A Singaporean In Australia

Year 1 is a year of planning and observation. I should also look out for frost during Winter. Since there is no real need for development on certain areas of the property, it may be a good idea to rent out portions of the property in the meantime. The real estate agent gave me a "very conservative" estimation of the rates to expect.

1) House alone without paddock - $400 per week

Even in such a terrible rental market (for landlords), $400 per week for this house is an absolute steal. I have no doubt there will be takers at this price. 

2) House + lower block to the river - $450 to $500 per week

3) Front horse land only - $100 to $150 per week.

Therefore potentially, I could rent out the entire place I am not working on for $550 to $650 a week. That gives about $31k for a year. We don't need to be a financial genius to know for a property that cost about 2 million bucks, that is a miserable yield. However shitty that yield is, it is still higher than fixed deposit in Singapore banks and I get to feel sibei song. At least some 30 grand will be able to cover the operating cost of the land, maintain the place and even add a bit of value with it. Having said that, it may take a century to get a full ROI at this rate, unless the land appreciates in value with another (unlikely) boom in WA in future. Who knows?

So we cannot say this is the worst investment in the world. Well, you can argue it will be very hard to liquid this purchase, as compared to Singapore banks fixed D. However, the weakness of such an investment is also its strength. One can create liquidity with the land. 

But how? 

That is where the average minds do not dare to venture. Unfortunately mine is one of them. That is why I am doing this exercise. To mock at myself and learn. There must be some form of ideas that can give higher yield of the land that can be implemented from the beginning of Year 2. I have yet to come to it, sadly. This post is still about Year 1.

Well there you have it.... let's talk about the land a little more. The flood plain boundary on the right looks scary but it isn't really that bad. It's just normal land when you walk through the site. The boundary is set by the water department to demarcate where they think a flood will happen on the worst case scenario. Thus, they will not encourage major structures to be built within the boundary. Land owners are free to build simple structures such as gazebos or sheds, conduct any activities or grow crops on it. During the "1 in 100 years" flood last Summer, the water came into the dotted area I marked (4) on the top right hand corner. For a flash flood of that shock level, it didn't affect this land that badly. Further up, the contours increased to 5m above river level and rising quickly to 8.5m. It'll take a massive volume of water to reach that level. Still, you'll never know. KL-J said ice caps are melting elsewhere. Hmm... seriously, then he should be looking for a land on the hills with a waterfall, not a land abutting a river lah!

The first thing that a construction manager does is to establish an access route. There is more than enough time during the first year of observation to identify the most ideal access routes. During the last few months before the end of Year 1, access routes to the fields have to be opened. On the first glance, the current one to the warehouse is illogical and will not serve any commercial purpose properly. So 2 new entrances to the warehouse have to be made. One in front and one at the back. The terrain leading out from both new entrances are not ideal and have to be cut and filled for to get the gradient more gradual. It is not a big scale earthwork project and should be easily funded from the rental of the property.

By the end of Year 1, Horse Around has to be ready or almost ready to start. The stable makes it a natural setting for the theme. However, the menu remains a problem. I have no problems designing a menu. Imagine I called one item on our school canteen menu "Chocobo Egg" The students (seemed to) love it and the item was sold out each time it featured on a certain day of the week. I draw my inspiration from Billy Bombers, which amused me when I dined there for the first time. I ordered "B-52" for the name rather than the food. So it is easy enough for me (and probably anyone else) to come out with names for a stable themed cafe. Such as, (description are not actual menu descriptions but to explain to noobs like you)

Entre

Pegasus Wings - same as Buffalo wings but I refuse to call that, that.

Haystack - Vegetable salad

I can eat a Horse! - Jumbo size platter, consisting of fried junk food.

etc

Mains

Trojan Horse - Cheese and bacon stuffed chicken, shaped like body of a horse with nuggets and potato sticks as head and limbs held together with Pocky Sticks. Cheese oozes out from body when you make an incision. I wish I can make soldiers dashing out to give diner a good smacking but don't ask for too much ok. Otherwise, fucking kick ass meal.

Dark Horse - Scotch egg (pork) on baked rice. Wish I can try that with a salted egg but I don't want to kill somebody.

