Happy Birthday Captain Greatpants

A belated happy birthday to our beautiful boy, Captain Greatpants, who recently turned 14.

Not bad considering the little guy was given about 2 months to live almost 3 years ago...
V&A

Cost blowout... and again another...

It's been a while since we have updated where the house build is up to.
Since last time, there was an initial period of waiting... and waiting... for the building quote to come in.
Then there was a period of extreme horror when the quote did arrive - and we saw it was nearly $250,000 over our budget.
After that there was a small glimmer of hope that, if we changed some of the materials from concrete to more lightweight products, we may be able to bring the budget back on track.
That glimmer was rapidly snuffed when the second quote came in, still about $150,000 over our budget (and not including the cost of the Epic Driveway, nor the fixtures and fittings we have chosen).
What caused this?
Essentially, the requirement to allow for the turning circle of a fire truck on the building site meant that the house was moved about 8 - 9 metres further down the hill. This positioned the house on a much steeper part of the block. As a result, we no longer could have the slab on ground, rather we would have to build a suspended concrete slab, and the Super Duper Footings that go along with that.
Unfortunately, even lighter building materials didn't fix the budget blowout - and these materials would fundamentally alter the aesthetic of the house.
This left us having a teleconference with Neal-the-architect over the sad situation we found ourselves in.
Basically, there were two options we could consider:

Option 1: Keep the building on the steeper part of the block, use lighter materials, but reduce the scope by removing the mezzanine, greenhouse, carport and breezeway and relocating Andy’s studio underneath the living room (not much house left after that)

Option 2: Investigate moving the building back to its original position and hopefully having the block work and slab on ground; and hopefully have this back in budget as estimated back in June 2013

After mulling over these options, there were some immediate issues springing to mind:

Option 1:

• At it’s current size and with the lighter building materials, this didn't appear to be a financially viable option. Were something to happen in the near future which forced us to have to sell, we would never obtain a selling price which would cover the cost of the build. And reducing the size of the building to lower build costs, wouldn’t resolve this, but potentially make it worse
• Of additional concern, while we plan to personally fund part of the build, we will require finance for the remainder – banks are notoriously cautious creatures and we may encounter difficulties in obtaining finance if the bank cannot see the value in the build.
• Comparable insulation amounts may be able to be achieved with lightweight materials, but we lose the thermal mass by removing the concrete

Option 2:

• The bushfire consultant previously advised that using the neighbour's driveway as a turning point for the fire truck would be too far from the site
• We don’t have the neighbour's permission (nor actually know who that neighbour is) to use their driveway
• We are presuming that the neighbour’s driveway would need to be upgraded to allow the fire truck to use it to turn – and this may be a cost that we would have to bear
• What other fees would be involved in relocating back to the original site? (engineering? Council? architect? surveyor?) What is the financial impact to us of these additional fees?
• Is there even any likelihood that, having done all of the above, the build would come in on budget?

And that is pretty much where we were up to as of last week.
After 2 years of planning, and considerable financial outlay, we have 2 house designs, neither of which we can afford to build.
Neal-the-architect is making enquiries in relation to Option 2.
But the Android and Viktoria are in agreement... if we cannot proceed with Option 2, then we have no other choice but to notch the whole thing up to experience and count our losses.
Sincerely hoping that this week brings better news.
V&A