Hi all

Well I did mention budget in the last blog... and our budget is tight and in this blog I will go into it a bit. Also my new build kitchen story and how it will help the budget!

When we got the initial design through, there were a few things that needed tweaking and I had been chatting to a lady that I had met a few years ago who knows her stuff when it come to energy efficient and high performance homes.  This lady's name is  Claudia  Kaltenstadler and she kindly spent an hour on the phone to me going over different aspects of our build, all this time I had no idea she had a consultancy business and when I found out it was a no brainer to sign her up to be part of my build team. 

It was clear to me Claudia's consulting fees  would be replaced with savings in other areas and Claudia's knowledge and understanding .... well I would be crazy to not to have Harakeke Consultants aboard! 

Here is a link to Claudia's business face book page....simply copy and paste if you want to check it out.

https://www.facebook.com/HarakekeConsultants/services 

One of the first things Claudia went over with us was budget and that is why we did our first pricing on the initial design. It took a bit of time but was well worth it as we came in at over 100k over budget.

We looked at some cheaper options in some of the big ticket items but the key ingrediant was shrinking the design down, we went from 4 bedroom to 3 bedroom and got rid of cost adding angles to simplify and therefore bringing the build back into budget. 

One of the big ticket items that I was aware would be costly was the kitchen and as I wanted a good quality kitchen I needed to find a way of buying a really good deal. So I saved a couple of searches on trade me for exdemo kitchens and full kitchens for sale and man did I get sick of looking at cool kitchens and missing out on them!

But you know what.... It paid off because last Sunday I did a Trade Me "buy now" on a kitchen in Auckland.

I phoned my Hubby and told him the good news. My words were "Hunny I have brought a kitchen and its only 3k!" Then I had to tell him the not so good news...The house was going to Demolitioned so we had 1 week to get the kitchen out and back to Cambridge. EEK!

So here is a seak peak of us getting the kitchen out.











Pretty good kitchen for 3k ...I will go into it a bit more tomorrow or Tues as it was a mission!

So watch this space!




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