Lead a Horse to water - Fish 'N Chips

One Trick Pony - Spaghetti Bolognaise, MY version

My Kingdom for a Horse - Mushrooms in cheese sauce on a panfried chicken chop with an intricate thin crust.

On the High Horse - Grilled Braised Pork Trotters with spiced peanuts

etc.

Deserts

Crack of the Whip - Rich whipped chocolate mousse

Two Horse Race - Double banana split

Unicorn Horn - Rainbow coloured jelly in v-shaped glass with evaporated milk on top

Hold your Horse! - Double scoop ice cream on cone

etc. etc. Too tired to think of a complete list. To buy a full version of menu .... please pay $57.


I have no freaking idea how to draw a crowd in. I can add items on menu and set up a decent SOP for the entire running of the place. The basic set up requires 3 staff to run optimally. 2 staff if business is still quiet. I can train them and even help out but I cannot be full time involved at this stage. Business better be good enough to pay their salary with access for profit. I wish I know how to make this work.

Like I mentioned earlier, I felt like being locked out in a losing Solitaire or Freecell game. Something had to go if I were to make any further progress. My bicycles would be moving to the new factory eventually, perhaps as a good aid slow walking folks to their toilet breaks. Until then they would be taking up precious space I couldn't afford in the garage. So I decided to move everything to one side of the wall. That was the only way I could begin work properly on the empty side.

I packed the rack that Patrick generously gifted me as much as I could, doing a better job than the Missus, of course. When my tasks are through one day, I'll have to run through the boxes of stuff one by one and see what can be eliminated from the household. I am not the slightest convinced we need that amount of things in the garage to run the household.

After one side of the wall was cleared, I made a visit to the hardware store only to find the high prices were not on my side.

That is what happens when you give a large corporate a monopoly of the market. Crappy prices for crappy goods. I find prices of many items in Bunnings exorbitant. Sure, I agree that there are goods available at great prices but if you know the hardware market well enough, you will be able to identify much more at cut throat prices easily. Fixtures and fasteners, for example, are some to begin with. They are being sold at a ridiculous margin in Bunnings. If I were to go with their recommendations, I would be spending hundreds of dollars to shelf the garage. Even a crappy fucking hook cost a few dollars. Fuck them.

So I decided to go the Pissed Poor Peasant way. For example, to hold my ladders, all I needed was 2 screws on wall plugs. For less than $0.50 (I didn't even have to buy the screws), I could hold my ladder plus my full weight climbing the ladder on that wall. (Yes, I bloody did that) Try doing that with your crappy overpriced hooks. The shape of the countersunk screws also held the edge of the ladder very tightly. These wouldn't fall even if an earthquake hits. See how the ladders look on the wall. What should I do with expensive hooks in a blood sucking hardware giant? Screw them.

Next, I spent loads of time walking up and down the aisles of Bunnings looking for a cheap solution to create shelving. No, there was no chance in hell I would be paying those money for ridiculous gimmicks. Bolt-less adjustable shelves for a hundred bucks? Hey - how often do you adjust your racks? I don't think most people even do that once in 5 years. Do I care if it was bolt-less or not? You think I cannot tighten a bolt? If they sell me a self-cleaning rack for a hundred bucks, perhaps I'll throw my money at them but not before that.

Tracks for shelves brackets, as shown earlier, was selling at exorbitant prices. A minimum of 2 tracks would cost me $25. A pair of brackets at $6. If I were to make a 3 level shelf, the total sum would be $43 and that was not inclusive of the actual shelf (wood) yet. I looked through every available solution but none of them were low costs. In the end, I sighed and decided carpentry would have to be the solution. The problem was, working in wood was the last thing I wanted to do. I preferred metal obviously, due to my experience with it.

Anyway, beggars cannot be choosers. I bought my cheapo MDR wood material for a total of $21. It consisted of 2 x 115mm x 2700mm and 1 x 60mm x 2600mm. I figured that was enough for now. I visited the "Cut Shop" in Bunnings. They told me the first 3 cuts (since I bought 3 items) were free of charge and subsequent cuts would cost me $0.50 each.

