I haven't been here for a while, and as many might know, we have been gearing up to use our PPoR as a short-term holiday rental over summer/Easter etc - which we have recently completed..
The last 12 months has been a monumental project to get the gardens done, purchase all the correct furniture for each bedroom, linen, crockery and so forth.
Many, many hours in the mud and dust for me, as well as other inside projects needing to be completed - locks on cupboards not being used by tenants and so on. Up at dawn, outside until dark and all weekend most weeks, but finally got it finished the day before the first tenants arrived.
My wife has been absolutely fantastic - on the Ipad every spare minute to search for items online/Ebay/Gumtree etc, lots of traveling to pick up items, etc.
We ended up with two groups for a week each over New Year and first week of Jan, which allowed us to go away for a fully paid and well-deserved 3 week holiday to Victor Harbor, and made a profit over the enterprise as well, which has covered all the set-up costs we incurred (quite a bit of money borrowed from the In-laws and the SIL to get us over the line, so we can pay them back now).
Giving it another crack over Easter for 2 weeks, and then for 4 weeks over next summer.
Here's a couple of pics of the back yard - retaining walls, handrails with sail wire, lots of soil fill and grass.
The handrails were made from cut-up tyre racks at the workshop, so cost nothing other than some grinder wheels and time. The paint was left over from the house build so it cost nothing as well. Sail wire and attachments etc was approx $450 and a few drill bits to drill the holes in the steel.
The soil was given to us by our neighbors who are having a pool dug at the moment (stroke of luck there!) and moved into place by one of our customers, as well as paying for some of the sleepers for the retaining wall - who owed us money for some work done.
We were quoted approx $10k for the retaining wall by the guys when the house was being built - we did the whole thing, including grass, water system etc for about $4500. Still hurt our very stretched pockets though.
The last 12 months has been a monumental project to get the gardens done, purchase all the correct furniture for each bedroom, linen, crockery and so forth.
Many, many hours in the mud and dust for me, as well as other inside projects needing to be completed - locks on cupboards not being used by tenants and so on. Up at dawn, outside until dark and all weekend most weeks, but finally got it finished the day before the first tenants arrived.
My wife has been absolutely fantastic - on the Ipad every spare minute to search for items online/Ebay/Gumtree etc, lots of traveling to pick up items, etc.
We ended up with two groups for a week each over New Year and first week of Jan, which allowed us to go away for a fully paid and well-deserved 3 week holiday to Victor Harbor, and made a profit over the enterprise as well, which has covered all the set-up costs we incurred (quite a bit of money borrowed from the In-laws and the SIL to get us over the line, so we can pay them back now).
Giving it another crack over Easter for 2 weeks, and then for 4 weeks over next summer.
Here's a couple of pics of the back yard - retaining walls, handrails with sail wire, lots of soil fill and grass.
The handrails were made from cut-up tyre racks at the workshop, so cost nothing other than some grinder wheels and time. The paint was left over from the house build so it cost nothing as well. Sail wire and attachments etc was approx $450 and a few drill bits to drill the holes in the steel.
The soil was given to us by our neighbors who are having a pool dug at the moment (stroke of luck there!) and moved into place by one of our customers, as well as paying for some of the sleepers for the retaining wall - who owed us money for some work done.
We were quoted approx $10k for the retaining wall by the guys when the house was being built - we did the whole thing, including grass, water system etc for about $4500. Still hurt our very stretched pockets though.
