Build on Razorback

We've just spent our first night in a new house. No, not our new house we intend to build, just a different rental property.

The one we moved into in December when our previous house in Picton was sold was a significant compromise. Given only two weeks to find a place and move out, we didn't have a lot of choice. But we were told at the time that the owners (one of who lives on site) were planning on selling it at the end of this year. So, this move was to preempt that while the newest little bubba is still inside, but also to get around the issues we had with the place.

The landlords were almost completely unresponsive, only wanting to do the bare minimum, and reneging on promises they made to fix the place up. Paying for 5 acres but only feeling we had the use of the house and immediate surrounds due to the landlady living (illegally) on site was another. Lack of garages or any external storage when we have two cars, a trailer, a ride-on mower and a caravan to store was starting to be a big hassle too.

So, we took the hit of pain and moved. We're back in Picton (well, north-west of it really) on 5 acres again, but this time with the landlords safely away in Sydney somewhere. The move was about as painful as you can imagine. Actually no, it would have been worse without the help of our parents - thanks to Margaret, Mum, and Dad (Happy Birthday!)

The owners had locked more locks than they gave us keys for, and then when we finally did get in the the place looked like a bombsite. It took three cleaners all day yesterday to make it acceptable. Not a good start.

But the setting is gorgeous - tucked in a valley. It's so picturesque that today AAMI are shooting a commercial there. Not sure if it's one of those dodgy driver ones, but if so then the approach road is certainly a good setting.

Hopefully this will have been an overall good move, and the last we make before we move onto our land.

Our block is now powered! There's a pole up and a meter box containing a bunch of meters all reading 0000000 - just like having a brand new car with a zeroed odometer.

The box contains a power point so we aim to go and plug a kettle in or something shortly just to test it out. However getting that power to a more useful location is still quite a hard slog of trenching ahead.

As for working out what to trench to, we're going over many different plans, working with some builders and hope to have decided on something a bit more announceable soon. Right now we spend several days getting very excited about one thing only to find a dead-end. This has been the case for several months now, we'd all like something a bit more concrete to go with. At least we do all that dead-end-finding now, before we've committed any money to the options.

This Friday we are going to visit a current project of one of the most promising builders we have been speaking with - with luck that path may prove fruitful.

Our neighbour asked us to get our boundary fence up as he wanted to start storing vehicles for his business on his land, so that was incentive enough to get that organised. We decided against doing the front fence at this stage due to the money that could be better used elsewhere, but even the process of getting two more sides fenced has been most exciting!

The pre-subdivision use of the land had a strange garden that we can't quite work out which stretched across our boundary, so the first task was to clear a path through that for the fence to run:



Then to get to the old wire on the rear fence, I had to hack huge amounts of overgrown grass and blackberries from the farm to our rear:


Once this clearing was done, a week or so later the most excellent fencers turned up and made quick work of getting holes sunk:



And posts in:



Liz even stopped by near a fresh post to show off her baby bump! :



A couple of days later, and we had 300-odd metres of fencing done - the side brand new and the rear rewired:



We happen to think the result is rather attractive:

We're spending a reasonably amount of time just mowing our block of land, and the associated bills with no real benefit are driving us to focus on saving to move on there!

The first structure went up some time ago - I built a compost bin! Compost is rather difficult to move between properties, so our previous two have been left with a nice supply thanks to all our kitchen waste. There wasn't much point doing that again, so a bit of research and time later, and our land was no longer 5 empty acres.

We've cleared some of the fallen trees and turned it into firewood, discovering our local wildlife in the process.

Not long after we purchased the block, there was of course the question of how to tend so much grass. The answer was served up courtesy of an eBay-ed large commercial ride-on mower (diesel to run on 100% biodiesel, of course!) which we collected from the Hunter Valley thanks to the impressive grunt of the VW and a trailer we decided to buy to do the move ourselves. Both of these have proved great investments, even with a bit of repair work we needed to do to the mower.

