Simplifying life for future dreams

contemporary bedroom design by 4.bp.blogspot.com

Well life has certainly been a little crazy & emotional here on the dream house front. If you missed the progress update a while back you can read the whole story HERE

Vt Interiors

We got a quote from a second builder for our dream house & it was actually more expensive than our quote from the first builder, with lesser quality fixtures & fittings.

WOW!

Doesn't the truth hurt or in our case disappoint :o(

Water leaf Interiors

We have had further discussions with builder No.1 & there are ways we can bring our price down a bit.

He also apologised for the actions of the kitchen & tile guys who both thought we would up our budget dramatically, so recommended more than was affordable for us.

These are some of the things we can change.

contemporary bathroom design by San Francisco interior designer Amoroso Design

In order to build our house to our liking we have opted to wait a bit & work towards ridding ourselves of  all debt.

We have several investment properties in The Blue Mountains we can sell, which will leave us owning our land, vehicles & be debt free, ready to build with a slightly bigger budget, not to mention ridding us of the stresses you sometimes face as a landlord.

I know it has taken me a while to update you all on this house building story, but we have really had to do a lot of thinking, planning & research before we could make any decisions.

This included going back on the project home search.

 As it turns out we just really love the home we designed & felt we would be better to make some sacrifices in other areas to achieve our goal. So, farewell investments & hope our dream home turns out to be a great retirement plan instead!

Wish me speedy house sales!!

CHEERS

Trish xxx

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A dream house Update

contemporary family room design by Toronto interior designer Jennifer Brouwer

Those that read my blog regularly would know that recently we suffered a devastating blow from our builder, where after months of telling us he could build to our budget, he came back to us with a quote

 ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS OVER BUDGET!!

After much thought & discussion we have decided to do some research & planning toward becoming owner builders. The only part of building this house my dream guy can't do is the slab,brick work & plumbing. He is very clever like that. 

traditional living room design by new york architect Austin Patterson Disston Architects

The savings we could make would mean we wouldn't need to sacrifice those beautiful timber floors that I covet. My dream guy has laid timber floors before using the hidden nail method, Perfect!!!!

In order to do this we  will be spending the next 12months working towards ridding ourselves of any debt, we will also use this time to plan & research & we are allowing a 12 month time period to build.

Well, that is the plan at this point, things could change, but there is nothing to lose by looking into these things & taking time to save a little more.

Our neighbor is a draftsmen who went owner builder on his home, except he acted as more of a project manager. He didn't do any hands on labour & says he still saved money. His house took 9mths to build. My dream guy helped him out with a lot of things on the house site so he is more than happy to sit down with us & walk us through  the process, as well as draw up our plans. This is great!

Any advice or website recommendations on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry I haven't been around much this past week, my family & myself have been taken over by a monster virus & we are all very unwell, not much fun for the kids as it is school holidays here in OZ.

Have a lovely week everyone!

CHEERS

Trish xxx

All images via houzz

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