Since we moved into this house, most of our time has been spent working on the outside and hopefully you can see from the before and after photos that it has come on a bit. I have been concentrating on developing a garden while Ian has focused on making the place easier to get around.

 Our block is like the foothills of the Himalayas and he has just completed a fourth flight of steps just to reach the top of the back garden from the house while I am starting from the bottom making a path which will eventually reach them.

 We try to use recycled materials as much as possible and were delighted to find over 1000 second hand pavers for the path on Gumtree for a fraction of the retail price. Although the monetary saving was huge, we have only just started to recover from the aching muscles gained from four 76km round trips loading and unloading what felt like millions of pavers. We started the whole exercise at 8am and finished unloading the final car and trailer full at 7pm - truly knackered. 

We never learn though and have decided now to embark on our most ambitious project to date - to fill in the underside of the house with an extra lounge, bedroom, shower and toilet, laundry, office and workshop. It is common in Australia to build a pole house like ours when dealing with a steep slope as it is the cheapest method and makes the most of any views but you can see from the pictures the area underneath is huge and wasted at the moment. So we are resurrecting Bodgit and Scarper Builders and jumping in feet first!

 The architect came last week to draw the plans and a surveyor arrived to take lots of mysterious measurements on Saturday so we can obtain planning permission. Ian has to take an online Owner/Builder's qualification and, once the development approval arrives, off we go. 

Hopefully this will all come together so we can do the bulk of the work in winter for a change, we usually forget to take this into account and do all the heavy work while sweltering in the summer heat like proper pommies to the amusement of our neighbours.