Talk about being in the right place at the right time…

There is a house behind my work that has been lifted and is the process of being built in under, like what we want to do with our place. At the same time a friend from work, who is also my boss, is having a house built next to that house. My friend started talking with the builder about all the trouble that we have been having and arranged for me to have a chat with the builder about our house.

Well, to cut a long story short, he is going to start enclosing our house on Monday next week! It’s amazing!

Because of the delays caused by our previous builder (almost a year to finally complete the front set of stairs) based on our initial budget we can no longer enclose under the house and fully complete it. The building market in Townsville is booming and costs have increased about 30% in the 15 months since we first tendered bids on our construction.

We will be getting under the house completed to lockup stage, so it will have the windows, doors, security screens, roller door and external walls finished. The internal framing will also be complete, but none of the internal sheeting will be done, most of the plumbing won’t be done, the electrical will not be complete and there will be no flooring or internal staircase. We will need to do the rest of the building room by room when the time and finances permit.

The whole thing is not exactly what we had planned (it was supposed to be completed by Christmas last year!), but we finally feel like we are making headway.

An advantage with the builder doing work on the house behind ours is that we have been able to watch him work. He seems to do a great job, and the owner of the house is very happy, even wants him to do more work for him in the future! That is always the sign of a good builder.

The construction should only take about three weeks, which will be amazing, and I will be taking photos along the way for posting.

We are excited about this and we feel a far way from how we were feeling in December when our son declared “The house is killing us“.

Tags: Building, Construction, Contractors, Renovate