"Ok, do it," I said.

So the chap did it. After the cuts, I realised that they were cut 1mm more than what I required. Every single fucking piece.

I walked to the self-checkout counters, paid for my materials and walked out. $0.50 for each cut? No way I was going to pay for that.

I didn't even want to use fixtures to hold my shelves up. I used leftover tubes of construction glue left over from my laminate flooring job a year ago. The next day, the glue seemed cured so I put my heaviest tool box (above) on one shelf for a load test. The last time I checked (yesterday, after 1 week), the shelf was still holding out fine. So I know my other lighter stuff will give the shelves absolutely no problem. So basically, I spent $21 to create these spaces. I already find it too expensive. I should have picked up unwanted timber in nearly construction sites to do this shit. Unfortunately, I couldn't being them to Bunnings for some clean, inaccurate cuts.

This post will make no sense to anyone. It is not meant to be for anyone, just a brain exercise for me. 

Initially I wanted to share the house I had the privilege to access and assess the day before. As a pissed poor peasant, it isn't an everyday thing I get to view a property asking for 2 million bucks. It had a beautifully built double storey house. I call that a character house and I doubt anyone who see it will disagree. It was the kind of house you'll either love it or hate it. If you belong to the latter, it will make no sense to buy it and do a major interior renovation. What a shame it will be.

Anyway, I changed my mind about posting the lovely features of the properties as well as the drawbacks that I saw. It is pointless and doesn't do much good. Instead, I'll take this opportunity to exercise my brain and come out with a 5 year plan for this land if I bought this land. That is a big IF but I believe strongly opportunities come to those who are ready. If I do not make my brain work and start learning and improving, I will never be ready for any opportunity. I don't care if I can afford this land or not. Eventually one day I will. It may be at a far, far away place where I can afford, nowhere near this plot of land I'm reviewing but it doesn't matter. 

It doesn't matter. I'll get there someday or at least die trying.

Profile of land:

This is an unusual piece of property. Most of the time, owners choose to build their houses along the frontage. However, the previous owners of the land chose to build their house right in the middle of the land, accessible by a narrow charming driveway flanked by matured trees. The rest of the frontage were covered by two sections of horse ranches.

The second storey bedrooms overlook a tennis court, which is the last frontier of the land of that elevation. The land begins to slope gently downwards from the tennis court towards to river abutting the rear boundary of the land. The river level is about 5m below the highest part of the rear and about 3m at the lowest part. The risk of flooding is low but flood walls may have to be built to ensure.

The condition of soil is relatively fertile. The rear land has never been used. The ranches have been used to mind or rear horses in the past. The fields are visibly healthy with thick grass.

Facilities

A beautiful house

1 good size open warehouse

3 sheds

3 car ports

1 stable

1 borehole with 10,000k L license for 10 years

At least 4 large aviary 

reticulation throughout the land

Automated security access gate

Year 1- The year of observation

No major earthworks or changes to the land will be implemented in Year 1. It will be a year of observing how the basic infrastructure and land works through the 4 seasons. Observations must be quantitatively recorded and analysed. That includes the weather, rainfall, daylight, sun direction, human traffic, neighbours, wildlife and the observation of the natural energies of the place such as falling leaves, wind, dust, wind droppings etc.

In the meantime, get approval from the local council to convert the stable into a cafe. For this land zone, this type of land use should be classed as Restaurant, where approval has to be granted to start a business. I do not foresee any major issue because this land is in a prime tourism region and the neighbours are running something similar. However, the council may have an issue with using the existing stable as the restaurant. A comprehension proposal will have to be drawn out in accordance to the requirements of the council and relevant authorities and changes will be made until approval is granted. 

While the cafe should be profitable, or at the minimum breaking even as soon as possible, the purpose of this cafe primarily to get public to know the place. It takes time to get the word around, therefore this should be done as early as possible. 

The budget of the project is $50,000. The conversion of the stable can be done without a builder, as changes will be functional and . Tradesmen have to be roped in to get the services up but the rest (or a big part) of the work can be done myself. The cafe will only open up about 1/5 of the land to the public and can be operated standalone. The cafe will have a country feel, with existing features of the stables preserved, such as half-swing doors, hooks and trap doors. 

