There came a time when the prospect of building made us depressed/angry/frustrated.

Provoked by the constant stream of expensive expert statements that contributed little to the actual build, we took a moment and questioned whether we were prepared to risk an unsustainable level of debt to build something that we had fallen out of love with.

We had invested heavily financially and emotionally.

We chose to STOP

We withdrew our consent application, and informed people of our decision.

We identified that we wanted to live in the city. Early morning coffees confirmed that.

We will build on our site.

Our original brief to both architects was that we weren’t worried about how it looked and that the fun stuff should happen on the inside. The first architect blew our budget by more than 50% just in the concept stage. Our brief to the second architect asked him to modify the design so that we could build something we could afford. Neither of those things happened.

We ended up with a whole new design and it was out of budget. We have to take responsibility for that because we let it happen. We would still recommend both architects.

We will build to the original shell, keeping it simple, elegant, and affordable. Apparently this is possible.

And we will put the fun stuff on the inside. We will reference our old place in Lyttelton.

We have been working on our floor plan. Things are looking up.