How is it really going?

April 2011
Is it now we should be reporting torture and doom? We know you want to live vicariously and hear all the tales of woe from living with the in-laws and dealing with builders. So we are sorry (although we aren't) that we actually can't report much trauma from recent months. There's been a few bits and pieces that have come up which we didn't expect (eg the look of Hebel internally) but overall it's been OK.
We are officially two months behind schedule with no penalties to apply. This is mainly because of the wet weather last year. Now we have a roof the rain shouldn't be so much of an issue. Jenny is having stern words with her Bureau colleagues - surely they can manage the weather for us?
Our neighbours have generously headed off around Australia for six weeks so we are housesitting and have the pleasure of living next to our very own building site. Not long after they get back, we are going to housesit our neighbours house on the other side of our place.
The main challenge of the next month is to keep the five chickens, two rabbits and eight goldfish alive.

In the frame

February-March 2011

Back of house (faces north)

Front of house

Kitchen and dining area

Lego for grown ups

January 2011
So much for builders disappearing for all of January. We had people on site from the first working day and before long the Hebel walls were going up. 
Hebel is an aerated concrete brick which is larger and lighter than traditional bricks but with much better thermal and insulating properties. It does not require any supporting structures and the blocks just get glued onto each other - Lego for grown ups.

More than a slab of beer

Christmas 2010

After all the angst, Santa looked after us and presented us with a lovely new slab just days before Christmas. 

Which will come first - the slab or Christmas?

Ours was going to be the project than ran super smoothly, to budget and on schedule. So where should we start the litany of woe?

Well, we're two months into our contract and we still don't have a slab. The builder is blaming the rain (and we agree, it has been wet) but perhaps if it hadn't taken so long to clear the rubbish from the block in the first few weeks the slab might have been poured before the rain came. In other events:

• the relocation company managed to severely damage our beautiful gum tree as they moved the house. They also tore up four nature strips - ours and three of our neighbours - and cracked a neigbours' fence post then refused to take any responsibility for the fence post. A few stern conversations soon reversed this position.
• the builder has so far managed to disconnect our neighbours phone not once, but twice. Excellent effort. The first time it took six days to fix and the next time the neighbours sorted it out themselves in a couple of days. He's also managed to tear up some of their plants and put equipment on their property without asking them first. At this rate we won't be welcome back. 

On current form the only slab that we might have by Christmas is one that we buy from the bottle shop to sooth our homeless sorrows.

Leavin' on a Big Truck

All my stumps are packed I'm ready to go

I'm waiting here close to the road

I hate to say good bye to my old folk

But the traffic's slowin' it's early morn

The truckie's waitin' he's blowin' his horn

Already I'm so cut I'm almost broke

So fix me and send me far away

Tell me that you'll visit me

Give me paint and a new family

Cause I'm leavin' on a big truck

Just hope that I will not get stuck

Oh Kew I'm leavin' you

All jacked up

Roofless and stumpless - the dear cottage is not quite as cute as she used to be.

It's all jacked up and ready to go. We're now just waiting for the big trucks and the VicRoads permits.

The house will be loaded onto two trucks during the day and moved in the wee hours of the morning when traffic is at a minimum.

The relocation company will do a letterbox drop to all the homes in the street asking them not to park their cars on the street so the trucks can get past. We are wondering what happens to the cars that don't get moved.

Work starts again

The crew have started work again and holes are everywhere. The fireplace is gone, the roof tiles are being taken off and some windows removed. With extra supporting beams and a tarpaulin to cover gaps, the house looks a bit like a trussed up chicken with a piece of foil on top.

While things are going to plan at our end, the woman buying the house has some challenges. Her block in Mansfield is under water and is unlikely to be dry enough to put the house on by the end of the month (as per the contract). So the house might half to be a halfway house for a while.

Two pieces or three?

The cutting has started - one beautiful straight line from front to back right through the middle of the house. They are going to have to be massive trucks if this house is only going in two pieces.

Work is progressing so fast that our neighbour, Max, has to go away next week and he is devastated that he might miss the big event. We don't think it will happen for a few weeks yet. The absestos still needs to be removed along with the fireplace and roof tiles.

Going, going...

Well, we are gone but the house is still going. The hard work started for us a month ago and we finally finished on Sunday. We packed up the house, moved a ridiculous number of boxes, sent stuff in all directions (storage, friends, op shops, ebay, transfer stations...) and eventually moved the five of us.

