot more people waiting in the wings but thought he’d offer it to us first. I hung up the phone and looked across at my partner with the wonderful realisation that I possessed the one piece of news that would bring back the sheer joy and happiness she had when we first realised we wanted that house. I wasted no time in delivering the news. What a wonderful moment. We traveled straight up to the Drake office and paid a deposit for a house we had not seen. The understanding was that we would try and have an inspection that weekend and if the house was not to our liking we could withdraw our interest and deposit.
That weekend we went to Brisbane to look through the house with the Drake salesman. We were greeted by one of the owners, a friendly man who went about his business after showing us in. My partner and I gingerly entered the house and followed the Drake salesman around. He hadn’t seen in it either, only his colleague had. After seeing one of the bedrooms and the bathroom we had a moment to ourselves in the kitchen. I’ll never forget my partner’s face. We looked across at each other mouthing profanities as a way of conveying our excitement at what we were seeing. We couldn’t believe it. The Drake salesman had seen a lot of houses and was amazed at the great condition this one was in. An overwhelming sense of good fortune had fallen upon us. Even though we were buying this house, and it would cost a substantial amount of money, it felt like we had won it.
Saturday, 23 February 2008
3 - The Housing Options We Considered
I guess by simply looking up at the title and explanation of this blog, there is no real mystery shrouding the outcome of the following deliberations. Nevertheless, let’s press on in the spirit to which we have become accustomed.
Own Design and Owner Build
The first option we considered was one that I had always assumed would be the only way to go when it came to building a house for the land here. It was, of course, to design our own house featuring all the little quirks we desire along with all the energy saving features we had learnt about over the years. It would be unique. We would gather recycled materials and do a lot of the building works ourselves.
So what happened with this idea? A few things did, none of which were more persuasive than the other, just awfully influential en masse. Firstly there didn’t seem to be that much in the way of savings to be had. Having a unique one off design can be expensive. Not sure how expensive but I was told it was substantial. Then there are still the services such as plumbing and electricity to be completed by other people. Of course the plan is that these costs could be offset by doing some building work ourselves. This got me thinking. Building one’s own house is a lovely thing to do and something I greatly admire for many reasons, however, I do not have the interest, inclination, patience, time or skill to do it. A large adventurous part of me wishes I did, a smaller practical part knows I’d struggle, and a tiny self care part, thinking of the longevity of my fingers, limbs and relationship, strictly forbids it.
Building a house and learning as you go takes a lot of time. I couldn’t really take this time out of a paying day job because at the moment we need the money. Doing bits and pieces here and there on weekends and the like would stretch the whole thing out beyond any realm of acceptability. We did not want the building of the house to become our entire lives, having to constantly field questions on its progress from everyone we know for the next 5 years. We have a child to raise, trees to plant and food to grow.
Kit Homes
We spent many months looking into kit homes. At first glance, from a distance, we were wooed by the prices and seduced by the promise of time savings. When we got closer, warts and alls started emerging. Here is a collection of what we discovered.
SALA Homes
This was the first company we took a passing interest in about two years ago. They make 5 star energy rating houses which incorporate a number of nifty features and building materials that reduce the house's overall impact on the planet. After a brief look at their designs we ignorantly deduced that their houses were a bit too modest for our needs. We also grossly underestimated the costs involved in actually building the house, assuming that the overall finished house price would not be that much more than the quoted material price for the kit. We thought we could easily afford much more than what they had on offer, how much more was a figure we didn’t know at that stage because we had not done any sums. Anyway, for the next year or so we shelved the house plans to make mental room for other things. After this time we returned to the SALA idea. They had more designs available and after sitting down with a pencil we mapped out how one would work for our specific site. We liked the four bedroom SALA Green and were becoming increasingly excited about it. The costs seemed reasonable on paper, $165000 for the kit, remember though dear reader that we had not really ironed out the detail in our budget.
We went on a tour of an estate that has some SALA display homes. This was very encouraging, we arranged a meeting with the SALA team in Brisbane and talked over the changes we had in mind for their plan. They were very easy to work with and open to new ideas and suggestions. They even encourage changes as long as they do not detract from the overall efficiency of the house. Everything seemed right. But it wasn’t. Someone mentioned a safe guesstimate monetary figure when working out the cost of the fully built house – “add about 80% of the kit materials figure to that very figure”. The world spun around me. Further spoken words after those corkers blurred together into a long continual throat song sounding note. I was in a brief shock. I felt like a fraud, sat there talking turkey with people who thought I knew more about turkeys, like how many hooves they have on the ends of their opposable tails. Arrghhhh. We politely wrapped things up, threw on some niceties, and exited the office.
