Friday 14th of October.

Now our real Job begins !

By Will.

Leading up to our Indian motorbike tour, Jenny & I, with help from numerous Contractors have been pushing to complete our house renovation projects.
It’s actually been quite full on, particularly at the “Investment House” we currently call home.

This will be our final dedicated “House Work” post for 2016, it’s not overly exciting stuff, but is necessary so we can continue with our future travel adventures. When you ask yourself “how do Will & Jenny finance their Tours ?”. This is one of those answers. feel free to skip this post & move onto the travel part. At least you can skip it, unfortunately we have to deal with building/disruption through to completion.

Just a quick rehash on the plan to simplify our lives during 2016. The initial idea after our 2015 Nullarbor Cycle trip was to rid ourselves of some stress, i.e. offload a Rental Property & our Large Family Home. There was to much equity tied up in the Family Home & we don’t plan on living there much while traveling, leaving it empty or renting it out wasn’t a suitable option either.

The Mandurah Reno Property had been handed back to us in a very poor state & it would require a lot of repair work to sell or re-rent it out again. We had purchased it about 4 years early at a very good price. It is in a great location if you want to live life without a car. The centre of town is 2kms away, nice beaches 1.5kms away, Train Station half a kilometre walk & numerous shopping options in close proximity. The City of Mandurah is blessed with a nice Mediterranean climate & is only 50 minutes from the Perth CBD by train.

With so many big positives staring at us right in the face it wasn’t difficult to come up with the conclusion that with a bit of money, effort & work it would make a fantastic small, cost effective “Travel Home Base” . So the plan to reconfigure & renovate was put into motion. In the ideal world of wiljen we should have been all moved in before our trip to India.

At present we are both happy with Compass Homes who are taking care of the additions & renovation, but there has been numerous set backs like a very wet winter & the City Council dragging their feet with the allocation of building permits. We are hopeful it will be nearly complete & ready on our return from India.

Before Photos of the Mandurah Reno House. 2015 & earlier.

 

Progress Photos during renovation of the Mandurah Reno House. 2016

 

Latest Progress Photos of the Mandurah Reno House. September/October 2016.

 

Building Plan of Reno House, Before & After.

 

During the sale of our South Yunderup Family Home, we received a call from the tenants we had living in another investment property we own. When they first moved in they had said that they would be there for the next 10 years. But their circumstances changed and a few months short of the 2 year anniversary they wanted to break the lease agreement.

Earlier in 2016 after lots of Painting & other Repairs we sold our large Family Home.

 

Since Jenny & I had nowhere but DIXYBUS the VW Kombi too live it actually suited us pretty well. With some juggling between the buyers of our Family Home & the soon to be ex-Tenants in the investment house we managed to time a reasonably smooth relocation. We quickly came to the conclusion we were sick of renting out property, so decided that if we can achieve a fair & reasonably sale price we’ll sell the investment house as well. Prior to the sale there is quite a bit of work to be done to make it appealing to potential house buyers.

After today all the pre-sale preparation work is pretty much complete. All that’s left to do is plant some shrubs, tidy & mulch the gardens, which we’ll do once we return from India. Come January 2017 it will be on the market for sale & we should be able to shift into our new home base.

Before, Photos of the Investment house we will sell next January.

 

After, Photos of the Investment house we will sell next January.

 

Very soon we head for Perth on the train, we are spending the night in a Hotel & going out for dinner with our 3 Children & their respective partners. Tomorrow we head for the Airport & commence wiljen’s Indian Motorbike Adventure !

We are both quite excited & plan on posting regular blog updates. Next time you read this blog team wiljen will be checking out the sights, smells & sounds of India.
Catch you all soon.