We have built before – we added extensions to our home in New Zealand, and we bought a house off the plans that was being built as part of a town house project – but we had never found a plot, and built a house from scratch.

New Zealand

We did a lot of remodelling of our two bedroom house – we removed a wall to make the kitchen (above) bigger and open to the rest of the living area.

We built a new loung area on to the end of the kitchen/living area, but because we were keen not to lose light, we installed two massive, heavy sliding glass doors which meant we could shut the living area off – but let as much light through as possible. You can see the doors in action here:

We’d also added a third bedroom and ensuite so the house ended up being much bigger at the end than it was at the beginning. So we arrived in Australia with a little bit of experience of the design and build process.

Australia

In 2014, we moved the Brisbane, Australia, and after a just under two years in a rental, we signed up in 2016 for a townhouse being built in the northern suburb of Nudgee.

We had very little to do with the construction – everything had been pre-chosen by the architects and designers, even down to the tiles in the shower. It took a long time to finish off – there was a lot of paperwork that seemed to take forever to finish before we finally moved in, in November 2015.

Work saw us move to Sydney, which we loved – but it became pretty obvious that there was no way that we would ever be able to afford to live there. So we started looking further afield… and that’s where our story begins.