Step one: moving out

Last weekend we packed up the house and moved into our tiny tiny flat down the road. Moving is horrible and wonderful, both. I love the cathartic, cleansing nature of the whole process - picking up every object we own and deciding: is it rubbish, is it for Vinnies, do we take it to the tiny tiny flat, or store it? That decision for every item in every cupboard in the house. I think we divested ourselves of about one fifth of all the stuff we owned, which feels fabulous.

Our house now has a portaloo, which is ridiculously exciting. Nothing doing aside from that, though. We're running two timelines: construction and money. At the moment both are running late by about two weeks.

The money has been harder than anyone expected because some new credit rules came into being from 1 Jan which require any lender to be incredibly conservative about calculating the borrower's cashflow. Assets don't matter so much as cash income now, so our lovely broker, Sarah, is jumping through hoops getting all manner of paperwork to the bank. We've secured a construction loan but it'll be up to 2 weeks before the builder gets access to the money.

Luckily (from one perspective), the builder stuffed up the Construction Certificate paperwork so we're still awaiting CC. Then the certifier proved to be more meticulous than usual, and he's asked for a heap of changes to the plans so Bill's back on the job redrawing them. More days lost, more money paid. We may have to lift the entire roof a smidge to achieve 2/3 ceiling height over 2.4metres - one of the certifier's issues. It's a perfect example of how opaque this process is to me: Bill should have known the code and drawn compliant plans, so why are we paying him again to fix them?

No big deal really, and in some ways an unexpected blessing as we don't have the money to start the job yet. Kim politely noted today that some would say that signing a $236,000 building contract when you don't have a bank loan is risky. She may have something there.

So there's a tension between our desire to see builders on site and Finally Get Started - especially since we moved into the tiny tiny flat - and our practical need for the builders not to be in a position to start before we have the money.

Surprising costs this week:
Council CC fees $2500
More Council CC fees: $885
Engineering report: $1800
Dilapidation report 1: $400
Bill''s extra drafting: $180

Kitchen post 1

I've been putting off posting to this blog because the 'back story' is so long I can't bear the thought of writing it down. Who has the time in this twilight pre-construction world of boxing and packing and mailing the cat to Brisbane? So I'll just begin in the middle of the beginning, which is to say: before we begin building, but long after we began planning.

I'm sitting at the kitchen table with Sharon, the stylish kitchen designer from Freedom. She's meticulously re-drawing our kitchen so she can tell us how much it would cost Freedom to build it. We went through the exact same process a year ago with Adam. As I think about it now, Adam may have kick-started us on the great Renovation Escalation by designing a kitchen so expansive (and expensive) that building it in the same old place as the last kitchen seemed mad. Why not build a new room for this lovely kitchen, we thought?

Escalation is the defining concept of this renovation business. When we began, Phil and I remind each other, we only planned to build a deck. A timber deck with a pergola and a laundry; my modest ambition being to put on a load of washing without getting rained on. Oddly enough, a year later we're spending several hundred thousand dollars but my 'laundry' is just a cupboard in the kitchen.

Before it begins

I've lost track of how long we've been talking about fixing the house. Last year I expected to be sitting on my new deck by Christmas. Last Christmas. That's when we thought we were building a deck; 2009 was characterised by such modest aspirations. 2010 is another story (storey?) altogether.

At this stage Home Projectz, our builder, is beginning work on site on 17 January, with a 3 month build planned. Even typing it feels like jinxing it.