A whilrwind of a month

So it's been a very busy April & May. Doug has returned to Australia for 4 weeks and in that time we needed to make sure we had decided on all external and internal decisions, along with the dreaded landscape plan.

After a bit of toing and froing with the builder, we were able to get our tender and contract presentations done within record time, simply so that Doug's signature could be on both without too much hassle.
     On a side note here, it seems very interesting that the banks and our broker have absolutely  no problem working with us along side Doug working abroad for much of the year, yet the builder seems to find this a very difficult idea to comprehend. It seems the way of thinking is "the paper says all parties must be present. There for all parties must be present." It leaves me wondering how military wives, which there are many, go about building properties in Australia.

We've spent the last four weeks in meetings with the builder, with the broker and then running between the brickyards, roof tilers, bathroom tilers, kitchen company etc. Along with a few visits to Bunnings for ideas of what we can do ourselves, and deciding what to do about flooring. It seems all of these decisions came easily. Bricks and roof tiles were chosen in a day. The bathroom tiles was a bit more of a discussion, but still a decision was made within the day as well. Paint colour was a visit to Bunnings to go through the Taubmans paint range - but to be honest I've been looking at all of these things for months, trying to come up with ideas of what I liked well before Doug came home in order to make the decisions easier.

We're going to do the flooring ourselves, which whilst we know what we like, it gives us time to finalise our decisions in the end - and change our mind if we decide to. Doug is convinced he can tile the house himself - and whilst I'm sure he can as well, I'd rather get a professional to do it - at the end of the day, if something goes wrong and I'm not happy I'd rather get angry at the contractor then the man I live with!

But after all the rushing to make sure we had everything set to go we've put the breaks on again. Seems that is going to be the way with this build! We've been advised by our broker to hold off signing the contract and paying the rest of the 10% to the builder until final approval has been given by the banks - we have approval for the land but are still waiting for the construction half of the loan. So we are waiting and are sitting in limbo, eagerly waiting for the next section of the plan to start, so long as we have the guarantee from the banks - so everything is crossed from this end!

At least in the meantime I can keep driving by the land and longingly look through the fence as construction is being finished.