Good news and the squatter attempts to move in

We had some good progress on the renovation this week.  The builder as stated the 3rd week of November for the beginning of demolition.  That is great news.  We still have a bucket load of things that need to be sorted out by then but we're excited that the builder is good to go in only a couple of weeks.

In other news, the house across from our place was sold the weekend before last for a bumper outcome.  We have therefore made quite a sizeable paper profit so we're very excited about that.  We also had a real estate agent knock on our door (remember, our rental is in the same street as the house we're renovating) as they are looking for other people that may be willing to sell in the street.  I also had a neighbour ring the bell to see if we know anything about our landlord and their willingness to sell.  It is Hot Property in this street at the moment!

A side impact of the house selling this past weekend is that there has been a squatter living on their verandah for the past year or two.  The actual house as not been inhabited for at least 10 to 15 years and so this lady has set up her abode on the enclosed verandah which is quite private from the street.  We have all been quite interested to see what would happen once the house sold.  Apparently, straight after the auction, once the Sold sticker went up, she ripped it right back off.  It was put back up and she ripped it right back off again.  This week I saw a guy spray painting the word 'Sold' on the sign.  He must be the new owner.  So it has been intrigue after intrigue.

We have been a little concerned that the lady squatter would move her digs across the street to our house.  Our tenant friends moved out at the beginning of October so the place has been empty for a few weeks.  It is only a few weeks more before demolition commences.  But she doesn't know that.

This afternoon we got a call from one of our neighbours saying that the squatter was moving her mattress and other goods and chattels across the road over to our place!  It seems the real estate agent leant on her pretty heavily and so she made a show of moving her gear onto our front verandah.  He must have then left and so when I got a chance to go down to the house she had moved back to her original house.  The poor lady is obviously not well so I hope that there can be some better solution worked out for her.  I know that an outreach agency has been trying to make contact with her.

In the meantime, we have ordered a fence to be erected across the front of our house.

Getting there slowly but surely

Things have slowed down a little bit in the design stakes.  The architect has been on holiday and is now busily finalising the latest version of our plans.  We've also had a beautiful week off on the gorgeous Sunshine Coast.  I think we managed to get the only 4 day stretch of sun they'd seen in a long time.  So very thankful for that.

But now it back to business time.  Below you'll see a new version of what our back extension will look like.  We're now going with a flat roof rather than the former pitched one.  It works out to be much simpler design from an engineering perspective and of course that means a lot of cash saved.  We still need to work out the back section.  I'm not happy that there are no eaves so we are awaiting a further revision to see what suggestions the architect has.

Timeline wise it looks more likely that we'll start in November now.  The builder will get a finalised set of documents by the end of October for him to price.  Then we'll just need the building permit and a signed contract.  Simple....sigh.

Based on our understanding of the timeline, I requested a 1 year extension on our current lease which would get us (hopefully) close to the finish date.  However, because of the frail health of the landlord we have only been offered 6 months.  So long as the landlord is well (read: alive), they are more than happy to have us stay longer.  We are sending her all our good vibes and positive thoughts.