We are now comfortably ensconced at the parents/in laws and we are never leaving. Nola (Jenny's mother-in-law) is doing our washing on a daily basis and we have a dishwasher which is not called James. We are onto something here, especially with built in babysitting. Let's see how long the bliss lasts.

The relocation people started preparing our house for its new home today. They were not impressed with the roof insulation falling on their heads in bits as they took the plaster ceiling sheets off in the dining room. We were impressed that there was actually insulation up there as it certainly never felt like it. We are also enjoying finding newspapers from 1936. Somethings never change...

"Parents who thought their children should be set a fair amount of home work each evening were just as much to blame as teachers, for the excessive home work some pupils had, said the Chief Inspector of Primary Schools." The Herald, 6 May 1936

The prep work will take about three to four weeks before the actual move. Beams are being manually taken off so they can be properly reinstated without cuts and the roof tiles, fireplace and all the guttering have to go. We will still be left with a helluva mess at the end.

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?

Cop out #1

And so it transpired that we moved in July 2009.

Somehow we had to justify to ourselves that it was OK to reneg on our commitment to retrofitting. We did this on the basis of cost, degree of difficulty and lack of confidence in the final outcome. We know some people won't accept this or may have persevered more but for us, after many long conversations, this is where we ended up.

The place we moved to is cute to look at but essentially a knock down. We have squeezed the five of us in and will live here until we work out what to do.

It seems we have got lucky again with great neighbours. The location is about four blocks from our old place so still very much part of our local community.

The next phase of this journey now begins - what kind of place to design and who with. And what to do with the existing house. Could it be possible to sell and relocate it rather than smash it to smithereens?

We're staying FOREVER Part 2 (December 2008, written June 2010)

Of course we didn’t get the ugly brown brick house. So like a lover on the rebound we decide we’re staying in Oswin St, FOREVER.

We head back down the architect route. This time it costs us real money. And you may be surprised to read that we decided to work closely with the mainstream architect. “Let’s work with him to expand the knowledge and skill base in this important profession,“ we nobly thought to ourselves.

Well, guess what? It didn’t work.

So the principle of collaboration and shared learning – out the window. He didn’t give us what we briefed and totally ignored our budget (surely that’s never happened to anyone else).

Where to now? A period of nothingness.

We started putting some insulation in our roof, we got some new water tanks and connected them to the toilet and washing machine, we watched our newish native garden wither in the drought.

And although we were staying in Oswin St FOREVER, one of the two of us couldn’t help checking out houses for sale around the area.

We're staying FOREVER (July 2008, written May 2010)

Turns out it wasn’t such a straightforward decision.

We had no less than three architects known for their sustainable designs and one self proclaimed but not really sustainable architect (and there are certainly growing numbers of these around) traipse through our place. They gave their views on how we could improve our living and bedroom space and make the house more sustainable.

We’re all for mainstream architects proclaiming their interest and skill in sustainable housing. But did we want our place to be their practice ground?

The challenge was that for an 80 year old bungalow, the retrofit was incredibly fiddly and we know what that means – $$$$. Added to this was the revamped and slightly (only slightly) extended living and bedroom space – the costs were getting up to half a million dollars – without actually adding an extra room.

So principle no 2 of the three R‘s (reuse) goes out the window. Off we go to bid on a nearby house, a fantastically ugly brown brick place from untouched from the 1970s. Perfectly liveable for a number of years until we can afford to rebuild.

Should we stay or should we go?

January 2008 (written May 2010)

This was the big question that occupied our minds.

This photo is our house. Cute isn’t it? We worked hard for five years to renovate every single bit of this home. We’ve been very happy here for 13 years. But along the way we “discovered” sustainability and it’s ruined our lives. Really, it has.

Because now we question everything. How can the house be orientated better, how could the breeze stop coming in through the closed windows. What would make it more liveable? How much longer can we live without airconditioning?

To help answer these questions, we organised an energy audit and got lots of recommendations about how to make improvements.

The problem was, we couldn’t find anyone who was interested in helping us to retrofit the house. And we are not so handy ourselves.

Added to this was the fact that after we renovated, we had three children and this meant that the fantastic space we created in our home for two didn’t meet the needs of a household of five.

What should we do - stay in the house and work with what we have or move on? Stay tuned for the next instalment.