The lack of blog updates on the house hasn't meant that we have been idle - on the contrary. It's just that we've been doing a lot of things behind the scenes, forking over sums of money for this and that to approach a set of plans we can submit to council.
These have been developed partially with a builder who specialises in strawbale and earth homes, which we have been to see a few of and walked away extremely impressed. Current clients of theirs too have independently been very positive about the experience, as have other people involved in the small strawbale building industry in Australia.
We now have some finished (if they ever are!) plans for a single story "boomerang"-shaped house, with an upstairs rumpus room across the middle to capture the distant horizon views from our block. The builders have given us an initial quote to build this, and we understand what the bank will lend us - next challenge is to get these two figures a little closer to each other!
One step we've been holding off on for a long time now but have finally decided to do is to put
our Penshurst Street house on the market. We have kept hold of it ever since we
moved out of Sydney to Picton, renting it out to the one lot of tenants who have been great. However we now need to sell to afford what we need for our family home and with just a touch of regret it is about to be up for sale. We inspected it a few weeks ago and it's still being kept well by the tenants, the renovations we did before moving out still looking fresh.
Having been
in situations with extremely short notice to leave a rental premises ourselves, we are giving our tenants plenty of notice in case the new owners choose to move in rather than use it as an investment themselves.
It's been by far the most crazy and stressful period of our lives working through to this point with two young children in tow, and we wouldn't have got this far without the help of Margaret, Helen and Neil. Plus my amazing wife Liz dealing with a newborn, most of the housework and a daughter who certainly got the memo about expected behaviour during the "terrible twos".
There's plenty more to come we understand, but by mid to late next year all going well we should be relaxing with a glass of wine on our land in the house we designed and even built some of. Sounds awesome.
You have to set yourself challenges in life - they almost always pay off.