Setting Foot

Late last week, my wife was on Facebook and noticed that someone in the community had posted about a new section of road being open in the development. It was after dinner and the kids were already in their pyjamas, but we jumped in the car and headed up to see what we could see as we were pretty sure that we could now actually get a lot closer to our new block.

As it turned out, we were able to stand at the end of our new driveway. The view is going to be great from the new block and the open space directly across the road is bigger and flatter that I thought it was going to be so it will be great to be able to kick the footy or throw a ball. Basically it has the potential to become an extension to our yard space for the kids as they could go and play there whenever they liked and we'd be able to see them out the windows of our house.

The photo above is from a couple of days later as it was getting dark when visited it the first time. As you can see it was pretty wet and cloudy when the photo was taken, so it doesn't really do justice to the view of the ranges that we will have, or the lights we'll see at night. I'll wait until we have some nice weather and I'll go and take some nicer photos.

Whilst we were at the block the first time, we actually met the people who have bought the block diagonally behind us. They were a nice couple around the same age as my wife and I, as we talked more, I wondered why the bloke looked so familiar and eventually we realised that our sons were the same age and in fact played in the same footy team last season! We both felt a little embarrassed that we didn't figure that out sooner considering we both would have been at a lot of the games our kids had.

It will still be several months before our land actually registers and we'll be able to get further onto our block. At the moment there is a big fence blocking access to our site as our neighbourhood is still being worked on by the developer. But this is still exciting and we are happy that we jumped onto this block as fast as we did as it is in a fantastic location and is by far one of the best blocks in the area.

Bomber
Who knew that a small piece of dirt could be so exciting.

Losing 20kg in 2 Months

I was leaving work the other day and bumped into a mate that I hadn't seen a quite a while. We started talking and I mentioned that it looked like he had lost some weight. It turns out that he had being on a Keto diet and the weight just fell off him. He lost 20kg in just 2 months. That's crazy.

My mate went into quite a bit of detail about the research he'd done and how his doctor had been into him about losing weight. He tried doing some other diets and had been riding his push bike a lot and ended up getting a week long migraine. He went on to say that he used to regularly get migraines and he'd been talking to another friend about his woes and that person told him to try a Keto diet as they often cured issues with migraines.

According to my mate, he went from watching his diet and counting calories, to eating whatever he wanted and as much of it as he felt like, as long as it fell within the Keto diet and the weight just fell off him. He did say that he felt a little queasy for a couple of weeks as his body purged itself off everything from his old diet but now he felt healthier and more energetic than he had in years and his eyesight, hearing and brain power had all improved.

I won't go into all the conspiracy theories that my mate had about Dr Kellogg and why he said we needed to eat so much fibre, or steam engines and counting calories, or even age old theories that red meat was to blame for male aggression which was why we were being told to eat less of it. I might do some of my own research into that but there was no doubt that my mate looked fit and healthy and he said that a Keto diet was what was working for him.

My own weight loss journey isn't going that great, I haven't had a beer in a long time but this last week I've basically been eating whatever and not really avoiding sweets. My wife had a birthday so we had cake and family over for big feed. I bought a bottle of Wild Turkey and some Coke and have been having a glass or two of that each night recently. I've also had an ice cream each night this week.

I've still been having the protein shake for breakfast each day and trying to have a healthy(ish) lunch. Dinners haven't been so bad either but I do each a lot of bread, pasta and potatoes each week so I'm thinking that there may be a reason that I don't really lose much weight and I find it hard to keep any weight lost from returning.

The more I think about it, the more I think that I may be able to give a Keto diet a go. Breakfasts are easy as I think I'd be able to keep having the protein shake. Bacon and eggs is also a staple of the Keto diet so no issues there, you can also have basically as much of it as you want, no problems there. Lunch I could still go to the same place (which is usually subway) and get a wrap or even just a bowl with the meat and salad in it. Dinners would be a little harder, but I'm sure I could replace a lot of the potato that I currently eat with cauliflower or other veggies and make sure that I have some nuts to snack on if I need to. The hard part will be trying to cut out the pasta as my wife and kids love pasta and so do I.

Swap anything that you use in place of butter for real butter, use only extra virgin olive oil, eat red meat, fish and chicken, cut out bread, pasta, potatoes and sugary things. Your body should then go into ketosis and start burning fat to produce all the energy you need, which means I should have a whole lot of energy! Could it really be that simple? could I be like my mate and lose 20 kilos in two months?

Bomber
Can I eat my way to weight loss.

Designing a Dream

As you know from last weeks blog, we now have the perfect block to build our dream home on. I guess it's the dream we can afford more than what we would build if money was no issue, but it's still going to be pretty awesome.