Savvy Steve's garage does not look that messy. Unfortunately, this (left) is the neatest part of the garage. There are worse sides of the walls that are best remained unseen.

I found myself standing like a loon in the garage many times last weekend. I didn't know where to begin. Believe me, I am a great organiser and can sort out any mess if I want to. However, that felt like playing a game of solitaire or freecell, being in a permanent locked situation. Fortunately unlike in those games, I can add elements into the situation to change it. My current racks do not solve my problem. I will need to spend time (and some money) to install wall shelves to house some of the permanent items. It shall be be done flushed to the columns without encroaching into the garage space.

The far side shall be have shelving flushed to the columns as well. Only one side of the wall shall be lined with my racks. That way, I could free up enough space to park 2 cars in the garage once again, as well as accommodating the amount of things I need to house in the garage.

An inspection of the fence also confirmed the possibility of freeing up about 1.5 sqm of space if I were to modify part of the fence behind. It was an oversight from me, I should have gotten the lazy fucks who did the fencing to do that. However, I was too busy working on the interior back then to think about it. Fortunately, my experience in making the side gate will be adequate for me to modify my fence. I shall claim my 1.5 sqm. In a tiny house like Savvy Steve's, every inch matters. I shall add this task to the list but it may or may not be completed in Autumn. All tasks unfinished will be carried over to Winter.

Despite moving all the remaining pavers out of the garage, it appeared that was only 10% of the work done. Addressing the mess in the garage is harder than I thought. I will have to put in real effort this weekend or it will never be done. Well, at least I got started. The start will always be the hardest. Things will get better.

It turned out that not all that glittered was gold, I found out the hard way. There was an easement placed on the land where Acres of Gold was. There was an important gas line across the land beneath. Though the previous owners might have not be disturbed for the past 30 years, it does not mean there will not be any disruption to the land in future when the need arises. Thus the easement clause in the land title and that does anything but to put one at ease if you are considering buying the land. KL-J's advisers told him to stay out. I had the same opinion. I wouldn't mind living on the land even if a gas pipe running below. In Singapore, we live above all kinds of shit anyway. However, running a business on land with easement is an entirely different story. If the easement is exercise, the business downtime, opportunity costs, reinstating costs and compensation will be potential headaches. Since prevention is better than cure, the best thing to do is to avoid.

Was I embarrassed for not spotting such a critical problem? Yes. However, it was the first time I heard of the term easement in my entire life. Much as I tried, I didn't cover every single potential issue associated with buying land. That is how we learn things. I am grateful for an opportunity to an eye opener rather than dwelling on my lack of knowledge. I learnt something from that and I am sharing it now for your benefit.

There will be always better properties around. Perhaps not at the same price or location but there will be interesting ones here and there. So it is up to KL-J (and me to a lesser extent) to shortlist new ones. Coincidentally, the one that he spotted and noted me was one that caught my eye just a minute before. It was a beautiful looking estate on paper. One that sends hearts fluttering. However, I thought it might be over his budget so I didn't suggest. Of course, I was wrong again. From the way I see it, if it is value for money, investors will not mind paying more.

The land report suggested a scary drop in land price in just one single year but it was still valued for a million despite the plunge. It looks like most people who buy land recently, be it residential, commercial or rural, will be sitting on a property worth less than what they paid for today. Despite the drop in land value, the owner is expecting at least a million more on the raw land itself. Is the stunning house, water licenses, boreholes, infrastructure, buildings and other investments worth a million dollars? 

I'll visit it soon to find out. Hopefully my eyes will be keener this time.

Before I drove off, I left KL-J a text, "If you are not buying this, give me a loan of 1.5 million."

By the time I reached home, he came back with, "Can no problem but we take your daughter as collateral. My wife always wanted a daughter..."

That was a toughie. I've gotta think. 

When I saw Judy, she asked me how was the viewing. I didn't answer her but asked how much was the EC in Singapore that she was interested in.

"$945,000," she replied.

Damn.

