Two contracts signed in one day

From the depths of despair two weeks ago to the giddy heights of today: two contracts signed within hours of each other - one to build our 7 star home and one to relocate our existing house.

Last Saturday a woman came and looked at our house to relocate to Mansfield. She thought it would be perfect to do her kinesiology and painting - she's exactly the type of person we had hoped to find; someone creative who is inspired by the character and history of the place.

By 9 am Monday morning she told the relocation company that she wanted our house and after a few days of working through the contract, it's all signed. It's hard to believe that this place will soon be chopped up, put on a truck and escorted to Mansfield.

We are thrilled that the house is being saved and will provide another family with a new home in a beautiful rural setting. Saving the demolition costs is also helpful although there will still be lots to remove later (all the substructures, roofing, guttering etc). How much do you think we will get paid for the house?

We also signed the contract for our new house this morning. That's due to start on 11 October after the relocation finishes at the end of September.

That leaves us four weeks to pack up and move to the in-laws. Does anyone need a family of five to housesit???

Relocate or detonate?

This house is really very quaint. It was built by a German cabinet maker around 1939 which accounts for all the dark timber beams. It also has two stable doors. It certainly is not typical of any other house in Australia.

But should we try and save it? What do you think? Does anyone know how to do a lifecycle assessment?

Intuitively it seems that we should. But it has gaps all over the place. We've used heaps of heating in the past year and for the first time ever used cooling in summer. Our bedroom has the equivalent open air gap of 20 cm x 20 cm as the louvres won't close.
On the other hand, we did read a report that said it would take 300 years for an inefficient existing house to use the same energy required to build a new place, even a supposedly sustainable one (can't remember the source.

For someone who wants to live in this house for years, they could easily fill the gaps and put in some insulation.

By the way, did we mention before about the recent scandalous past of this house - it involves lovers trysts, extreme wealth and untimely death. It was also famous for its Christmas lights. Two electricians used to come each year to set them up. That is until the green party poopers arrived who had neither the interest nor money to continue this tradition. Nor are we interested in continuing the scandals although who knows what might be unearthed when the diggers come in.

First half of 2010 - an expensive cardboard model

January - April: We spent this time finalising plans - we went without the study, got the front of the house looking better but didn't ever stray too far from the original plans.

We were very happy that we could achieve our four bedroom home in 214 square metres - a whole lot smaller than most homes being built in Australia these days (although we read somewhere recently that the average size in the UK is 77 square metres).

May - June: The building quotes came in. Devastation. They were much higher than what the architect had estimated (as if this has never happened to anyone before). We've spent the past two months trying to reduce the cost without any success.

Could our little cardboard model of the house be the most expensive cardboard model ever made? Is this all we were going to achieve after nine months of working with the architect?

In a state of complete despondency I called Metricon and Burbank - they wouldn't even touch our site because of the slope. I called another custom builder and set up an appointment with them - there had to be a cheaper way. But not really, because what starts off cheaper ends up the same because in other quotes there is no driveway or paving or retaining walls or toilets or walls (well, not quite...).

Another quandary - we know the 7 star rating and the recycled/low emissions materials is adding cost but philosophically, could we walk away from this? Would we be happy with any other outcome?

Along the way we lost a potential buyer for the current house (to relocate)) because the whole process was taking too long.

It would be no exaggeration to say that one of us got so concerned about costs and the impact on the next 30 years of our lives that she started scouring the papers to buy not a house, no, a unit. That little exercise was short-lived because even these were in short supply and expensive.

July: Decision-time and after deciding to sell off whatever assets we could find, and accepting a kind offer to live with James' parents we decide to go ahead. Woo-hoo. Now things are getting exciting.

Nov 2009: First set of plans

The plans did come back - on budget but less one room. How does that happen?

We loved the layout, hated the look from the outside at the front and were concerned about the lack of study.

Late 2009 What have we done?

Our new place is freeeeezing. We thought our old place was drafty and cold in winter. In this one, half the rooms have windows that don't even close.

Still it's only temporary and we are now fast tracking getting plans done. We thought about using a volume builder and trying to engage them on the sustainability opportunities for the new place. But by now you won't be surprised to learn that we didn't do this and instead went back to one of the 'sustainable' architects.

As well as listing all the environmental sustainability features and space requirements in our brief, we threw in some others:

• the home should respect the streetscape and homes around it. This doesn't mean it has to look the same, but that it not be a 'blot on the landscape'
• we wanted a carport not a garage. One of the aspects of our lives we have enjoyed is seeing our neighbours and having a chat over the fence.
• access to our bikes. We want them to be at the front of our house as they are as important as our cars.

What will come back?