About this blog


In January 2011 my adorable post war cottage was consumed by the floods that devastated Queensland. The floodwaters came to just below the ceiling and having not been around in the 1974 I had no idea how high the water would go and took very little with us before we evacuated, so we lost pretty much everything.

I had owned it for a little over a year but in that year we had done quite a lot to the backyard, shed and garden. It was devastating and shocking to see the damage.

But life goes on and luckily for us we were fully insured. The frame of the house itself was very solid, but the interior had to be fully gutted and the floorboards replaced. There was also a fair amount of subsidence due to the softening of the ground, so the house would have to be restabilised - an expensive undertaking.

As with many renovations, particularly with older style homes, they are far more expensive than knocking down and building new. After much research I realised renovating back to the original state would take up all of my budget with nothing left for flood mitigation. So I've decided to knock down and build a new home above the flood level.

Luckily for me I work for a building company and their advice has been invaluable. After much research, a design was decided on that was a modified version from the company's standard design portfolio. To mitigate any future floods, and also due to building codes for new homes in a flood zone, all the living was upstairs. The block is a large 1012m2 with a 20 metre frontage, so I've decided to subdivide the block and build the new house on one side, with the intention of selling the other block at a later date.

This blog is my thoughts, dreams, issues, frustrations and journey of building the new home. In my day  job I'm a media and communications coordinator, I write all day every day, for press releases, blogs, websites, brochures so this is a natural extension of me.

Your thoughts, comments and advice is very much appreciated. You can click on the bottom of each blog to submit.

I hope you enjoy joining me on my journey and happy reading.

1 comment:

  1. Hello lovely,
    I love this blog and look forward to following the journey with you. Great read so far, very inspiring - thank you for sharing. xx

    Peta

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