You're Either on the Bus or You're Off the Bus

OK. I know that you've been waiting very patiently. Here are some pictures of the bus set-up that we currently call home.

What can I say about the bus? It's not so bad. It looks questionable, sure. But knowing that it is just for the summer... Well it's a lot like camping. Really nice camping, actually.

Burgess is fine with it. It's all a big adventure for him. He has his whole room set up in the sleepout, which helps to give us all a little more space. The bus can feel a bit small sometimes... especially when it is rainy out.

But we make do...

I've definitely lived in worse places (even if those places were in third world countries!). It is certainly an adventure... a good one. It'll be great to look back with a glass of wine and think...

"Ahhh, remember the bus? That was nuts!"

E-lectricity... Eeelectricity

An important part of building a home on a section is getting water and electricity. Water is easy. We will collect rainwater into two huge tanks. This is a fairly common practice out here. We certainly get enough rain in the winter and two big tanks should see us through most dry seasons. We could drill a bore... and would love to... but the expense is a bit prohibitive at this point. (Foreshadowing...)

Now, electricity to the building site. We had thought that would be relatively easy also. Not so! When we originally looked at the property, we were told that there was electricity cabled to the end of the driveway and down by the damn. Great. Fine. Unfortunately, this information was wrong. (*sigh.*) For most rural property that is subdivided, electricity needs to be taken to the property boundary (by council law). However, in our case, the property owner at the time was somehow able to get an exception! There is telephone cabling to the two spots that we were told about, but the electricity ends further up the road... meaning quite a financial difference in getting power to our building site. (Arg!!)

We feel stupid, as if we did something wrong... but, like I said, we DID look into this. Unfortunately, we actually believed what we were told... which was wrong? This is so incredibly frustrating! I mean, if you can't believe the professionals around you, who can you believe?! Perhaps we should have had a rep from the electricity company come out to verify that info? It didn't seem necessary at the time.

We've looked into what we should do about this. There may be a couple of different legal routes that we could take... but what a pain in the butt! Besides, we might just end up getting very little in return for our effort (when you take into account legal fees). Either way, we still need power to the building site. So, we'll just have to bite the bullet and get it done.

House Design Revisited

The house is coming along surely, but slowly. We started talking to the architect (as opposed to communicating via email) after the craziness of the holidays. He agreed to work on the plans to get them within our budget. It was then a matter of figuring out where to cut corners. His suggestions ranged from practical (changing from a Hebel structure to wood frame) to acceptable (aluminum framed windows, hollow core doors) to ridiculous (leaving half of the house un-gibbed).

At this point, we feel that the house design is finally something that we can work with. It is not the house that we originally planned on, but it is close enough. And we will be able to build it and not go bankrupt. The architect will now re-write the plans, our builder will look things over to give us a rough quote and see if there are any other areas where it would make sense to change things. Then the plans will get re-submitted to council and we should be away and running... er, building. The whole process not quite as exciting as it once was. We just want a house.

If we were to do this again... we would involve a builder throughout the planning process. The architect has a great sense of space and design for our lifestyle, but not such a good handle on building within a tight budget. The builder that we are now working with is someone local that we have known for a number of years (Burgess is quite good friends with his son). Not only was he recommended to us as an excellent builder, but he is honest and trustworthy. We could really use someone honest and trustworthy at this point! He has made a number of suggestions that are practical and easy to implement - without causing us to feel like we are cutting back on quality.

So. No house before winter, but maybe by next spring? Not sure. I sincerely hope so! We are told that the planning process is the most time-consuming. Once they start actually building, things should move along quite quickly. yay.

Goin' off the grid for awhile

OK.... it's not quite this bad!

But we do kind of like the idea of the clouds, though : )

Just wanted to let everyone know that there will be a "brief" (?) period of darkness on the posting front, as we enter the period of "Bus Livin'".

Ummm... not quite that either! Maybe somewhere between the two.