FTO AUSTRALIA

Congrats phil cant wait to see the finished product

Congratulations mate! Now build a shed before the house.

Thanks everyone.
I will be going up there tomorrow, so I will take a few pics.

dstocks wrote:Congrats Phil.When does building start?

It will be 6 weeks until we get settlement on the land.
We still need another $2K savings to sign a contract to build the house, hopefully that won't take to long.
Once we sign the contract to build they have to do soil and soakage tests on the land.
Then put in an application to council to get approval to build, this can take up to 3 months.
When approved the builder will take about 14 weeks to build the house.
We will probably have to put in some sort of driveway (road base/blue metal) before work starts, so the builders can get to the house site.

Vectose wrote:Congratulations mate! Now build a shed before the house.

We are hoping that our budget will allow a shed, but it won't be a big shed, probably a 6m x 6m 2 car shed to start and we add more sheds later.
It will be up to the bank, if they allow, we will build a bigger shed to start.
All our construction, connection and ground work quotes need to go to the bank as one, so they shed can't go up first.

Make sure you leave room for "dedicated bonfire area"

The fire pit area will be up the back near the giant gum tree.
I will be on the lookout for a big tractor rim that I want to turn into a fire pit.

We went up to look at the block of land today.
The owners whom still live in the block behind ours, we are buying their back block, greated us at the newly constructed back fence and invited us up to their place for a drink.
They are Greek and very friendly.
They told us that they are going to construct new fences for us down both sides of the block before settlement, I might have to go up and give a hand in the construction.
I had a few beers in the shed with the husband and Sue and Steven went inside their house for a coffee/soft drink with the wife.
He has a Magna which has leaking rocker covers, I told him to get the parts and I will fix it next weekend for free.
As the community there work with each other in a barter system.
When we left they gave us some of their home grown produce straight out of their walk-in coolroom...10 tomatoes, 2 rock melons, 3 apple cucumbers and 12 eggs.

Also they want to knock down their olive plantation and he asked me if I want the plantation to burn for my FTO bonfire

Pics...

Hey Phil, you're a land owner

kiz wrote:Hey Phil, you're a land owner

No, we are now "land people"

Nice work there on the awesome score Phil!

Awesome news, congratulations Phil.

Great block, great view, great neighbours, living the dream

Even got goats

Damn that's a huge block! And to have a good neighbor is worth in gold
Did you find out about Anticon?

We are at frame, supposed to complete end March/beginning April. I hope final handover doesn't clash with Bonfire dates

Awesome! Congrats mate!!!!

Thanks for all the well wishing guys

The owners, now known as the "vendors" as we signed the contract on Wednesday, dropped off their 99 Magna 3.5l yesterday so I could do the requested repairs.
Rocker cover gaskets, spark plug seals and spark plugs....I made him go buy some plugs as the car was running rough and smelling of unburnt fuel.
I pulled the top of the engine/intake down in about 45 mins.
Cleaned everything down, the rocker cover to rocker cover breather hose and fittings, and the PCV valve were fully blocked with caked hardened oil sludge.
Put it all back together with the new parts, started it up and it ran smooth as.
Although there was oil running out of the rear rocker cover
So I stripped it back down to find that the breather pipe was cracked and leaking and the cheap silicone rocker cover gaskets had been pinched on instalation
Reinstalled the rear gasket with "Ultra Blue", replaced the breather hose with a new piece of standard hose and all was fixed.

Took me from 11:30 to 5:30.

When the vendors came to pick it up they brought us a full BBQ chicken and a large mixed salad for our dinner.

You are a saint, and a scholar. Well done!

Nice work!

Shane001 wrote:Even got goats

They is sheep

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Update on our progress...

Today I helped build a 240 meter fence down one side of our block.
I turned up at the block to help the vendor at 9am.
It took us to 2pm to put in all the star pickets and posts. We used a dumpy level to line them all up.
My arms were hurting after all the hammering
At 2pm I drove home and Sue and Steven came back up to the block for the arvo.
From 3pm we started to put up the cyclone wire.
We tensioned the wire with the vendors tractor.
We found that tensioning the entire 200 meters of wire in one go wasn't working.
So we moved the tractor to the half way point and tensioned the top 100 meters of the wire and then moved back down to the bottom to tension the rest.
By the time we did this it was 6:30pm, so we called it a day and went up to the vendors shed for a few well earned brews.
If the vendor doesn't finish it through the week I will return to give him a hand next Saturday.

Oh...and I didn't have to pay for any of the materials.

Please enjoy the pics.

Galant in its natural habitat now?

Ever seen the movie 'welcome to woop woop'?

Update...

I took the FTO for a run up to our block of land today and found that the vendor had completed the side fence and also had built the front fence.
The fence still needs to be tied to the droppers (star pickets) to be fully finished.
When I saw what had been done I found a very large smile grow on my face
The block looks so much better with the boundary fences

Some news on the purchase...
We have been informed that ANZ has given us a conditional approval on the land purchase.
The condition being that the land has to be independently valued.
This process has started and we should have a final answer this week.
They better say yes after all the work we have put into our investigation and fence building.

Please enjoy some more pics.