Trees gone, land cleared and ready to go!!!

The build has finally started aso Im all motivated to get creative and start reallt thinking about the house. We both switched off for a while and wanted to run away from the whole project. Mostly due to dramas with the bushfire restrictions (and subsequant whopping great big budget blowout!) Me having a strop about $25,000 for ugly metal shutters but realising they do keep the house preety safe. It all seemed to be taking forever and messages werent going through. The lack of control was really hard to get our heads around but guess we have to get used to that! 

So, DA approval was lodged in Jan and was approved 19.3.14!!!!! The process was actually pretty smooth and took about 8 weeks so what we expected. As soon as that went through we got onto our wonderful arborist and started clearing the trees that were needed. I would highly recommend him, his quote came in way under everyone else as he seems to have the massive equipment needed for our HUGE gumtrees...much to the kids entertainment!

It took longer than expected to get the construction certificate, I think so many people are involved between finance, planner, building co etc that the messages went through so slowly that the "2 weeks" we were told from getting DA approval to build starting turned into 2 MONTHS! Finally we started on the 14.5.14

Trevor in action

...and the rest is gone!

These videos are pretty cool and amazing how big those trees were! Stumps gone land cleared and readdy to go!

The build started while we were on holiday in the UK and it was great to come back and see a fence, portaloo and the start of the slab! Just seeing anything happen was pretty exciting and felt like all this planning, meetings, talking, budgets were actuially getting us somewhere. Beacuase we dont live in the area and dont see so much of what happens behind the scenes it feels like nothing ever happens. All I see is my scrapbook getting bigger and my neverending piles of home magazines getting bigger and bigger!!!!