With only a handful of days off over Christmas, the conversation began about making the move permanent and that we should find a place to call home!

We weren’t sure how long “home” would be and whether we would buy or rent, but the search began. Was it going to be close to the kids new school? Close to amenities? Out of town for all the machinery equipment?

It just so happened that there was a “cute enough” cottage that was available for a 12 month lease. The owners were happy for the dog, machinery equipment and alas the children to rent the space, after a number of viewings I might add!

The deciding factor in the decision to rent the cottage was on one of the final viewings, I noticed some of the largest sunflowers I have ever seen in the garden! I didn’t notice them on the first or second viewing, only the last private viewing. I stood in the lounge room for about 30 minutes really contemplating this move and the sunflowers were my deciding factor. My late grandmothers favourite flower!

We of course wanted to move in right away! But there was one problem, the realestate agent was heading away so couldn’t get us back in until 2/2/2021. My late grandmothers one year death anniversary! Now I know she really wanted me to be here! I still didn’t know why but I was happy she wanted to play this game with me (us)!

Now if you are still reading this, thank you! It truely is a special story!

I was completing the entry condition report and noticed from scratching behind the roller door to the main bedroom. I made a comment to the agent and suggested that I was happy to paint it, if the owners were ok with it? She spoke with them and within the day they came up to the cottage ever so pleased that I was happy to paint it and suggested that they were ok if I painted everything because they wanted to SELL!

OH-EM-GEE! I don’t want to go through this again, I thought. We had just sold up a few properties in Queensland over 2019 and there was no way I wanted to do open houses again!

Brenton and I spoke and thought - wait a minute - let’s see what the ‘main house’ is like?

We got the run down of the property and found out it use to a winery / cellar door. It was on 32 acres and had plenty of water supply with the creek running right through the “front yard” of the main house. There were orchards, both fruit and olives! Yummy! The main residence was built in the 1970’s, in original condition. Hello, renovators dream!

It all sounded too good to be true. BUT there was definitely a lot of work ahead of us if we went down this path!

Which of course we did! For those who know us, know we love a challenge! We have renovated 7 houses in 10 years prior to this property so we weren’t completely blind to what was in front of us.

We went all in! We purchased the property by spring of 2021.

We gutted the inside of the main house, renovated it and “put it back together” as well as painted the exterior of the cottage, landscaped and commenced work on the cellar door!

We’ve come a long way in a year, but what is most exciting is to see were we are going. And that you get to be apart of the story.