I sat down and ate some chicken and carrots for dinner quietly. Savvy Steve's house was only a 5-10 minutes drive away... but what a big difference it makes. Here we are, sitting on a measly 310sqm land. With building cost, it didn't come out to 0.5 million bucks but it was close. That property I viewed was a 15 acre lot. It had a residential property on it, built in 1980 but very well kept for its age, almost at a move-in condition. There was a large cottage on it too. It was built in 1940s and would have a lot of character if it was better taken care of but unfortunately it wasn't.

While the cottage was in a shabby state, it was structurally sound with good Jarrah wood that stood the test of time. The cladding of the house, however, badly needed a face lift. Still it had charming things such as 1 very old school fireplace and a firewood oven, features that could potentially look amazing if restored.

I wanted to spend 1 hour at the property. I ended up spending 3 hours there. I have viewed a fair share of properties but never had I spent that much time in one property before. Although the sellers were serious sellers, they had been great hosts and along with the agent, were never pushy. Neil, the son of the owners, told me a lot about his growing up days and what he used to do in the property with his 4 siblings. There were animals everywhere and they caught breams at the river for dinner often. However, his parents are 75 and 80 respectively and could no longer handle the chores in that land and had to sell it.

The owner was a little deaf in his ears. He was a quiet man who did little talking. However when he did, his words carried substance. While looking through his study room, he even showed me a book that he wrote.

"Can I have it?" I asked shamelessly.

"Yes," the old gentleman said and even offered to sign it for me.

They also prepared tea and cakes for me. It wasn't a facade put up for the sale. They were simple and nice folks and I could feel it.

Sentiments aside, let's get down to facts.

This property is 15.3km to Perth City, a 26 minutes drive.

It is 13.3km to Perth Airport, a 17 minutes drive.

It is 6.8km to the nearest hospital, a 10 minutes drive.

A 5 minutes drive to the nearest train station.

It is 7km to an upcoming university.

10 minutes to 2 historic suburbs and 1 big one with full amenities.

It is 1km off the road along a famous tourism route in Perth

It has a riverbank at the end of the land. How many such property can you get hold of?

It has good neighbours to synergise with. They run good businesses and keep their properties beautiful.

It is a safe, peaceful area.

The main property enjoy a consistent gentle breeze from the river throughout the afternoon

All 15 acres of it plus the houses on it, the great location and great potential for $1.5 million. I challenge you to find a better deal.


If only I am not a pissed poor peasant....

A few weeks back, Auntie Jo came over to visit. Before she left, she pulled me over and whispered, "You see your grass is creeping to your neighbour's side. Clear it in case they not happy."

Oh bother. It wasn't initially added as my Autumn task list but now I had to commit time to do that. No choice.

Since I had some pavers left, I thought it would be a good idea to create a deep boundary with barricade with them. The roots of the grass would never grow that deep and cross over to the other side again.

It was surprisingly hard to dig a tunnel for my pavers. The roots of the grass were insanely strong. I had to change into my safety boots and eventually wear socks because the stomping on my shovel was starting to give me blisters. Nabei.

Before long, my stomping job was done. The grass finally gave way and realised who was the boss. With the digging done, putting in pavers was a formality for me. I prided myself in doing the best boundary on my street. I saw some of the slip shod work done by my neighbours .... nothing comparable to mine. Theirs were not even straight, for a start.

Now that I have the worst planter box on my street, at least that boundary pavers, along my pavement leading to main door was the best on my street. In time to come, I'll make the best letter box on the street to make up for my planter. I'll do that later..... I have only 2 hands and 24 hours a day...

After the job, Jen helped to remove the grass that crept over to the neighbours. It looked much cleaner now. I'm sure the neighbour will like it.

Well, I ran out of Jasper color paint. You know, I'm very reluctant to spend more on paint. That is one of the reasons why I procrastinated the painting of my planter box until now.

I thought it was a great idea to use some the leftover paint for MIL's job to paint it. It was a good, expensive outdoor paint and would make a lasting finish on any surface.