Starting this coming week our fencing starts to go up. The neighbor we are sharing the fence with unfortunately started the relationship off on a less-than-optimal note by reneging on a deal we had, however this is hopefully behind us now.

The neighbor on the other side is a far different story - it turns out I used to work with him back at Strathfield Car Radios 13 years ago! One of those real small-world stories, and enough to completely overpower the let-down of the other neighbour. He fenced his block with the help of his father who lives around the corner, running an olive farm. This means he can borrow farming equipment as needed, although yesterday he had broken his slasher. The fact that he was slashing at given he has sheep on there shows just how much the recent rain has made the grass grow. Our block has sure taken some mowing in recent times!

For the fencing we have to clear out a section of odd fenced garden that is mostly in our property but goes into the block next door which we want to separate ourselves from with the fence, this is tomorrow's task.

The back fence is somewhat intact so we've asked the fencer to keep what he can to help keep our costs down, and I spent some time clearing away the blackberries and other overgrowth from the farm behind us with another new piece of gardening equipment we're going to need - a petrol whipper-snipper (using our electric one when the nearest power point we own is 3-4km away was proving a little difficult).

We have decided for reasons of cost not to fence the front for now, instead waiting for a final decision on where our driveway is to go (there's a drainage ditch which if we are careful we can drive across but this won't work in the long-term for delivery trucks, etc.)

Once that is done, we're pretty much done with the first phase of our project - get land and boundaries established. After that, the next phase begins - Services - where we get power, sewerage, water, hot water and phone available on the block in preparation for the following phase. This will be when we put up the barn with kitchenette, bathroom, heating, etc., then back in the caravan we purchased as cheap bedrooms and kitchen that we can sell later (currently sitting outside our rental property), and move onto our land!

Current hopeful plan has us there in spring, after the new baby comes along. We could be there far earlier but have to pace our spending according to our earnings.

I have a flickr set called Build on Razorback where I'm putting pictures of the process, and am also working on a more specific website to showcase our crazy plans as they evolve.

Here's a belated Christmas post with some updates on our life.
Phoebe had a great time on Christmas day, exploring Santa's presents, and those from her parents, grandparents, and other great friends. Having our family together for the day was great - Phoebe really loves being around people she knows.
Favourite presents vary from day to day, but between boxes of Duplo, wooden train set, a play house, and piles of In the Night Garden books and a talking doll, there's plenty of entertainment.

The sale of our land has gone through - pics shortly - and as such we are now planning how to move on there and start building as soon as possible. Our current rental property being only five minutes away has turned out to be basically the only positive of it - the previous tenants' seven puppies appear to have left a legacy of an impressively robust flea population. These things are sent to challenge us.

Since we now own the land and are planning to get into temporary accommodation there quickly, we've decided not to do much unpacking here (hence the boxes in the picture). Exactly what form this accommodation will take is still up for discussion, but we may yet become trailer trash :)

Lots of recent pics up in the usual location.

And now some far better news (although it's hard to be as excited as we should be with our rental hassles going on at the same time).

We have bought 5 empty acres of land to build a house on!

In all our time looking at houses around Picton, none of them ever grabbed us as a perfect place to live in. All involved some fairly major compromises. But one thing that not even one of them had was a decent basic set of sustainability features. This is very important to us to save energy and reduce our environmental impact, and is something we both feel passionately about.

So, we started considering building our own house. The government helps out suggesting this too through the current stimulus measures of halving stamp duty (which we probably won't qualify for), and the fact that you only pay your stamp duty on land value when building, not the total cost of land and house built on top.

We really like the acre we are currently living on and if anything want more so that we can have horses and other animals grazing, a small orchard, other fruit and veg, etc., but around Picton there really are no acre or larger lots left. More might be coming, but nobody knows when and we want to be live in this house as a young family asap!

So we broadened our search to Thirlmere and Razorback, both places where larger lots are still available. We found a great 12.5 bushland acres on Razorback and spent months investigating it only to find out that due to legal complications it was unclear whether anyone had rights to build on it. Legal minefield, dropped that one like a hot potato.