Following this revelation we were quite disappointed. It was made worse by the fact that we first saw the SALA option as a cheap one. In fairness to SALA their safe percentage figure included the complete building of the house and further allocation for driveways, water tanks, extra solar panels, on site sewage management and the like. We would need all these things, it’s just we wanted to do it for a lot cheaper than $300 000 – at that stage we knew this was way over even our fantasy budget figure. Despite this setback we were so impressed with the SALA staff we went home and worked on working with another cheaper, smaller, simpler plan, the 4 bedroom SMART. Here is a blog, documenting the building of a modified SALA Green House.
Other Kits
During this time we also looked at a range of other kit homes for comparison hoping that something cheaper would emerge. We wanted to find out if the SALA’s vented wall system, high pitched roofs and other passive climate control features were worth the extra cost. Now of course this is hard to gauge when you’re talking houses, they are not available for test lives on your specific site. I guess we started trying to make educated assumptions about the significance such features would have for us and if their impact would be substantially noticed. Additionally though, SALA does use sustainable materials, where ever possible. They also come with very functional louver windows, wooden French doors high ceilings and 12mm Ecoply lined walls as standard, turns out they share our distaste for plasterboard. All these are nice features and things we would perhaps try and incorporate in other kit homes.
The first place we enquired at was Valley Kit Homes . They were situated about an hour’s drive from us so after looking into a few of their plans via their website we made an appointment to see them and ask questions. We arrived to meet our host, and after briefly looking around the display stage set style interior layout boasting the company’s finest in fittings, we reclined across from a desk cluttered in photos of houses and grandchildren. Our host seemed nice enough to begin with and listened with a pained smile as we fumbled through the delivery of an introduction to our situation and some of our preferences for the designs. She responded obligingly showing us some real life pictures of finished houses. These were not to our taste and as we started to unpack our questions of alterations to the designs and incorporation of things like high ceilings and wooden wall linings and window frames, her answers became increasingly shorter in both length and tone. It is as if the more questions we asked the more she did not want to secure our business. We did get out of her that most of the things we enquired about were doable but were “very expensive”. She did not give the impression that she represented a company that was progressive in its concern for the preservation of the natural environment, good style, flexibility or plain common courtesy. Maybe she has come across our flakey type before who ask lots of questions and don’t come back. Maybe it is her job to filter out our kind. Maybe she personally loves all the things we wanted to change and was deeply offended by our insensitive remarks. Or maybe she was keen on nipping down to the shops in her lunch break to return a pair of slacks she was going to wear to a friend’s 60th that weekend. Who knows? On the way out we were guided via another display, a wall of external cladding options that were mostly fake wood grained imprinted Hardiplank which I’m sure it is not without its function and charm in certain situations, hopefully though, not ours. We did not speak of Valley Kit Homes again.
Another nearly local company is Affordable Steel Kit Homes. They pride themselves on their steel, easy to put together, framed houses. Their designs seemed to hold more potential for us than Valley Kit Homes did. We were sent their information pack, complete with a rather odd promotional DVD containing a collection of their recent appearances on various home shows that we had never heard of. This is not saying much though as we are not ones to watch such programs. I went along one afternoon to their offices and chatted with one of their youthful polo-shirted team members who had a tendency to smile smugly after each of his confident assertions. He was a nice enough chap, though naïve to some of the finer concerns I had about things like passive solar design and the inclusion of recycled materials. I came away from the meeting with a wary feeling. Not something you want from such encounters. The one thing I did take on board from the meeting with ASK was that it prompted me to do an online Owner Builder Course through Access Building Education. We figured it couldn’t hurt to have it ready incase we decide to go ahead with the kit option. Even if we didn’t do any building then at least we could save money on overseeing the project. It cost $155 and was rather informative.
When comparing all three meetings, our experience with the SALA people won hands down in making us feel understood in our desire to feel understood regarding the elements we feel are important to include in our future house. They were literally unreal. This fact, coupled with their overall philosophy and inclusions such as solar panels prompted us to decided that we would go with SALA after slightly rearranging the internal layout of their 4 bedroom SMART House. We would make it three bedrooms and with a larger living area.
We did look at a lot of Kit Home companies during this time and followed some up with detailed enquiries. This list includes some of them.
