Property Inspection Complete

Today we had a builder complete the property inspection. The house received a 76% rating. The things that need to be fixed promptly are all external, and none of them are gonna bring the house down in a heap. They're just weather proofing mainly, to ensure damp doesn't creep in. There is some mould in the bathroom and the rumpus room, but having seen photos of it I'm not concerned that we can't handle it. The house we are currently in is a mould pit, complete with fuckroaches ... at least the new house has minimal mould and no fuckroaches! It's definitely a roll up your sleeves and get stuck in job, but we always knew that. By the time we've fixed it up a bit it'll sell for more than we bought it for too, so that's a bonus!

The next thing we have to work out is how to conduct the conveyancing ourselves. There are no DIY conveyancing kits for Tasmania, and working out all the ins and outs of it isn't as straight forward as googling.

Introducing Us, Before Antarctica

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me at 35w round

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Stylish the day she turned 12

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Spikee at Questacon

The rarely photographed A, fishing at Eden Wharf

We've bought a house!

Welcome to our blog! This blog is devoted to our big migration from Sydney to Tasmania, our renovations, the planning, moving, resettling and probably many other things too. It's a really big tree change for us. I have spent my whole life in Sydney and I love it here, but owning a house here is just not a realistic goal for us if we want to have a life that's not devoted to working and paying a stupidly huge mortgage.

We'd like to scale back the need for money, and scale up the time for family. We're keen on camping and holidaying and that's not something that we could do if we were paying a huge mortgage. We'd also love to head towards more of a sustainable lifestyle.

Our family consists of Me (32) my partner A (34) and two kids Stylish (just turned 12) and Spikee (4 in two weeks). We're also expecting a new baby, I'm 35 weeks pregnant. We are a family of natural learners or home schoolers, but I don't like the word school and it doesn't suit our approach to living and learning and growing up. Our new baby will be born at home, probably in the room where I'm sitting now!

At this stage our plans are to have a baby, then A will finish up at work around 7 weeks later (depending on when the baby is born), then we'll leave here in mid October. Our plan is to drive down to Melbourne, spend a day or so in Melbourne enjoying civilisation, and then catch the boat to Tasmania. From there we will spend a night with A's family so they can see the kids and meet the new baby, then we will make our way to the house and begin renovating.

So much to do and so little time to get it all done!