Discouraged after all our effort at that point, we briefly considered just buying where we are now as "good enough", but in the end we wanted to change so much, and it was sold before we had a chance to.

I had never really stopped looking online - mainly using the excellent but mostly unknown Google Real Estate. One day I found new advertisements for a new subdivision we had visited months ago, but ruled out due to the excessive prices they were asking at the time. But now the prices were far more reasonable, so off I went for a drive.

Two cleared, flat, ex-farmland 5-acre lots remained for sale and I was there to look at one with a dam - I did, but was underwhelmed with the position and views so just for interest walked up to the adjoining one sans dam on my way back to the car. I turned around, took in the sweeping panoramic views, and immediately thought it a very real possibility.

The next 24 hours is a blur. Liz returned from work and I took her there the next morning. She was still unsure but in comparision to what we had seen more recently, it has far better views, was better located, and cheaper. I said "so, what about if I was to make an offer?" Brave Liz, after just seeing it, took a punt and said yes on the basis that it was not binding, just a verbal discussion between parties.

I rang the real estate office and that afternoon, 24 hours after I first saw it, 8 or so after Liz had, our first offer was accepted!

It turns out that the developer is extremely keen to say the least to offload these last two lots of land and move on to his next project, so he jumped at the chance, even at our low offer price. Two days ago the contracts were exchanged and we paid our 10%, and today the "Sold!" stickers go up!

What a huge step we've taken, and now the huge process of building what will hopefully be our lifetime family home begins.

More details of course to come.

I'm absolutely overjoyed to have my girls back home again! They returned safely Friday morning (no thanks to Malaysian Airlines' website with wrong times on it, nor the airline in general with indifferent service and poor treatment). The trip was a great success, with them visiting friends and family in many parts of England. Photos to follow once I've seen them first :)

It's been a rather busy weekend since then, starting with me getting to know Phoebe again. I'm so happy that she seems much more attached to me now, perhaps absence makes even the young hearts grow fonder. It certainly has done for me, for both of them.

While they were away, I went shopping for land to build a house on. Where we are living now is a truly fantastic house, in a great position, but I'm glad we tried out the place before buying because, in ways we almost can't articulate, it's not really "us". It's too ostentatious, not energy or water efficient enough, has a tennis court that disagrees with my knees, and which is also part of the problem of the backyard. One acre is big enough to grow food and/or graze animals, but not really when a good deal of that is taken up with a tennis court.

So, we've all but decided that we want to build. I originally was on the lookout for land right in town at Picton, but have branched out across Razorback, which has the benefit of being closer to work, friends and family, and also being cheaper for the same size block. Not to mention that there are much larger blocks available, such as our current favourite that we're researching after I took Liz there and she concurred - 12.5 bushland acres close to a great little Primary School. Phoebe had a great time chasing animals and spotting ducks on the dam, so I'm sure she'll love it there too.

It is however in a bushfire-prone area, but I have new-found confidence that we'll be able to design to cope (and plan to get out) in that worst-case scenario, after yesterday putting out a fire in a neighbour's backyard. They were burning off something or other, and the high winds carried some ashes across into their garden. Nobody home, nor anyone in the house between them and us, so I went in, called the fireies for backup and found that their garden hose just reached long enough to drench the area. If I hadn't have had the day off work, and Liz wasn't home either, then the outcome could have been much worse. Fireies arrived just in time to say "nice work mate, that'll do it" and left a calling card for the owner to get in touch with them.

Burning-off is crazy at the best of times, but with gale-force winds predicted, and so much dryness around, it's pure idiocy. Luckily Liz had the car packed and Phoebe ready to go for a worst-case scenario. Which we both hope to never see.

Unfortunately that car almost remains packed, with one of my grandmothers suffering a heart-attack up in Nambucca. I'm on the train to work now but might be off for a quick drive up the coast later today or this week, depending on how that progresses. She's stable but heavily impacted last I heard.

So a very eventful weekend, let's see what this week has in store.