A practical guide to making a tree change, building on a budget, and living the ultimate country life!
Making a detailed budget for a DIY house build is not an easy task. At least, it wasn't for us: budgeting and managing finances is NOT our forte, as you'll soon discover! But if confessing our bumbling mistakes and oversights helps someone else in some small way, then they will not be in vain. Well,... Continue Reading →
12 January 2017: After a long and drawn-out process to get to this point, we now had a finished shed frame and a tight deadline to turn it into a house. 11 weeks in fact (our rental lease was due to run out on 30 March). We had two lists: the work we would outsource... Continue Reading →
Thursday 5 January 2017: the shed builder and his team arrived on site in what was already a record-breaking summer for high temperatures in the ACT region. Clearly the weather gods were going to throw everything they had at us throughout this build. To their immense credit, the building team barely took a break in... Continue Reading →
It was July 2016 and we finally had a workable plan to move onto our block. My husband, Matt, had just been made redundant and had picked up some contract work, so things were falling into place. We had spent countless hours, evenings and weekends drawing plans, getting quotes from tradies and suppliers, and preparing... Continue Reading →
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,... Continue Reading →
First of all, let me say that building a home out of a shed was not in our original, 'dream home' plan. My Pinterest account is chock-full of pictures of gorgeous, country estate-style, weatherboard-and-verandah homes with cottage gardens and the mandatory cocker spaniel (or spoodle) lying on the front step. That has been mine and... Continue Reading →
