Sal and I purchased our house in September 2014. We had been renting the house next door for the previous 18 months so we knew that we liked the area and didn’t fancy moving very far. As luck would have it, Shirley next door was downsizing and we managed to buy her house without the involvement of a Real Estate Agent, thus saving about $20,000.

We also contacted a wonderful organisation near to us in Brisbane. Customer Law Reform. We bought a conveyancing kit from John and he could not have been more helpful. Doing our own conveyancing save us rather a lot of money and I would not hesitate to do this again whether buying or selling. The paperwork was easy enough (with Johns help) and the only hiccup on the day was the sellers solicitor had forgotten to supply one very important piece of paper. Thankfully, we noticed and had to drive over to his place and grab the document with only a few minutes to spare. Idiot! As you can see, I haven’t quite got over this event. Pillock. See?!

Anyway, I digress. The house was the least attractive on the block. It had zero street appeal and it was dark and dingy – very much a fixer-upper. Well, that suited us because we are both keen doityourselfers. We were always looking for ideas as to how to add value to the house without breaking the bank.

We live on an estate built in the eighties so most of the houses had features like bronze sliding windows and patio doors etc. One of our good friends and neighbours decided to demolish their house to build a couple of new ones on their block and we were able to purchase some new windows, doors, gravel, bricks, pavers, a big air conditioning unit and various other items.

Using these items, we were able to brick in our garage and create two new bedrooms. We’d never done any building work before but, even though we say so ourselves, it turned out very well. We did most of the work ourselves, and anything that we couldn’t do like the brick windows sills, we hired Michael the brickie for cash and beer. I was not confident with plastering so we hired Craig  a painter and decorator who’s help and advice was invaluable. Again, we paid him cash and saved a fortune. I was able to learn from Craig and I now do my own plastering – it’s not too difficult.

All in all, our two new rooms cost us about $7000. Heaven only knows what a builder would have charged. My belief with building companies is that you should obtain three estimates from three separate companies. Then you add all the estimates together and that’s what you’ll end up paying. Or perhaps I’m getting a little cynical in my old age…

If you have an ABN you can apply for a Bunnings PowerPass. This saves up between 5 and 10% on just about every purchase and you will use this a lot.

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Before deciding what work to do on your house to prepare it for selling, you must make sure that you’re not throwing good money after bad. We have a good friends that’s a real estate agent and her advice has been invaluable with regards what to renovate and what to tidy up.  If you’re in Brisbane, Julie Harris has been awesome for us.

We firstly found out the figure that the house would be worth should we sell it as is. Julie toured the house with us and let us know that she was confident that if we did some work we could expect about $200k more for the house! There is a fair bit of work that needs doing but we set ourselves a budget of $35k and just about all of the work we could do ourselves. Had we needed to bring in contractors to do this work we are pretty sure the budget would have been shooting up to six figures which we just can not afford.

Our list of renovations are as follows:

• New strand woven bamboo flooring throughout the common areas. $3800 from Bunnings. A little exxy but the ‘wow’ factor for potential buyers will be immense.
• New carpet in all of the bedrooms. $4300 or less depending on discounts and mates rates.
• New floor tiles in bathrooms, toilets and laundry. $800 ish
• Two bathroom refits. $6000 ish. Since this is now, apparently,  a 6 bedroom home, the buyer is likely to be an extended family so we will install two sinks in each bathroom.
• New Kitchen. $10,000 ish. Kaboodle cabinets from Bunning’s and a 900mm cooker and range hood. If you’re planning a new kitchen, get the Bunning’s kitchen planner out to do it for you! Only 99 bucks and that will be refunded once you buy all your cabinets and stuff. Very pleased with this service.
• Fans and lights. We replaced all of our fans with the same unit which has a remote. Consistency is good. We replaced all of our lights with LED when we first moved in and we will ensure that these are consistent throughout.
• Painting – most of the house needs repainting and we will do this ourselves. When we made our two new rooms in the garage, we employed a painter and we learned so much from him that we are confident to do the rest ourselves. We learned that it is all about preparation.
• Our front lawn is a bit of a disaster so we will be digging that up and laying turf down. This is a job that we will get someone in to help and, when we were building our retaining wall a few months ago, we found. Griffo’s Dingo Hire were awesome!
• The rest of our garden needs cheering up – if we can find the money in the budget we may employ a landscaper to do this professionally. if not, we’ll just do it ourselves as usual.
• We need to render some of the house to cover up my dreadful bricklaying! We were intending to render the whole house but Julie suggested we just render a few ‘feature’ walls and that’s going to save us a small fortune.
• We will replace the front door which is past its prime, as well as a few of the other odd doors throughout the house – again, looking for consistency.

Other than that – we’re going to have a very relaxing few months…