I thought I would make this thread as people have known I have been on this journey for a while now… and not riding because of it.
So after a year of looking for houses, failed attempts at securing property at auction and offers above scenarios - Vee and I purchased a home in the area that we wanted an on a massive 880sqm block. Due to my generous inlaws - we have been able to stay with them whilst we undergo a major renovation to the house.
We are saving as much money as we can by undertaking the labour and some of the rebuilding under the guidance of Ivan, my Uncle in law who is a perfectionist. Ivan is a fabricator by trade - but built his first home on his own when he was 19. He has been a huge help and without him we would finish this project with a lot of debt and a house of lesser quality.
So - we started this process on the 27th of December and used the xmas break to get as far as we could. We stripped the house in 5 days.
The insulation that was in the roof has been kept, I will be adding this to the underfloor in the next couple of weeks.
Whilst I got busy straightening walls… Ivan started rebuilding walls, and cupboards. The blue framing is going to be the entertainment unit wall. The white cupboards are all custom made. We sketch what we would like the cupboard/wardrobe on paper - he would draw it up in Cad and get us to approve it before he cut all the melamine up to construct. These cupboards took about 3-5 days each to build and fit in. When we are only there on Saturday and Sunday you get an understanding as to why we have been doing this for so long.
Whilst Ivan was inside - I was outside grinding the thick render from the exterior. So far I am 4 full days into it - which has been spread over 2 months. I have at least one full day left.
We had to deconstruct the deck in order for the extension. I saved this until we had nothing else to do as it was nice to have lunch (or smoko for the tradies out there) out on the deck. This was a full weekend getting rid of the deck… we wanted to take care so we could re-use or sell the timber later on. We ended up selling it.
Before the extension started - we had to knock out the wall. This took a weekend, all bricks were saved and I will be using these for paving later on. The fence was removed and trees cut down for access into the yard (we are on a corner block). Ivan made up a temporary wall out of old doors to block off the big open gap created by the new hole in the wall.
At this stage the asbestos got removed (not by us). The house looked like a bomb has hit it… roof tiles were loose and bits of the trusses were all bent and broken. It was at this stage I thought ‘Holy fuck, what have we done’. Anyway, I quickly got over that and removed the floor in the bathroom, toilet and laundry.
This is when our cousin the builder steps in and gets his trades in on board. He had an excavator come in and dig a trench for the power which is going to be routed underground instead of the overhead connection which is it now. Then trenches for the footings which I helped pour… which the brickies did their thing over the weekend. I got back to grinding the render off and cleaning up under the house.
I have absolutely no clue about building houses and the outmost respect about what you are doing there but I just wanted to say that I love to see this happening.
Thanks all! One thing to remember - We don’t have the added pressure of having kids and we aren’t living there. It is just a massive time sinker.
I am missing out on social events, not having a weekend to relax and I do feel not having any downtime - but I always have to remember it is only temporary and once it is all done I can start to enjoy the house and it’s closeness to the trails that i love to ride.
Nice stuff - my sister owns exactly the same house, also in Canberra (and also being renovated) - thought I had seen that plan before, then realised I had drawn the same thing a few months ago!
Really awesome to see your progress and all the hard work coming to fruition!
Great thread, I love seeing pictures of renovation projects.
My Dad, sister and I are renovating/putting a new bathroom in a unit my sister and I own. I know how it feels when it drags out, we started in January on a much smaller project than yours and we aren’t quite finished yet. Except for the plastering we’ve done all the work ourselves though which is really satisfying.
