The Pain of 2021

The year of 2021 started out as a year of hope and excitement for our family, but it quickly turned into a year of heartache and disappointment.

At the start of 2021, my beautiful family and I embark on a very big and exciting journey together. My wife and I decided that it was time to renovate our family home to create some more space for our three beautiful daughters and to create our dream forever home.

Midway through 2020, we engaged a builder and began the planning and design process. This process took approximately six months and by early 2021 the demolition and foundation work began on our new home.

We were over the moon with excitement and seeing the progress of the foundations and the concrete slab being poured gave us a glimpse of the all the hard work and time we had put into the planning and design of our house.

Suddenly everything stopped!!!

No one was on site any longer, our builder was not answering his phone or his emails. Our hearts sank with fear when we realised what was going on. Yup you guessed it, our builder had gone into liquidation. I am not going to replay all the events that we went through once we discovered that our builder had left us high and dry. The pain of that memory is still to fresh and raw. Perhaps in the future I will be able to write in more detail about the events that took place.

The photos included in this post were taken at the start of the demolition and the laying of the foundations for the new home. In upcoming posts I will share what the property looks like now after it has been left sitting vacant and half demolished for an entire year.

The Long Wait

Yes you read that right, we found out January 2021 that our builder went into liquidation, and as I sit here writing in January 2022, there has still been no building progress on our new home.

As you can imagine the heartache and pain that we have experienced has been immense. I know the world in general had had a very tough 2021 with the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic, so I realise that our situation is still minor in comparison to those who have lost loved ones during this pandemic.

Unfortunately, the majority of the factors that put us in our current situation are directly attributable to the impacts of COVID-19. This disaster of a pandemic has caused immense disruption and turmoil around the world, in our personal experience the impacts have not been health related, but they have been in other areas of our life, which I believe should not be underestimated. I know that we are not the only family that has been negatively impacted by COVID-19 for other than health related reasons.

Impact of COVID-19

1. Firstly, our builder going into liquidation was largely due to his company not getting much work during 2020 and 2021 as a result of people being too fearful to sign renovation contracts due to the uncertainty of COVID-19.

2. Secondly it took over six months to go through the legal process and the process of claiming builder's insurance through the Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC). Again, many of these delays were directly attributable to impacts caused by COVID-19.

3. Finally, after we were eventually appointed a new builder by the QBCC, we were informed by our new builder that there was an over six month wait for our timber trusses, frames and other key building materials to arrive. He also warned us to expect price increases when the materials finally do arrive. The logistic and supply chains across the building industry were completely disrupted by COVID-19 throughout 2021, as companies were trying to navigate the new restrictions imposed upon them. We are starting to see very similar issues starting to arise in the food supply chains at the start of 2022.

Our family has patiently endured the long wait of 2021 and finally we are starting to feel the glimpse of a new hope that 2022 will be the year that we get to complete and move into our new dream home.

The New Hope of 2022

Last Wednesday we met with our new builder at our property, our girls now refer to it as our 'broken home'. The home looks worse than ever, I will take a few photos to share with you. It has been a very wet summer here in Queensland with torrential rain at time, so the weeds have gone wild. I have done my best to contain the weeds, but when you are not living at the property it becomes quite challenging.

Our builder took us through the pathway forward and told us when we could expect to see works begin again on site.

The great news is that our builder has assured us that by the end of January 2022 works will recommence on our dream home. As you can imagine we were over joyed and relieved to hear that things are finally starting to look positive again.

Obviously there are no guarantees in life, so I am still holding back some of my happy emotions until I actually see some actual evidence of work commencing. The builder said that he will start by bringing in his digger next week to clean up the site and make it a work safe site for him and his team. Shortly after him cleaning up the site, he expects the arrival of the timber trusses and frames. 😀

When these timber trusses and frames do arrive, there is a very strong possibility that I might shed a tear or two. 😭 They will be very happy tears, because the arrival of the timber trusses and frames is such a crucial component of our entire build. When they arrive on site, the carpenters can work their magic and we will see massive progress take place very quickly. This sort of long awaited progress will really to make the hard work we have put into the creation of our dream home totally worth it.

Conclusion

This new beginning for our little family is both extremely exciting and also very daunting. We went into the first attempt of the renovation full of hope and trust, with this second renovation attempt we again are going into it with a lot of hope, but we are going to be a lot more careful throughout the process to make sure that we get our home completed successfully this time.

We will not know ourselves once we finish the renovation and have a roof over our heads again to call home. I will take you all on this journey with us. I will share the highs and the lows, continually keeping you up to date with how the build is progressing.

This is definitely going to be a bit of an emotional journey for our family, so please be prepared for that in my future posts as I like to write from the heart and I do not plan to hide my emotions, both my good ones and my bad ones.

Wish us luck as we embark on this new journey!!!! Take Two!

Post authored by @strenue