Before long, I realised it wasn't quite a good idea. The brown simply stood out against the Jasper painted feature wall. Tough luck. I would have to redo the damn thing. Fortunately I stopped at an early stage. A search in the garage yields the finding of plenty of Scallopini paint. That would do, as it was the same paint as the rest of the house face. The only disadvantage using that was the planter box would not stand out as a feature anymore. Did I care? Not really.

So Scallopini it became. I was actually relieved using it because the finish of the rendering was far from perfect. Yes I should have grind uneven surfaces away and patch blots before I began to paint. It was too late to do so as I realise it didn't look that good when I almost completed the paint job. On the bright side, it would look a lot worse if I had used Jasper.

Sure, I could fix the problem by patching and re-painting it. It wasn't all that bad. However, it isn't me to fix up something that is done. I'll always move on to the next undone priority and come back to it when I have nothing left. It could be Spring time or even next Autumn. I do not know.

Since I had all the painting stuff out, I took the opportunity to fix up the imperfections of the Eggshell Cream paint area all around the house. With that, I could strike out two jobs of my Autumn task list. The list is shrinking. I'm relieved.

I found out later it wasn't the gutters I was supposed to pain. I don't know what you call these here but in Singapore we usually call them fascia and the projects I was dealing with only involved aluminium or glass panels as fascia.

Whatever it is, the job has to be done. Well, I wasn't feeling that great because there was a hemorrhoid problem acting up. So sitting on hot tiles on the roof where part of the fascia goes to wasn't exactly my idea of spending a nice Easter holiday but like I said, the job had to be done so I turned up.

I walked into Bunnings and saw every staff wearing bunny ears hand bands. I even spotted an elderly female staff hopping around like a rabbit. Aussies really get into things when they do, don't they? There was free flow Hot-crossed buns, I would have eaten a whole pack if it was a normal day because I am ... well Singaporean. However I was on a diet so I didn't touch any. What a sin for a Singaporean to commit. This is the kind of thing that makes Christ rise from his grave in anger.

I painted fascia all around the house and finished the job by lunch time. (only to know I have missed one area after a few days and had to go back to finish up) I thought I would paint the wooden side gate as well. It seemed like a fast and easy job at first because I was painting the front face. Once I went on to the back of the door, I found the bracing components annoying like fuck. However, I did a pretty good job. MIL couldn't complain. It is already mid Autumn by now. I better keep going before Winter comes.

I felt sorry that Jen had to lobby a campaign for my approval to buy a $55 Ikea cabinet so I granted the approval. So she got Judy to grab one since she was going that way with Jo one morning.

Today was designated to be a busy day. I made breakfast for them, installed the cabinet on top of the laundry sink, did an engine oil and filter change for Ugly Green and took her out to the nearby kiosk to fill her tyres and then I finally get my lazy ass to finish the final part of the paving right to the end of the side gate.

Wife was very happy. She already half-filled the new cabinet on the wall with poison and cleaning stuff. "The other side of the wall is for a future dryer," she explained when I asked her why she chose to fill only one part of the wall instead of opting for my storage. I glupped.

The paving job didn't go as happily as I preferred. After the first load of sand, I decided to pump the tyre of the wheelbarrow up a little. I might as well, since I have an air pump with me.

I wouldn't call paving a backbreaking task. Ok, it wasn't the easiest thing to do. It was dusty, heavy and could get frustrating at times. However the pace I set myself was manageable. It had to be slow, lest I burn myself out. There may be some some additional work I will do in other areas later on that involves paving but for now, the main scope related to paving is finally over. I must tidy up the tools and equipment in the garage soon. It has turned out to be a store room that it isn't meant to be. I will have to address that as soon as I can.

By the time I reached this stage, I was a piece of tired rag. I was going through a busier period at work, had to handle both Savvy Steve's houses and I was expected to cook or man the toddler when the wife couldn't cope. The good news was, I lost all the weight I gained the past year just in time for late Autumn. It was the time the weather starts to get cold during the transition into Winter. If I did not reduce my flab adequately, I will be unable to squeeze a thermal layer into my pants when the morning temperature goes flat 10 or below.

I visited Savvy Steve and told him about my problems, "Hey Steve, could you get the flat off my care?"

