Down Wattle Lane V2 - The Plan

Buy land, put a house on it, live happily ever after!

That is normally how I start with an idea, naively, I start in the simplest, most basic form of a plan and I tend to run with that. However, in reality as I always discover there is a multitude of steps and layers before the happily ever after is ever reached.

There are two parts to our plan.

Part 1 - New Home & New Lifestyle Block

Part 2 - Create Self Employment

Part 1 - New Home & New Lifestyle Block

Now we started with big grand designs, self building etc. However the reality has set in, we've spent $50K more than we intended on the land, and to achieve and be successful in Part 2 Self Employment we cannot get into debt. So our 150sqm self build dream has now ended up at 108sqm brand new relocatable dwelling.

I came across homes being built by the Southern Institute of Technology here in Christchurch. There is only 1 design/floorplan/option, and I believe this is so not to upset building companies who will in turn employee the students. SIT offers free courses to students who get hands on learning building homes right on campus under the guidance of experts within the industry. The school essentially sells the homes at cost, as a shell. So the purchaser has to arrange relocation, foundations, connection to services, gib stopping, painting, installing kitchen, bathroom, appliances, flooring and etc, etc. I love the concept of helping the students, also the house is bigger than what we had, we still get to add our own touches, they are a quality house and at a great price. I think they look good too. We're sold, so a buying one! At a rough calculation we expect the complete build to come in under $200K. Time will tell.

Part 2 - Create Self Employment

Gary is an excellent Satay Chef. He has his very own secret recipe that he won't even share with me. Once the house is built we plan to invest in a food caravan to attend evening food markets selling authentic Malaysia Satay Sticks, & Satay Burgers. We've compared with a variety of restaurant style satay sticks, and Gary's still beats them by a country mile!

As for myself, it's all about the Arapawa Sheep. The sheep have always sold well as livestock, but we need to turn a $100 live sheep into a $400 processed sheep. So my goal is to sell Arapawa Sheep products at farmers markets. Selling a variety of Arapawa wool products along with fresh meat products. In Canterbury there are boutique abattoirs and butchers that we can access to process the meat for sale... legally. So I really want to expand on what I have already been doing as a hobby to create a profitable business.

So in a nutshell, that is our plan.  I will post on the progress, and fingers crossed all goes to plan and before the end of 2020 we are living that happily ever after dream!