Background

We wanted to build our penultimate home after many years of trying to find a suitable house.  After moving back to the St George area of Sydney (and renting) we finally gave up on trying to find a house in Lugarno or Carlton or Kogarah or Penshurst as it was just too expensive for a house we would have to do a lot of work on.  We always wanted a private, bush block with some views.  We even thought about Sutherland Shire again (we use to live there) but it was just going to be too far from our mothers' places and the whole point of moving back down this way was so we could get to their places quickly and easily.

Other suburbs we have lived in included (in chronological order):
  • Sans Souci (2 bedroom villa)
  • Sutherland (2 bedroom townhouse)
  • Mount Kuring-gai (5 bedroom 2 storey house)
  • Kellyville Ridge (3 bedroom house)
  • Lugarno (4 bedroom split level house with water views)
  • Carlton (3 bedroom renovated house)
Our ideal house would be something which had a bush sort of outlook or some privacy, views and would allow us to enjoy indoor/outdoor living and have space for a home theatre, drums, a dog friendly yard and space for cars and a guest room.

We looked in our favourite suburbs in the area and kept a house alert via Domain and Realestate.com.au for both St George and Sutherland... and at one stage came up with the current property.

It was an old red brick house.  I remember when we first looked at it I was horrified at the pink bathroom and the 'sunken' spa bath.  It was not something I wanted to live in.  But we thought we could possibly build something that was suitable.  It ticked a lot of boxes as it was in Peakhurst which meant it was close to both our respective Mums and it was in a bush setting.  It even had views or glimpses at least of water :)

We put in a throw away offer and didn't think too much of it as we didn't think it was likely to be accepted.  (We weren't that keen as it was going to be a lot of work to rebuild).  But lo and behold i was called whilst shopping in Woolies by the real estate agent saying that the offer was accepted (actually I think this was after we had raised our low-ish offer by a few grand when I said something like "at most we would only go up by a few grand so that's fine" the last time I spoke to the agent not thinking I had actually made an offer!!)
As it was very close to Christmas we held off on anything further till we could get out to the display houses to check if we could afford to build.  After verifying we could and consulting with our friend Nigel who is an architect we proceeded with the purchase.

Now it's just a matter of finding something that works on the block!

This blog is our journey in developing our pen-ultimate house.  We want this to be our home till we retire... and want to build into it the features we feel we want for now and into our older selves!  It needs to cater for us and our dog/s (Sprocket and any companion we get for him).

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