Savvy Steve took a deep suck in his expensive looking cigar, glinted at me and paused for a few seconds, for effect. "No," he said. "You promised to look after my house, didn't you?"

"But now I have two of your houses to look after," I protested.

Savvy Steve held his hand up and stopped the conversation, "Say no more. You solve your own problem, you hear?"

I shrugged and left. That night, I told Jen I had to stop working on Savvy Steve's house and return to his townhouse to freshen up the place in order to drop the hot potato. The state of the house left me overwhelmed. Albany's hand marks were all over the walls, unwashable unless a great deal of time was put into it. Even so, the after effects was still unsatisfactory to me. The bath was in a mess, but at least there was a good chance to restore its gleam. I left the kitchen to Jen, who needed to combat the grease that we were too lazy to clean off regularly. We spent about 16 hours, split over a week, in order to get things to our acceptable level.

Unfortunately, I saw Mr Daniel's idea of cleaning shower glass a month too late. Else, I would be able to do a good job in half the time I spent using normal shower glass cleaner. Removing mold in grout or silicon was also a time sink. Frustrated, I told Jen, "We are going nowhere. I will restore the place by adding things instead of removing."

Before long, I went back to Savvy Steve's townhouse with a 15L of basic paint that costed me $36.00 and a 270mm sheepskin roller that costed $25 or so and came with a tray and a few more accessories in a set. I brought along the beautiful blue cutting brush I promised to save after the last painting job. The sheepskin roller was recommended by Cedric when I bumped into him and his beautiful wife at Spencer Village. We were amazed at the odds of meeting there and sat down for a meal together. That sheepskin roller was an expensive roller that I planned to use for a few jobs in future. Most importantly for now, it would save me the time I badly needed by aiding me in painting Savvy Steve's townhouse.

The painting took me 2 weekdays and 5 hours and 2 hours on a Saturday, a total of 7 hours. I noticed my speed increased tremendously due to the familiarity of work as well as the new sheepskin roller I invested in. The roller has the ability to take in a lot more paint and spreads the wall more efficiently than a normal roller, speeding up my work significantly.

When Jen turned up, I asked her if I needed to go one more coat but she said it looked great and it wasn't necessary. Eventually, we got Old Fart John to take a look and he, too, gave the thumps up. Old Fart John was confident to find interested parties to occupy the place. That should keep Savvy Steve's mouth shut for a while. There might be troubles later on, we would just have to play it by ear. For now, I needed to focus on Savvy Steve new place and I couldn't stretch my physical limits for long.

Before we left, I took one last look at the lovely place we called our home for 3 years. The memories came back furiously. Albany was so little, so cute when we first moved here. We celebrated our birthdays, watching her grow significantly each year. It provided me quiet refuge as I combat cancer, watching over me during countless nights of worried sleep. It sheltered us through the cold days of Jen's miscarriage and recovery. It shared our happiness when little Anthony came along and grew into a healthy chubby baby. The place would always hold a special memory in a small corner of my heart. We have not seen the last of it, I am sure of that. For now, it is goodbye and thank you. 

Encouraged because I made the best pavement of my street, I proceeded to remove the temporary path I did at the garage when I first started paving. I managed to pick up some "half pavers" from a nearby dump. They were left behind in excess by tradies who had finished their work at another house. With that, I was able to complete that area not only in a shorter duration but achieving a better finish. When Stephen heard about it, he laughed and said, "Smart."

However, such a short cut was limited to how many suitable pieces I could find in the dump. I decided it was finally time to do something about that problem and went to the tool shop. A wet saw that cost thousands to buy and tens to rent was out of the question. If I had that much money to burn, I would buy a car and crash it into a tree. At least that my money goes out in a bang. I reckoned I could spare a few bucks for a good blade that might help me cut pavers apart with my bread-and-butter tool, the angle grinder.

So I came across that blade they called "Diamond," I supposed that would be a woman's favourite blade. 

It looked like that (left). What do ya think? A beautiful solitaire isn't it? With all the hardness, high clarity and shit, no less. Unlike useless diamonds that are shoved into the cabinet for the rest of their lives, that blade would become a cheap solution to my problems. Well, not as cheap as I would like. I had to pay $30 for one. The great news was, it was built to last, unlike the metal cutting disks that I have been accustomed to.

