Author Archives: Bill Hutchison

Preperation for the House Lift has begun

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Northern House Raising showed up this morning to start the preperations for the house being lifted later in the week.

I’m going to be posting pictures of the raise and restump every day that they work on it. Below are the photos that I took tonight after I got home from work. It was dark already but the flash did a pretty good job.

House Lifting Day 1 - Blocks removed from the front
Day one of the Raise and Restump – Front of the House
(I always wanted to be able to drive the car in there)

House Lifting Day 1 - Back - Blocks being removed
Day one of the Raise and Restump – Rear of the House

House Lifting Day 1 - Under the House - Blocks being removed
Day one of the Raise and Restump – Under the House

It looks like now we will only need to be out of the house for one night, either Friday or Saturday. That is a lot better then when we thought we had to be out for the full week.

Buying Shares at Bunnings

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A few friends of mine have joked that I really should have purchased shares at Bunnings before I started doing all my renovations. Bunnings is pretty much the Australian version of Revy (for you Canadians) or Home Depot.

Although we did not purchase those shares, which I sort of wish I had now, we did get a credit card that gives us a point for every dollar that we spend. We can then transfer those points onto our frequent flier program with Qantas, which is a pretty good deal. By putting every expense that we can on our credit card, not only our renovations but also our every day expenses, we were able to fly Tamara and Caleb down to Adelaide for half price when I did the move from our old house to this one.

Now just to clarify things a little, we only use the credit card to spend money that we have and we pay it off every month so that we don’t have to pay interest on it. As long as we do that this credit card deal works pretty well for us.

I actually read about a pretty good little deal on a credit card in the US that is specifically designed for renovators. Basically it gives a refund of 1% on all your purchases, but if you use it at a home improvement store you get back 3%.

You can read more about that credit card deal here, houseblogs.net: A Credit Card with Home Improvement Rewards.

What do the Symbols Mean on my Oven?

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I really like the oven in our new house. It actually works!!! The one in our old house would take about 30 – 45 minutes to pre-heat. This one usually pre-heats even to the highest temperature in about 5 – 10 minutes! It’s great.

There is one thing that confuses me though. I think that the oven is a multi-function fan forced oven but I don’t know what the functions are.

I would love your comments about what you think these do.

Below is a picture of the function dial on the oven. If you know what each function is please let me know in the comments on this post.

Fan Forced Oven Dial

Let me know what you think…

Didn’t you just move?

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This is the question that I was asking myself this weekend as I moved everything out from under our house to put in a friends shed while our house is being lifted and then enclosed under. It took us about seven loads in a small trailer and my station wagon to get most of it over.

We still have a lot of questions about the process of having our house lifted and will affect a lot with how we prepare for next week when it will be happening. We are going to be taking down all of our pictures and stuff from the walls, but I don’t know if I need to go as far as removing the books from the bookshelf, if you know what I mean. We are going to try to organize a meeting with the contractor doing the raise and restump and then find out some more details.

I am hoping that while they do the lifting that I will be able to head over there at least two times a day to take photos. It’s going to be a pretty cool process I reckon watching them lift the house, and I don’t want to miss it. I’ll try to post the images up here as well. The first day they will be knocking out all the old walls and removing the old slab from under the house, and then after that they will be starting the actual process of lifting…

Thankfully we have been able to find accomodation while we are out of our house for a week. We will be staying in some of our guest accomodation with where I work, Reef to Outback. All of us will be sleeping in one room with us actually sharing the flat with another couple who are here for a course that we are running, but it sure beats having to stay at a hotel or caravan park.