The design process begins July 2011

So Trevor was engaged and came to present his draft plans – so did we jump up and down with excitement, well not quite, the plans were good in some respects but didn’t hit the mark in others. The plan had 4 bedrooms and an ok size living room (looking out onto the garden of course) but there are only 2 of us and we love blobbing on the couch, so we wanted a large (for Inner West) lounge/dining room and only 3 bedrooms.

It appeared we had a problem, Trevor put together the best plan possible to come as close as possible to our (we now know) totally unrealistic budget of $250k – but it’s not what we want. I must say that there were heaps of thing we loved about the plan but it just was not the right plan for us.

After toing and froing for about 4 weeks Trevor delivered our dream home (on paper) but of course he knew it would not be in our budget, but looking after our best interests suggested we engage a Quantity Surveyor to see how much our dream would cost. The report was completed in about 2 weeks and the price for the renovation (not including architect and other fees) was approx. $600k. I actually cried at work, where do we go from here, we know what we want, we have a plan and we can’t afford it. We also knew we would have to add in about $80k for fees and then some money ($35K) for PCs (tiles, bath etc) and some decorating money. To say we would be overcapitalising would be a gross understatement! So back to the drawing board again to remove some of the ‘nice to haves’ but not essentials – built in bar-b-que – gone, steel pergola – gone etc etc. The changes to the plan came back to $500k which initially I was happy with that as a $100k reduction seemed pretty good – I didn’t really think that we would not afford that either. So again we sat down and had a think about what to do, should we just buy a renovated house (same problem of never finding anything ‘just right’) or do we try to find a cheaper house to renovate (and lose $80k in moving costs) – around and around in circles we went and decided to proceed in the hope that the lotto fairies would smile on us (didn’t happen).

3D rendition of living area (from rear) created by Paul Hill Architectural Draftsman

3D rendition from the rear (unfortunately the built-in bar-b-que was removed from the plan due to cost)

3D rendition of kitchen (from rear) created by Paul Hill Architectural Draftsman