Andrew's blog

It takes many people to get a project like building a house off the ground. We've been in contact daily with our surveyor, resource consent planner, engineer, designer, and more recently mortgage broker and valuer. After having had a frustrating few weeks, we are now, finally, making progress.

We now have a earthworks plan that will create the optimum space on the site. The site will be excavated so that the house will have a North North West outlook, which in Wellington, is the best angle for optimum sunlight. The best part about the earthworks plan is that we can now build using a concrete slab, which is much cheaper than having to build on piles or any other engineered foundations. So we have now finalised our resource consent for the earthworks, which is ready to be lodged with the Council on Monday.

We've heard back from a number of suppliers this week who have firmed up their quotes for us. The best one being from our digger driver, who has been very generous with his pricing. So now that we know how much money we have left in the kitty and the site dimensions, we've been having fun deciding which house plan we'd like to build.

The Hillstone

This week's big milestone: Paying the deposit and proceeding to working drawings.

So exciting, so surreal. After all this time we're actually building our house. Yippee!!!