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House




In mid-2012 we bought a 258 acre property in the small South Burnett settlement of Kumbia (near Kingaroy) in Queensland, with the intention of eventually building a house and setting up a small farm. Over a year later we were still trying to decide what type of house to build. Both of us were keen to use a sustainable building method, as we like natural materials and hate waste, but it wasn’t immediately obvious what would suit our property. Then we came across a removal house in our local area, advertised for only $10,000. It was located only 14 km from our property and was probably 100 years old (based on the when the area was originally settled).

BEFORE photos of the house here.

The only problem was that it was a “Queenslander” style house. We had lived in a Queenslander before, and even though we loved the features, we knew it could be a lot of work to maintain and we were wary of the asbestos used in extensions. Even so, we made an appointment to view the house and were besotted with the sweet little cottage. We started referring to it as our “Second-hand” house.  We were looking forward to the prospect of living in “VJs” (vertical joint walls) again instead of plasterboard and it was good to know that we wouldn’t be using much new material for our house.

When our offer was accepted we began the process of organising to move the house. Fortunately we found a really helpful building inspector who was able to guide us through the process. Removal houses are quite common in our area and we had several removalists to choose from. I got my owner-builder licence so that I could coordinate all the trades.

Read part 1 of our house story here and progress updates here.

We moved into the house in April 2017, but work continues!

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