July 13, 2009 13:24 in Early Renovations by Coralie

"Think outside the BOX..... & just do it!"

To give you insight into where we have come from and what we have built, I will take you back to the beginning.

My husband Paul and I started our life together in 1989 at the age of 19 & 20 with two car loans, one of which had been repossessed due to not doing a revs check. We were engaged after only 9 months of dating, didn’t have 2 pennies to rub together or a plan for the next day let alone the rest of our lives.

After combining our pay packets to clear our car loans, we put our entrepreneurial spirit to good use and began investing in the property market in 1989. Our first investment was a deceased block of land in our home town of Esperance, WA, which took 4 months to settle in which time the land had nearly doubled in price. Not bad for our first investment, we thought. The plan was to build our home on this land eventually, but we hadn’t seen that much cash in our lifetime. So we were forced to make the tough decision to sell it and cash up.

We got married in 1990 and left the beautiful beaches of country Esperance WA to head for the remote mine site, Bellevue, where Paul would become an airleg miner. For those who are not familiar with WA, Bellevue Mine was in the middle of the desert, 450kms north of Kalgoorlie. Not exactly the ideal place to start raising a family of four children.

There we were in the middle of a stinking hot Australian desert having our first baby and needing a home on the mine site. So naturally we swapped our second car for a caravan and annex, which we had to first pull apart and pack up before we towed it away. Sounds crazy when I look back on what we did. Anyway the 24foot caravan was in desperate need of a good renovation and I began to get excited as I could see the caravan’s potential and all it needed was a little TLC and elbow grease.

We loved the whole process of renovating. I still remember how excited I was when we hung the new curtains, re-upholstered the seats, laid new lino & carpet, painted the faded walls and gave the place a good scrub and clean. Paul being the handy man attached and erected a solid annex and covered the caravan roof with suspended shad cloth to provide relief from the scorching heat. It didn’t stop there; this caravan was becoming a little village right before our very eyes.

Later we added a garden shed to the annex and Paul found sewerage plans that enabled him to tap into the sewerage; low and behold we had our own toilet, shower and washing machine. Life was getting really getting posh in the caravan now that we didn’t have to use the public abolition facilities. This was a dream come true after a year and a half of trekking to the laundry & public toilets with kids and a pregnant bladder.

But wait there’s more, we fenced in a yard, planted some grass, made a veggie patch and even had a front rockery garden. A year and a half later we decided to put the word out that we were selling the caravan on site as we needed to get something bigger to accommodate our 3rd child and were quickly running out of room.

Whoopee, our hard work had paid off, as we doubled our money when we sold it. All cashed up and ready for more I headed to Perth in search for a new caravan in need of a renovation. Well I found a beautiful brand new mobile home, which was $5000 more than we wanted to spend but I convinced Paul that it would be an ‘investment’ in our quality of life on the mine site and later be our golden ticket for a house when we eventually left. Gotta love a wife’s power to persuade!By this stage we had started to develop dreams, hopes and plans for ourselves and our soon to be four children.

WE WERE NOW HOOKED ON MAKING MONEY, BUYING LAND & CARAVAN RENOVATIONS!