Month: April 2006

House Removals – Relocating a House

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Because of the nature of the construction of many of the houses here in North Queensland it is not uncommon to actually see houses relocated from one location to another. This is what actually happened to our old house that was purchased by Castletown. Because they were really only after the land so that they could expand the shopping complex they sold off most of the houses that they had purchased for removal. You can see our old house before and after the house removal in my previous article Where did the House Go?.

Having the houses built on stumps actually makes it quite an easy process to transport a Queenslander or similarly styled house. All they need to do is back a flatbed trailer under the house and lower the house onto the trailer. They even have specially designed trailers for this sort of work that can raise up to meet the house, making it even easier to remove the stumps. I have even seen one of these trailers driving down a narrow road actually raise up one side of the house to go over a parked car! I sure wouldn’t want to have been the owner of the car looking out the window and seeing that.

House Removals - Specialized Trailers

There is quite a bit involved in actually organizing for the removal of a house. Our old house would have been relatively easy to relocated as it was only 6 metres (about 20 feet) wide with the front enclosed varanda removed. If a house is bigger than 8.5 metres wide from what I have read it actually has be to be cut in half for transport. We had toyed with the idea of relocating our house to the area that we live in now, but decided against it as there is very few empty blocks of land around here to put it in.

There is a really good discussion about the removal and relocation of a house over at Cracker Classifieds, Removable Houses?. Some of the people participating in the discussion have actually gone through the process of relocating their house and it has fairly up to date information.

Here are some more links for information on the removal and relocating of a house:

Probably my only real disapointment with the whole process is that I didn’t get to see it happen with our old house. I think that I would have liked to see it go and to know what’s actually become of it…

Reorganizing the Living Room

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After getting home from the hospital with Jessica we came to realize that our living room layout really wasn’t all that functional. Live many families we had made the focal point of the room the television, at the cost of space on the floor.

The old layout of the living room

Not only were we cramped in the living room, but we were also cramped in the dining room and I would quite regularly knock my chair on the wall behind me when I got up from my chair. Tamara was also starting to feel quite claustrophobic with her, Caleb and Jessica in the room all at the same time.

We managed to arrange a temporary swap of entertainment units with some of our friends. They got our large unit which you can see in the image above, and we got their smaller unit, which you can see in the corner in the image below.

The new layout of the living room.

The room is now a lot more conducive to conversation and there is a lot more usable room in it. The new entertainment unit is a bit cramped, but we are planning to someday get a smaller stereo that we can put on our book self that is in the dining room. That will unclutter the unit even more and make it even less of an eyesore. There is also a lot more room to play with the kids and I no longer bang my chair against the wall as we were able to move the table over a few inches.

Now there is more room to play in the living room.

Watching television in the room isn’t as easy now, but we really aren’t watching all that much of it any more. When we set it up for Caleb to watch we just ask him to pull out his bean bag, which he is more than happy to do (getting him to put it away is another story…). Our reasons for not watching much television anymore is partly because we are very busy, but also for personal reasons, which you can read about on my other blog Television is Sucking my Brain.

A New Addition to our House

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Jessica Lee Hutchison was born on April 12, 2006 at 10:03 am. She weighed 7lbs 13.5oz (3.54kg) and was 50cm long.

Tamara and Jessica are still at the hospital for a bit longer. We went into Townsville Hospital at 4:30 am and less than 6-hours later Jessica was born.

 

Tamara was amazing and is looking fantastic (as you can see above).

Caleb is enjoying his role as a new brother and absolutely loves Jessica.

After visiting with Jessica and Tamara, Bill and Caleb headed out to dinner and sleep.

You can check out more of the photos that we took on the day in the Jessica Photo Gallery, which will continue to grow as she does.

Young and Naive

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I reckon that this is exactly what the realtor representing Castletown was thinking when we started talking to us about buying our old house (see The Street that Castletown Bought for more details).

In the weekend newspaper they listed some of the houses around Townsville that had been sold for over $500,000 in the last three years (we weren’t on that list). We discovered that our neighbour, who had the exact same land size as us, had sold his house for nearly double what we had sold our for. This was despite the realestate agent trying to convice us up to the last minute that we wouldn’t even get what we wanted for our house.

I am certainly not ungrateful that we have been able to move closer to our friends and work, and that we are able to renovate our new house. It has been an amazing testimony to us of God’s faithfulness. What it does do is leave me with a strong distrust of realestate agents whose motivating factor is only $$$, despite stating otherwise…