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.