Agnes Water Kit Homes
Classic Queenslanders
EHabitat
Gateway Manufacture
Ecohut
Smart Shax
Sustainable
As we started to crunch the numbers on the SALA home, we became increasingly concerned about the costs. Because of this we kept looking around.
Project Homes
Our neighbour had a project home built a few years ago. It seemed rather cheap for what she got and, due to its orientation, was rather cool in summer and warm in winter. We could not help then to at least investigate the possibility of building one here. We found a number of companies with a number of designs. This is as far as we got. We shook ourselves out of what was an irrational moment of poor judgment. Project homes represent everything we do not want in a house or in our lives. We actually felt rather ashamed of even considering such a thing, however fleeting. The biggest issue for us is the companies’ seemingly complete lack of concern for sustainability. They appear to build these houses unecessarily large these days, with air conditioning in mind, featuring things like rooms tucked away without cross air flow, small or no eaves and large windows all the way round the house.
We’ve always only wanted a small house. Anything too big is rather pointless and somewhat embarrassing, especially considering that we moved out here to be ‘out’ here. Not inside all the time. Media rooms, powder rooms, activity rooms, games rooms, and the myriad of other useless extra rooms they often include in such houses hold no appeal for us whatsoever. I read somewhere once that paying off big houses is like renting out a heap of rooms in a hotel everyday and not using them. It is sheer waste poorly disguised as decadence. We could not live with ourselves living in a place like that. For us these kinds of project homes serve as monuments to everything that is environmentally and morally wrong with the planet, from the materials that make them to the energy they consume after they're built.
Relocatable Homes
My partner had always wanted to move an old house onto our block. It made sense. Old Queenslanders have all the features that we wanted in a house and we have enjoyed renting them for the last ten years or so. The only thing though was that we had heard that they can be quite expensive once they're moved and restored. So it is with some trepadation that we started searching house removal sales companies' collection of current stock. We found Drake Removal Homes, south of Brisbane, and decided to go along to their yard to see some houses in the flesh, errr... wood. We met one of the salesmen and as we left the office to walk around the houses, he reminded us to use our imagination. We looked at few places that we had already seen photos of on the website. They were different up close. They required a lot of "imagination", only thing is imagination costs money in this context. The old wooden houses we looked at would require major work to replace decking, roofing and all sorts of other odd bits and pieces. We discussed the removal process with the salesman on the way out and left him our details for email updates of new stock. We would need a house that did not require much work for this option to be viable for us.
Own Design and Owner Build
The first option we considered was one that I had always assumed would be the only way to go when it came to building a house for the land here. It was, of course, to design our own house featuring all the little quirks we desire along with all the energy saving features we had learnt about over the years. It would be unique. We would gather recycled materials and do a lot of the building works ourselves.
So what happened with this idea? A few things did, none of which were more persuasive than the other, just awfully influential en masse. Firstly there didn’t seem to be that much in the way of savings to be had. Having a unique one off design can be expensive. Not sure how expensive but I was told it was substantial. Then there are still the services such as plumbing and electricity to be completed by other people. Of course the plan is that these costs could be offset by doing some building work ourselves. This got me thinking. Building one’s own house is a lovely thing to do and something I greatly admire for many reasons, however, I do not have the interest, inclination, patience, time or skill to do it. A large adventurous part of me wishes I did, a smaller practical part knows I’d struggle, and a tiny self care part, thinking of the longevity of my fingers, limbs and relationship, strictly forbids it.
Building a house and learning as you go takes a lot of time. I couldn’t really take this time out of a paying day job because at the moment we need the money. Doing bits and pieces here and there on weekends and the like would stretch the whole thing out beyond any realm of acceptability. We did not want the building of the house to become our entire lives, having to constantly field questions on its progress from everyone we know for the next 5 years. We have a child to raise, trees to plant and food to grow.
Kit Homes
We spent many months looking into kit homes. At first glance, from a distance, we were wooed by the prices and seduced by the promise of time savings. When we got closer, warts and alls started emerging. Here is a collection of what we discovered.
SALA Homes
This was the first company we took a passing interest in about two years ago. They make 5 star energy rating houses which incorporate a number of nifty features and building materials that reduce the house's overall impact on the planet. After a brief look at their designs we ignorantly deduced that their houses were a bit too modest for our needs. We also grossly underestimated the costs involved in actually building the house, assuming that the overall finished house price would not be that much more than the quoted material price for the kit. We thought we could easily afford much more than what they had on offer, how much more was a figure we didn’t know at that stage because we had not done any sums. Anyway, for the next year or so we shelved the house plans to make mental room for other things. After this time we returned to the SALA idea. They had more designs available and after sitting down with a pencil we mapped out how one would work for our specific site. We liked the four bedroom SALA Green and were becoming increasingly excited about it. The costs seemed reasonable on paper, $165000 for the kit, remember though dear reader that we had not really ironed out the detail in our budget.
