The Baynhams

When you build a house here in Oz the local council come around regularly to check you are following all the rules. When you are totally finished you are issued with a "Final Occupation Certificate" Without this you would be unable to sell your house. We have had an "Interim" cert for the last year which gave us temporary permission to live in the house while a few outstanding jobs got finished. Some of these jobs were to...

Build retaining walls around the garden - Thanks Paul.

Backfill and charge the termite reticulation system - Thanks Mr Termite man

... and finally build a small deck outside our office sliding door to access the spa without falling down the 3 foot drop.

Dad and myself got stuck in to making the deck while he was here but ran out of time to finish it before he left. Having had Dad do all the hard work I spent a few hours on Easter Sunday putting the final planks of Mirbau wood in place and of course got all the credit ! (sorry Dad!)

We were granted our final certificate this week and are finally free of council sticking their noses in.

We were also on a tight deadline to apply for the Australian First Home Owners Grant which we qualify for (despite previously owning houses in the UK) We believed we needed to claim it within 12 months of moving into our house and so we needed to get it all sorted by 12th of April this year. We were all ready to apply but Byron's passport was in Canberra being re-issued and we were stuck without it as it needed to be presented with the application. After chewing our finger nails and wishing for the passport to arrive back and the Final Occupation Certificate to be issued we have been racing out to the post box every day hoping to find them. This week they all arrived so I raced in to Newcastle with days to go to claim the grant. The woman who lodged our claim was very nice and told me that our 12 months started from the date of issue of the Final Occupation Certificate and we had 11 months, 3 weeks and 5 days left to claim the money!

Never mind. It is lodged now, I think I am going to sit in the spa, admire my lovely new deck and think of ways to spend the money...!