The story so far...

The story of how we arrived to where we are today is long and varied.

For the last 2-3 years Heli would curl up in my bed with a net book and surf the web looking for houses. Most were discounted by the floor plan (if supplied) instantly. In Finland it is mandatory to supply the floor plan; it should be here too. If it passed the floor plan test, it had to then pass the picture and walk in pantry test. Most didn't.

Those that passed, we generally went and had a look at. Some we regretted in doing so; we could not get out of quickly enough. Some we gave some very serious thought too.

But one issue remained: We'd end up spending anywhere from $500k-$800k for a house that we're going to spend (at least) another $200k+ on in renovations. You'd end up with a half a new house, and half a 30+ year old house. And left wondering when/what would go wrong next!

So, to our utter surprise, we both ended up of the view that we'd prefer to build from scratch.

That then left a choice of:

• Build a new estate (in the middle of nowhere, no services and horrendous estate covenants).
• Build in an existing area. Given that vacant blocks are rare, that really left one choice: Knock Down and Rebuild.

This did us the favour of severely reducing the amount of properties that we needed to look at!

Then, fortune, events and luck all coincided and we found the perfect property. It ticked all of the boxes (and a few more!) that we'd been looking for. The right location, the right price range and most importantly, the right size!

So we went off to look at it. We were not alone! It was an early 1960's brick house that had lived its life well, but now it was time to start afresh. Of all of the properties we'd seen, the name list was the longest of all of them, some 15 or more people had looked at it. All I felt was "Go away! This is MINE!". I enquired about seriously interested parties, there were four. I asked for a copy of the section 32 and site plan. They'd email it to me on Monday.

We drove off very excited.

Then I remembered that I had a camera phone (don't we all??? DOH!), a quick U-turn and a picture later, we had what we needed: Sizes.

So, with site details in hand, we went in search of a house to put on 'OUR' block, bearing in mind that we'd not purchased it yet. YET!

We'd been looking at 5 bedroom houses for a while, and quite liked the Porter Davis floor plans, we found that they were well designed, in that they were well thought out and 'liveable'. Of course, the mandatory features were exactly what we needed: a decent kitchen space and a walk in pantry.

So off we went to the Porter Davis Saltwater Coast display village. The first house we walked was the Brookwater 49. It was overwhelming. It was the first house of this size that either of us had ever walked into. It was a mistake. Even though we spent a good 30-40 minutes simply sitting in there, getting a feel of the house, it's ebb and flow, it just felt too big and not the right design for us. I think we should have started a little smaller. We also had some issues with the staff. Telling us what we could or could not do: "It's a Prestige house, you can’t do that!". "Oh, I'm sorry, we're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you're telling me what?" The attitude quickly put us off, so we left.

Still having some of Saturday afternoon left, we then went and visited the display village at Williams Landing. I was keen to do that, as Boutique was also there, and based on floor plans, I quite liked the Montpellier 43. We walked though it, and really did not like what we saw. To us, and we're all different, there were some odd bits to the floor plan, and the display home finish was really not quite what I expected. Perhaps we had our expectations set very high by starting at Porter Davis. We still talked to the staff there, and they said that they'd get us a site plan on Monday. I'm still waiting...

Then we discovered the Waldorf 48! Tick! Tick! Tick! And some more ticks for good measure! I think that we'd found what we wanted. It worked for us. It was closing time, so we had to go, but we'd be back the next day.

We spent an excited night looking though the Waldorf in detail, the galleries and the facade options. We quickly came to the conclusion that the Hampton facade was not negotiable! So we set off to Berwick Waters to see Porter Davis's newest Waldorf, the one in our chosen facade, the Hampton.

It was love at first sight!

By the end of the weekend, we'd found the block we wanted, and the right house to put on it.

Now all we had to do was to buy it!

I called the real estate office and waited for the results of the 9am sales meeting. This would tell us if had been any other offers over the weekend. There was one, insultingly low, that had been declined. There had been one other, realistic offer. Ok. Game on. Heli works in a job where she can not simply pick up the phone to receive calls, so I could only communicate with her via SMS. So, in a true technological reflection of the age, we had a bidding war via SMS and phone calls. By 3pm Monday afternoon, we'd WON! A little over the initial guestimate of the price range, but not insanely so. We met the agent that night to put the initial holding deposit on it, with a further 5% to follow within the week.

So, from casually looking at the block at 11am on Saturday morning, by 3pm on Monday, we'd decided what house to put on it, and we'd won the bidding war. Whew!

For the next two to three months, we continued to look at what was available, and we became more and more convinced that we'd truly found the perfect block for a good price!

We went back to Williams Landing and starting talking to the sales staff in earnest. This was all fun and games until the sales person who we'd butted heads with at SaltWater Coast showed up and got all pushy again! Note to Porter Davis Staff/Head Office: I'm not interested in a turf war on sales; I'm interested in buying a house! We get to decide whom we're happy to deal with, NOT YOU!

In the end, we went back (the opposite end of the city!) Berwick Waters and dealt with Daniel there. We can not recommend him enough.

So early in September we settled the property. Yey! Now we could look at getting the old house demolished.

We made several phone calls. Most were not returned. Of those the two that did, one, express demolitions (which clearly isn't) took two months to get back to us. The other, far more responsive person was Andre from Online demolitions. He arranged to meet us on site (so we can be sure that it's the right house we're talking about... Don't laugh, it's been known to happen!), he was punctual and pleasant to deal with. Compared to the eventual, expressdemolitions quote, online was a little more; but I'd far prefer to deal with someone who is pleasant to deal with and reliable. Cheapest is not always the best!

So now it's time to abolish the services to the property. There is no gas connection to the property, so nothing to do there. We'd previously asked for the vendor to disconnect the services, but that appears not to have happened. So once we sent the abolishment forms into PowerCor, a few weeks later we got a call from Origin. Sigh. We'll have that done in the next 28 days. Double Sigh. Still waiting for that to happen.

However, in the meantime, we've had the initial soil test performed. This was necessary to enable Porter Davis to set the site costs.

We have also looked at getting a pool. Whether it will be installed pre or post build has yet to be decided. We have good access, so it should not be substantially more expensive to do post build.

Flooring is another thing that we have looked at, either Bamboo based or the high end (commercial grade) laminates are up for discussion.

So, as it stands today, in terms of the house, we're waiting for the electricity service to be abolished and the demolition permits to be granted.

In terms of the Porter Davis process, we've had our tender appointment, and next week we have our Colour, Electrical, Kitchen etc appointments at the World of Style.