We went on a tour of an estate that has some SALA display homes. This was very encouraging, we arranged a meeting with the SALA team in Brisbane and talked over the changes we had in mind for their plan. They were very easy to work with and open to new ideas and suggestions. They even encourage changes as long as they do not detract from the overall efficiency of the house. Everything seemed right. But it wasn’t. Someone mentioned a safe guesstimate monetary figure when working out the cost of the fully built house – “add about 80% of the kit materials figure to that very figure”. The world spun around me. Further spoken words after those corkers blurred together into a long continual throat song sounding note. I was in a brief shock. I felt like a fraud, sat there talking turkey with people who thought I knew more about turkeys, like how many hooves they have on the ends of their opposable tails. Arrghhhh. We politely wrapped things up, threw on some niceties, and exited the office.Following this revelation we were quite disappointed. It was made worse by the fact that we first saw the SALA option as a cheap one. In fairness to SALA their safe percentage figure included the complete building of the house and further allocation for driveways, water tanks, extra solar panels, on site sewage management and the like. We would need all these things, it’s just we wanted to do it for a lot cheaper than $300 000 – at that stage we knew this was way over even our fantasy budget figure. Despite this setback we were so impressed with the SALA staff we went home and worked on working with another cheaper, smaller, simpler plan, the 4 bedroom SMART. Here is a blog, documenting the building of a modified SALA Green House.
Other Kits
During this time we also looked at a range of other kit homes for comparison hoping that something cheaper would emerge. We wanted to find out if the SALA’s vented wall system, high pitched roofs and other passive climate control features were worth the extra cost. Now of course this is hard to gauge when you’re talking houses, they are not available for test lives on your specific site. I guess we started trying to make educated assumptions about the significance such features would have for us and if their impact would be substantially noticed. Additionally though, SALA does use sustainable materials, where ever possible. They also come with very functional louver windows, wooden French doors high ceilings and 12mm Ecoply lined walls as standard, turns out they share our distaste for plasterboard. All these are nice features and things we would perhaps try and incorporate in other kit homes.
The first place we enquired at was Valley Kit Homes . They were situated about an hour’s drive from us so after looking into a few of their plans via their website we made an appointment to see them and ask questions. We arrived to meet our host, and after briefly looking around the display stage set style interior layout boasting the company’s finest in fittings, we reclined across from a desk cluttered in photos of houses and grandchildren. Our host seemed nice enough to begin with and listened with a pained smile as we fumbled through the delivery of an introduction to our situation and some of our preferences for the designs. She responded obligingly showing us some real life pictures of finished houses. These were not to our taste and as we started to unpack our questions of alterations to the designs and incorporation of things like high ceilings and wooden wall linings and window frames, her answers became increasingly shorter in both length and tone. It is as if the more questions we asked the more she did not want to secure our business. We did get out of her that most of the things we enquired about were doable but were “very expensive”. She did not give the impression that she represented a company that was progressive in its concern for the preservation of the natural environment, good style, flexibility or plain common courtesy. Maybe she has come across our flakey type before who ask lots of questions and don’t come back. Maybe it is her job to filter out our kind. Maybe she personally loves all the things we wanted to change and was deeply offended by our insensitive remarks. Or maybe she was keen on nipping down to the shops in her lunch break to return a pair of slacks she was going to wear to a friend’s 60th that weekend. Who knows? On the way out we were guided via another display, a wall of external cladding options that were mostly fake wood grained imprinted Hardiplank which I’m sure it is not without its function and charm in certain situations, hopefully though, not ours. We did not speak of Valley Kit Homes again.
Another nearly local company is Affordable Steel Kit Homes. They pride themselves on their steel, easy to put together, framed houses. Their designs seemed to hold more potential for us than Valley Kit Homes did. We were sent their information pack, complete with a rather odd promotional DVD containing a collection of their recent appearances on various home shows that we had never heard of. This is not saying much though as we are not ones to watch such programs. I went along one afternoon to their offices and chatted with one of their youthful polo-shirted team members who had a tendency to smile smugly after each of his confident assertions. He was a nice enough chap, though naïve to some of the finer concerns I had about things like passive solar design and the inclusion of recycled materials. I came away from the meeting with a wary feeling. Not something you want from such encounters. The one thing I did take on board from the meeting with ASK was that it prompted me to do an online Owner Builder Course through Access Building Education. We figured it couldn’t hurt to have it ready incase we decide to go ahead with the kit option. Even if we didn’t do any building then at least we could save money on overseeing the project. It cost $155 and was rather informative.
