Our House Build - Introduction

For some reason, I've held off putting anything up about our house build until now. It's odd, given that every step of the way with the build of my race car project (http://www.e21build.com) I've put up post after post, but I guess I consider(ed) cars different to houses - at least until I got this far in.

I've recently spent some (significant) time reading through other house build/blogs and realised that while it might not be everyone's cup of tea, I quite enjoy reading about others building process - despite them not doing the work themselves - just watching a house take form and the decision making process that goes into it is quite interesting. I figured that if I enjoy reading them, and others take the time to post them, then it's probably worth publishing our own journey.

It's also handy to use these blogs as a sort of record keeping mechanism - times, dates, things to avoid or to do again the same in the future - both for our own selves and for others.

For those who don't know us, we're a family of five -  Clinton (that's me), my wife Sarah, daughter Scarlett (5), son Hunter (2) and daughter Hayley (1) - based in Warrnambool, Victoria (that's in Australia, if you happen upon this from overseas).

We've been renting for a long time - I'd always told myself I'd own a home before having children, but that wasn't to be! Paying off someone elses mortgage always hurts the most when you sit down and calculate just how much you've put into a specific house during your tenancy - so far at $330/week we have paid a staggering $47,850 rent in only 2 years and 9 months! Our previous house would have come to around $100,000 in about 8 years.

The time has come to put our money where our mouths are and build a family home. We love Warrnambool - it's a great place to live - surety of rainfall, solid economic growth, low unemployment, low crime rates (although higher than average levels of alcohol fuelled violence), plenty of great parks for the kids, less than 10 minutes drive to the beach from anywhere in town and no more than 15 minutes drive to work in the worst traffic from either extreme end of town.