Demo, rebuild and restore.

It's been four months since my last update. Wow! I can't believe how the time just flies by.

We are inching every so slowly towards our dream of building our own energy efficient home. I'm not sure if I've said this before, but if we had of known how long this whole process was going to take, we may have settled on buying a house that we didn't really love or see the potential in. They were the two options at that point two years ago... Yes, it's been two years and we are still waiting on our drafty to finish the final touches on our drawings so we can send them off to our Buildng Surveyor. We've been through every emotion, from anger and impatience to finally some kind of surender.

In the meantime, Pete has been busy getting the block and outbuildings ready for our build. He's removed part of the pergola, the old brick outhouse (remember that saying 'built like a brick sh**house'??) Well it certainly was!! No cyclone or earthquake would have shifted that beast!

This is the small shed attached to the end of the brick garage - coming down! Not one but two layers of concrete on the floor meant a whole day of jackhammering to get one layer up! Hmmm....we're rethinking this and a bobcat will be a much better solution.

Pete will hire a bobcat and a small tip truck and after he's cut into the concrete with a demo saw, he'll take it up with the bobcat and put it straight into the truck and do runs to the concrete recycling place which is only about 10-15 monutes down the road.

Pete's currently working on the brick garage which has to be partially removed. We could have knocked the whole thing down (it really does need to be!) but we'd have nowhere to store Pete's tools, and Adriano wants some garage for his own use so we've kept it. It's required a lot of stabalising work, with metal plates that sandwich the wall on the lane side, where big cracks are. This internal wall Pete has built will be right on the boundary between us and Adrian so he's building it to fire rating standards.

Looking back towards the end of the garage that will come down once the internal wall Pete's building is finished.

Beautiful job by my very capable man! The end of the garage that is being saved, all set up with his tools and a 'smoko' station as well! The floor in the garage was already tiled in these lovely slate tiles. It was a very fancy garage :)

Things are changing all the time when it comes to our build. We have challenges at every turn and we haven't even put spade into the soil yet. Currently we have an issue with our drafty and getting our construction drawings complete so we can lodge all that we need with our building surveyor, who will in turn get our builiding permit for us. We have been facing delays in getting our plans to completion due to one member of their team being on an extended trip to their homeland. It's incredibly frustrating and at the moment we are looking into what our options are here, consumer affairs being one. We realise that solving this issue with them directly is the best and probably easiest way to go about things. We call our drafty every week and each time he gives us no solid answers, nor a solution. We're not inclined to bear teeth here but how else to do we get our desired result? By being nice and patient? Clearly, so far, that hasn't worked.

The second issue that has just come to light, literally, is to do with our builder. It's pointing at even more delays and us having to re think the way we go about this build...

But I think I'll leave that for another update, as I need more information, and a better understanding of how we might move forward.

Much love,

Nat xx