When comparing all three meetings, our experience with the SALA people won hands down in making us feel understood in our desire to feel understood regarding the elements we feel are important to include in our future house. They were literally unreal. This fact, coupled with their overall philosophy and inclusions such as solar panels prompted us to decided that we would go with SALA after slightly rearranging the internal layout of their 4 bedroom SMART House. We would make it three bedrooms and with a larger living area.
We did look at a lot of Kit Home companies during this time and followed some up with detailed enquiries. This list includes some of them.
Agnes Water Kit Homes
Classic Queenslanders
EHabitat
Gateway Manufacture
Ecohut
Smart Shax
Sustainable
As we started to crunch the numbers on the SALA home, we became increasingly concerned about the costs. Because of this we kept looking around.
Project Homes
Our neighbour had a project home built a few years ago. It seemed rather cheap for what she got and, due to its orientation, was rather cool in summer and warm in winter. We could not help then to at least investigate the possibility of building one here. We found a number of companies with a number of designs. This is as far as we got. We shook ourselves out of what was an irrational moment of poor judgment. Project homes represent everything we do not want in a house or in our lives. We actually felt rather ashamed of even considering such a thing, however fleeting. The biggest issue for us is the companies’ seemingly complete lack of concern for sustainability. They appear to build these houses unecessarily large these days, with air conditioning in mind, featuring things like rooms tucked away without cross air flow, small or no eaves and large windows all the way round the house.
We’ve always only wanted a small house. Anything too big is rather pointless and somewhat embarrassing, especially considering that we moved out here to be ‘out’ here. Not inside all the time. Media rooms, powder rooms, activity rooms, games rooms, and the myriad of other useless extra rooms they often include in such houses hold no appeal for us whatsoever. I read somewhere once that paying off big houses is like renting out a heap of rooms in a hotel everyday and not using them. It is sheer waste poorly disguised as decadence. We could not live with ourselves living in a place like that. For us these kinds of project homes serve as monuments to everything that is environmentally and morally wrong with the planet, from the materials that make them to the energy they consume after they're built.
Relocatable Homes
My partner had always wanted to move an old house onto our block. It made sense. Old Queenslanders have all the features that we wanted in a house and we have enjoyed renting them for the last ten years or so. The only thing though was that we had heard that they can be quite expensive once they're moved and restored. So it is with some trepadation that we started searching house removal sales companies' collection of current stock. We found Drake Removal Homes, south of Brisbane, and decided to go along to their yard to see some houses in the flesh, errr... wood. We met one of the salesmen and as we left the office to walk around the houses, he reminded us to use our imagination. We looked at few places that we had already seen photos of on the website. They were different up close. They required a lot of "imagination", only thing is imagination costs money in this context. The old wooden houses we looked at would require major work to replace decking, roofing and all sorts of other odd bits and pieces. We discussed the removal process with the salesman on the way out and left him our details for email updates of new stock. We would need a house that did not require much work for this option to be viable for us.
Sunday, 3 February 2008
2 - The Budget
Apparently the most important first step in deciding upon a housing option for a patch of land is to ascertain how much money one can legally acquire for the pleasure. We did not really do this, preferring to jump right into dreaming up, discussing, and looking at plans. In keeping with my unwritten desire to ensure this written piece is readable, I will outline the budget details here rather than clumsily unpacking them over the course of proceedings as was the case in real life. Right, so towards the beginning the only thing we knew about the budget was that we would like it to be small enough to pay off its borrowed component (all of it) with one modest income or two half modest incomes. There are a few reasons for this. We do not want to be stretched thinly across a large debt, we are not keen on having a child care centre raise our child(ren) and a small loan is better, in so many ways, than a big loan, no matter what the hell it’s for. The actual figure would need to incorporate what we owed on the land already – $70 000. After factoring in my sole income of around $50 000, it seemed we would be eligible to borrow about $220 000. This leaves $150 000 for the house and everything that goes with it, like water tanks, waste systems, and solar panels. For the first few months of house planning I sort of forgot about the $70 000 already owing on the land, grossly overestimating our confidence when talking with potential contractors.
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