A New Beginning

Well, as you can see from the notes below, we have, at last, made a fresh start on rebuilding our house. In the intervening FIVE (yes 5) months, we have:
a) been getting our collective heads straight, while we shelter in temporary accommodation;
b) figuring out how to get money OUT of an insurance company. (Luckily for me I have seen "The Incredibles" many times and picked up a few pointers), and;
c) figuring out what kind of house we would like to rebuild.

The temporary accommodation we are staying in is the kind of place we lived in while we were students. In other words, basic, honest accommodation. It is a much smaller house than we had, so we fill this place to the gunwales even with our meager collection of stuff.

Mind you, at this point it isn't so meager. We have managed to wheel and deal a nice collection of whitegoods at a reasonable discount, but probably not as good as the one you could have negotiated! :-)

The insurance company was able to pay us out completely on our contents insurance, as we turned out to be about $50k underinsured on contents. The payout was way more than strictly necessary, because most of the underinsurance was in the area of "Wiggles" audio cassettes, "Bananas-in-Pyjamas" videos, and about $30k of "Barbie" dolls. Most of these qualified for some kind of "disabled" dolls house because most were missing some appendage or other.

Admittedly, all my old Apple II stuff went up in smoke too. I just hadn't the heart to toss it all when I upgraded to Macs. Having it go up in smoke was not inappropriate and very... hmmm... cleansing. No trip to the dump for me!

In contrast, the house building was overinsured, which meant that the insurance company was intending to repair (rather than replace) our house for some $40k short of its insured value. We were more than a little shocked at this because our expert advice was that entire sections of brick wall would have to be replaced. This would, in turn, mean that the replaced sections would never ever match the existing bricks. The tumbled-bricks that the house was originally constructed from, made even rendering an impossibility. Who would want to live in a patchwork house? Certainly this was probably the biggest concern that we had. The other concern that we had was that all the houses that we saw that were repaired, rather than reconstructed, after the Jan 2003 bushfires had some issues of quality with the repairs not quite blending in with the pre-existing house. This would mean a huge loss of value, one that we did not want to tolerate.

We researched all our options and put a conservative case to the insurance company to pay us an extra $19k to cover the extra work to replace all the walls and other matters. After a month of it kicking around with our claim manager, we decided to ask for a management review with a view to getting a decision, one way or another. Surprisingly, it only took 10 days for the company to rule in our favour. It was like a weight was lifted from our shoulders. All at once we could actually afford to replace the house entirely!

It took another 10 days before we got official confirmation, but by 30 September 2005 we had the money in the bank, a new house design, and a builder to take on the job of building our new home. For those familiar with our old place, we are basically doing 3 things differently this time. We are moving our master bedroom, ensuite and walk-in-robe to where my office was (NE Corner), moving the laundry into the main entry corridor (hidden behind two bi-fold doors), and putting my office in where our master bedroom was and creating a fifth bedroom in the space vacated by the laundry, ensuite and walk-in robe. (OK, that's four things) The living space of the house will also increase slightly to 225 sqm.

I will soon post a scan of our new house plans. Stay tuned to this blog.

Anyway the posts below are from the first day of demolition. We expect it to take about 18 more weeks before we can move in, so hopefully you will enjoy lots of postings as our new house slowly takes shape from the ashes of our old one.

Cheers, Michael