Tales From the Box

BRDAY+1
We have action! Our topsy turvy rear slab has been ripped up and now looks just right to plant a fab veggie garden. However this area will be where the main plumbing will exit our slab from our bathroom. The house is about 46 years old yet the dirt below the slab looks relatively fresh….in a weird sort of way…

They have also started to cut into the front part of the slab to extend our floorspace in the main area of the house. This is to align the front beam with enough clearance to make it uniform with the rest of the ceiling height.

Slideshow

Today marks the first day of our renovation which is otherwise to be known as Box Renovation Day +01 (BRDAY+1). The cool dawn sun flickered on the large pile of timber nestled on our front lawn. We have had many false starts on our way to BRDAY+1. Our mortgage lender has not once, not twice but thrice stuffed up – i.e. lost our paperwork, tried to re-mortgage our house again (i.e. not realizing that we are in fact doing the extensions) and generally taken their sweet time. But all appears to have sorted itself out…

Gavin from Premium Mortgage Solutions has been invaluable. I have no idea how the average joe in the street actually deals with the banks. While we were waiting for our lender to give the final stamp approval after jumping through all of the specified hoops, we learned that the person actually dealing with our application had gone on holidays (at the very last moment). The boss then couldn’t find the application….and went away for a long weekend.

Anyway Gavin has been our proverbial bulldog in harassing the bank to just do their job efficiently. He has gone beyond what he needs to do, which for most brokers means securing the loan and signing the papers. Gavin does much much more than this. This isn’t the first time that he has stepped up so save our behinds – we had similar issues in 2003 when our lawyers forgot to process our first home buyers discount which threw out our mortgage deposit and almost made the purchase of The Box fall through. But Gavin was there…

Anyway as we start on the physical building we acknowledge Gav tireless efforts on our behalf!

So if you haven’t heard the news (because it hasn’t been announced here) our major renovations start in earnest this week. This is an exciting time because we have been planning these reno’s ever since we moved in (3 years Thursday) and have been going through the motions for the actual building since February this year. I am hoping to write post a blog every few days about the process of getting to where we are in terms of the ideas behind our slightly odd choices. So until i have any physical evidence of renovation work, I present to you….The Inspiration series!

On a cold blustery December day – I was wedded to my wife at the large and lavish Fairmont Resort – nestled in the glorious surrounds of the Jameson Valley. The day following our wedding as we journeyed back down the mountain, we drove past this house which inspired us – due to the use of colour (greys/blacks) and the use of red timber to offset the color. That and it bore very close links with our own house on stilts. I suppose we want our house to combine a genuine Australian architectural style with a sense of classic modernism – a love for all things square, simple and sophisticated.

In fact if you want to buy it – its available…don’t delay buy today!

Tales from the Box – after many weeks of quiet its about to get much louder. And this begins with a move to our brand spankin’ new Media Temple servers. More to come….