Our Dream Home

A lot has happened and we have just decided to write this blog.

For the purpose of anonyminity on my blog, my name is Moreton, and my partner's name is Squirrel!! That's why our house is called the Squirrel's nest.

We had looked at property to by and we were not able to find anything we liked. We wanted a 4 bedroom house with at least 2 living areas and 2 bathrooms. Everything was just plain ugly, not our style or way overpriced for what it was.

We did our research and thought the only way to get value for money was to buy land and build our own house.... our "Squirrel's Nest".

We were not sure of what size land to build on. We originally thought a larger block, perhaps 2000 sq m or larger, but then we'd have a lot of work to doing the garden etc. We settled on a block of approximately 1200 sq m. It is slightly sloping with a rural outlook. Our street name is named after a very famous and popular person!!

We drove around the area and took names and numbers of builders. The first builder we saw, or rather attempted to see was not home... so he missed out. The second builder had no interest in anything! Over the telephone we had given him a brief on what we were after and when we visited him he just handed over a pile of house plans and said, "see if there is anything you like". Half the plans were not what we wanted (e.g. ranch style) and the other few were just doubles of what was there. Of the 50 or so plans he gave me, there were only about 2 or 3 that were "possibilities". My partner and I left his office and got in the car and we both said, "we're not going with that guy - he's not interested - he never asked us anything, not even what our budget was".

We visited a 3rd builder - Chris - (his company will remain anonymous just to keep things about us private!!). We visited him at a house he had just built and we knew upon walking in that this was the builder we wanted. He had quality fittings - not the normal "cheap junk" and the house was modern / contemporary, without being "too modern". We told him what we liked and had a rough sketch of the house we wanted. He gave us his idea, showed ideas from around his own display house, and my partner and I both got the impression that he was willing to do the job, and that his quality control was excellent and he liked "designer things".