What has driven the design is that my wife and I both wanted to try and get a view of the ranges and we
wanted a dedicated guest room with it's own en-suite. We turned the spare room in our current house into our study and whilst guests can stay in it, there's only room for a double blow up mattress and even then it's very tight. We want a dedicated guest room and we want space for a dedicated study. What we've ended up with for the new study is essentially a spare bedroom, but we won't be putting guests up in very often if at all.

One of the reasons for having a dedicated guest room is so guests feel more comfortable staying with us and also to allow for our parents to live with us if they want to, or need to, as they get older. My Dad currently lives by himself in the house I grew up in and he's approaching 80. I really don't want him to have to go into a nursing home if I can avoid it. At the moment he is doing just fine and can still drive himself around, but really, he could fall over and hurt himself at any time, or be told by his doctor that he can't drive anymore, or that he needs live in help. Having the dedicated guest room means that he has an option if wants to use it. If my Dad did end up in a nursing home, then the rest of the family would have somewhere to stay if they came to visit.

My wife's parents are quite a bit younger than my Dad and they currently live a couple of hours away from us. However, the nearest major hospital for them is close to where we live, so if one of them got really sick and needed to stay in hospital or nearby the hospital for any length of time then they could stay with us. It would also allow them to stay with us during school holidays as our kids are starting to push back about heading down the coast for week each holiday.

One of the other things that my wife wanted was another living area. I'm not really sure why she wanted it but it has morphed from being just another living area into a small home theatre room, which I'm now quite looking forward to.

So, now we had to get all the ideas down on paper. We initially started off with one of the builders existing plans and tried to modify it into something that we liked. We came up with a few ideas and sent them off to the builders sales rep to pass on to their architect. The architect was very slow to get back to us, we kept getting told that they are very busy at the moment and that's the reason for the delays but it would be around four to six weeks from when we would talk with the sales rep and when we would see the changes on the plans.

After a bit of back and forth we just weren't happy with the way the plans were looking, so we basically drew up a complete layout ourselves and sent if off to the sales rep. They said that we would have to pay them more money as we were now going completely custom. We agreed to send them a further $3500 so the new plans could be drawn up. We had a couple more back and forth meetings with the sales rep and the architect still couldn't grasp what we were trying to achieve and the house kept getting bigger and bigger and changes we asked for weren't getting included whilst other things were getting added that we'd either didn't ask for or had already asked to be removed. It was really frustrating.

During this time there was another land release and we decided that we would enter the ballot to see if we could secure another block, a block that was not tied to a builder so we would have a little more time to design the house. We could also select a different builder as we didn't really select the builder we were using, we just really wanted the block that they had, so we had to use that builder. It would only cost us $1,000 to secure a block and again it was a risk we were willing to take.

When the ballot was drawn we received an email stating that our name hadn't even been selected at all and we wouldn't be given a chance to even try and select a block. There was only one block that we could have been interested in so the chances were slim in the first place. We continued on with our current block, considering that we were now $5,000 in it made sense.

We still weren't happy with the way that the plans were turning out until my wife
actually found the perfect house plans for us on another builders website. We forwarded the new plans to the builders sales rep and they weren't too impressed and tried to ask for more money. We ended up saying no to sending them more money and explained that they hadn't been able to come up with plans that met our requirements and they hadn't been able to capture the external look that my wife was wanting.

The plans went off to the builders architect, who I now think is more of a draftsman than an actual architect, and when they came back there were still things that had been missed and the design had been changed enough that it wouldn't have been compliant with local guidelines. So it had to go back to the architect again.

It was now approaching the end of August and we finally received a set of plans that we were basically happy with, there were still issues with the plans, but only minor things like typos and some of the written measurements didn't line up with what had been drawn. The builder wanted all of those things corrected before issuing us with a build contract so we had to wait another couple of weeks before we could sign on with the builder officially.

Come the end of September, we finally signed on with the builder and committed to building our new home. We then exchanged on the land contract and paid the builder a further $5,000. The builder did issue us with an invoice for $33,000 but we questioned it as the building contract clearly stated that they couldn't ask for more money until they had secure insurance for the build and they weren't planning on doing that until they were closer to actually starting work.

So where are we now? Well, we've exchanged on the land but the land itself can't settle until it has been registered. For it to be registered, the developer needs to have everything signed off and handed over to the local council because it will then be the council who will be responsible for maintaining the roads, sewers, storm water etc from then on. Once the land has registered and we've settled on it, the purchase of the land will be complete so the builder can then submit the plans to council to get approval to build it. Once the plans are approved, the builder has 21 days to commence building and then 52 weeks to complete the build. There are reasons that the build can be delayed, but as we are now out of lockdown and living with COVID-19, it should be unlikely that there are any delays.

Bomber
Fingers crossed we don't go broke.