I thought I should probably explain WHY we're doing such an, er, extreme 'reno'...
I bought my
house in February 2005,
not the best house in the world, but what I could afford in a great
suburb... It was never intended to be my long-term home, but a 'get into the market' starting point... My then-partner, now-husband, was also looking at buying at around the same time, so rather than co-own and co-habit immediately, we bought our own places... His, a unit in nearby
East Brisbane, is still ticking away nicely...
When we eventually moved in together, we pretty quickly realised how small my place was... so when the time came to upgrade, spread our wings a little, contrary to a lot of people's assumptions that we just decided then and there to offload my little house and start all over, funnily enough, we actually weighed up the pros/cons of buying a new house elsewhere or rebuilding on my land...
Given it was already in a really good suburb, and the block of land not too shabby, when we weighed up the rebuild with buying a bigger property in/around this area, we quickly discovered the house we could afford would be a) further out from the CBD and b) older... even a house in decent condition was going to be older than a brand new house!!
So, opting to 'remove & rebuild' was not only better financially, but we end up with a brand spanker in a suburb 4k from the CBD for less than an older house 10k out...
And the beauty of it? It's not actually a reno = hard work, graftin', relationship testing (not to say the build won't have its CHALLENGES/stress, BUT... we're not having to do any of the physical work!)... we move out, new house is built, we move back in...
Now tell us who's mad?