My designer reported last week that a “pool” house at the bottom of the garden was not possible given the stupid amounts of fees that would be required to relax easement coverage. While we were all disappointed, she visited today and came up with something even better: we’re going under!!

Our house sits on a sloping block and the bottom section of the house (the garage) is legal height. The builder has a brother who owns an earth moving business – it seems we will be able to excavate under the house another three metres or so and put in a double garage, bedroom, bathroom and laundry, linked by a staircase in the little anteroom off the kitchen. The earth moving won’t have to go in more than 3m x 10m by about .6 metres deep, so it’s totally doable, once we replace the posts with a steel H beam. Huzzah!!!!! This is what I had ALWAYS wanted to do, but I thought it would cost more than the figures being bandied about at present. This is due to the great floods of water running through the house, which will require rather a lot of hard landscaping work. I think we will end up with a cost of about $120,000 for all the plans we have but we can cover that with all sorts of spare credit cards if need be. Our bills aren’t going up and DH’s income is set to rise in the next 12 months or so. With any luck so will mine! We won’t be able to build all the lovely jubbly cabinetry I want for a little while, I imagine. But once we’ve got the changes to the house done and informed the bank of the upgrades, we should get some more money to finish the remainder, as presumably the house will go up in value.

Not only that, the designer recommended we build a studio with a skillion roof off the eastern side at the front of the block, where the current skillion entryway is now. If we offset it and don’t go to the boundary – in other words following all regulations – we can fit a 3.5 metre x 6m addition alongside the current house – perfect for the studio and away from the main house, with an entryway at the front. We place lovely new (but old style) stairs to the front of the house, thus giving us a proper four bedroom house with a front verandah, separate studio entry and double garage. I cannot tell you how excited we are. Very excited. OMGOMGOMG. AAARRRRGGGHH!!!!

And now I want to draw it.