Countrified

On Christmas Eve, 2015, after 11 years of dreaming and planning, we finally took possession of our dream block of land, a 1.6 acre parcel on the edge of a small village in rural NSW, half an hour north of Canberra.

We had a house plan we loved, the perfect block to put it on, and a great builder lined up who could build the house within our budget. All we needed to do was get the plans through Council and get the mortgage approved. And then…

It all came to a grinding halt. We were forced to put all our plans on hold while my husband’s employer began a major restructure, with my husband’s job highly likely be on the chopping block sometime in the next six months.

So we waited – our second lesson in patience and even more gruelling than the first. Meanwhile we were advised that the rental property we had spent the past year in was being put on the market for sale, so we opted to move. At the eleventh hour we found a place fifteen minutes out of town, at significantly less rent per week, and gratefully moved in.

With the uncertainty around my husband’s employment, and with way too much time on our hands to think, we started questioning whether we were on the right track with this house plan. We already had a mortgage on the land and not a great deal of equity (that’s a whole other story), and adding on the cost of a spacious four-bedroom house would put a lot of pressure on us to find and maintain a significant level of income. It would be quite some time before we’d be able to apply for a mortgage, and we both loathed the idea of having to keep renting indefinitely, not to mention the financial craziness of paying off someone else’s mortgage when we could be focusing on our own.

So we started researching alternative options that would get us onto our block either in temporary accommodation, or much more cheaply than a conventional house build. We looked at transportable houses, kit homes, modular homes, shipping container houses (temporary and permanent), dongas, caravans, standard shed fit-out, caravan-inside-shed… and probably a few others I’ve forgotten about. One by one we discarded them for some or all of the following reasons: too cheap-looking and ultimately not worth what they cost (transportable and modular homes); too small (shipping containers and dongas); too cold for this climate (caravans, even inside a shed); a large outlay for what would end up being just a shed (typical shed fit-out); banks would only loan 65% (kit homes); council generally wouldn’t allow to be used for more than 12 months (standard class 10 shed fit-out, dongas, caravans, etc.)

We talked, argued, changed our minds, went in circles, chewed the ear off our mortgage broker (who is also a good friend) and despaired of ever actually moving onto our block… and then one day, a wonderfully wise and creative friend of mine said, “Maybe you could redesign the floor plan a bit so that you can build it in stages – a small section now and the rest later?”

It made such total sense that I wondered how we hadn’t thought of it ourselves. It was one of many occasions on which we were incredibly grateful for the ideas, input, advice, and experience of others who had been on this journey before or who had particular expertise that they generously shared with us. Each one of them saved us from making costly or time consuming mistakes that might have derailed our plans.

So the seed was planted and the only question was how exactly we could put it into action. We immediately began coming up with options for a new floor plan and, after countless iterations, our current plan was born. We would build a ‘wing’ that would ultimately become the rumpus room, office, and guest bedroom and bathroom, and put in a kitchen that we could remove later. We went on a brief tangent of considering building it conventionally, and looked at various building materials, but in all cases the cost or time-frame quickly spiralled beyond what we were willing or able to spend. Finally, after exhaustive research and discussion, we were left with one viable option: to use a shed frame and do most of the work ourselves.

It sounded quite simple. We were certainly very excited to finally have a viable plan. Around that time my husband found out he was to be made redundant, and the payout was enough to cover 100% of our estimated build costs including a contingency fund, though we knew it would be tight. But there are plenty of sayings about ‘best laid plans’ and, as we were about to find out, we were still almost six months away from breaking ground.

Next: The Shed House – Part 3