I realised I could cut the pavers as thinly as I needed. I could also make notches to fit pavers into any crevices that I came across. The sound it made was a little loud and the dust it caused was quite alarming but not surprising. It wasn't a wet saw after all.

I was astonished how long I endured paving with just a hammer and chisel. It wasn't all that bad. I enjoyed the simplicity of the work. I wanted to prove that it wasn't necessary to over-complicate the method to perform a simple task. It was also an example I would use to refute the textbook mentality of Singaporeans that make us think doing any job requires a strict following of an SOP or a method statement, while failing to understand the logic behind the recommended steps.

Well, you see, I am not as reckless or foolish that I make myself to be. In this case, I was also concerned about the quality of work I did. I wanted to avoid the issues of bad paving work, such as uneven pavers after a period of time or even cracked pavers. The first question I asked myself was, should these pavers go crocked down the road, do I know how to fix it? I did a test and found that it wasn't all that bad. It is as simple as breaking one of them, fix the uneven sand before and replacing the broken paver. All I needed to do was to ensure those cases were kept to the minimum, if not completely eliminated.

With the new blade, I was able to cut even wafer thin slices off the stone if I needed to. It was impossible if I wanted to do the same using the cave man method.

Obviously, it gifted me the ability to cut not just a straight line but different shapes and sizes to accommodate whatever obstacles I might need to pave around.

Lastly I would like to drop a note regarding the compaction of sand. I had tried doing the same for dirt. Most of us the call the dirt, sand. That is because they look just like sand. However, construction sand has different properties that are important. When it comes to paving, the key property is the ability to be compacted many times it's natural volume. There is also a popular myth that it is of absolute necessity to use a mechanical compactor to compact the sand in order for it to withstand load without some pavers going uneven in the long run. That might not be true, as I found out.

I left an area of sand that was leveled but yet to be paved over the weekend. It rained on Saturday. By the time I returned to work on it on Monday afternoon, I realised the surface of the sand was hard and firm so much so I couldn't even leave a clear dent in the sand when I punched on it lightly. Meanwhile, the dirt surface nearby sank immediately as I stepped on it, proving how different both materials were. These screenshots are evidence of what I described:

I put my whole weight on it, leaving no footprint when I lifted my foot

Any engineer will know a point load creates more pressure than a uniformly distributed load (UDL). For simplicity's sake, imagine if I put a piece of plywood over your feet and get a 70kg man to stand on the plywood. Ouch? Now imagine if I get a 45kg woman wearing high heels stepping on your foot with the heel. Double ouch! No doubt about it. My point is simple. If I can stand on one leg on the sand, compacted naturally by rain, without leaving a mark on it, I will never dent it standing on the stones paved over the sand tightly locked together. I wouldn't say that in certainty if you drive a car over the pavement everyday. However, this should be enough to withstand the load from any human being walking or jumping on it.

Unless you are damn fucking fat and you like to dance on silts. 

Feeling bad for my visitors, who had to walk on dirt to my door, I placed some pavers in front for them to play hopscotch. They ended up more like wading ducks but all of them still looked please when they finally made it past the River of Lava to Castle Safety. All except one.

By that time, Duchess of the Brook was heavily pregnant. (Now she is supremely heavily pregnant) So I understood that hopscotch did not appeal to her. Initially, it wasn't in my plans to do anything outside the house. Obviously, anything inside the house was a higher priority. The place had to be made functional before the external area should be looked into, with the exception of the laundry area of course. However, I might have to make another exception because if pregnant guests started to trip all over the place, lives might be at stake.

Since safety is #1, I had to attempt another paving project. One Saturday night, I decided I had the energy to do something and so I did. Just the week before, Steph painstakingly made two trips between our places to offload his stash of pavers in my garage. There was about 300 pieces of them for me to use. The problem was, they were of a higher quality than mine. So I couldn't mix them up together to pave up larger areas. However, I could use some for a location such as the front walk way. The rougher surface of Steph's premium pavers would also provide a higher co-efficient of friction for wobbly pregnant women who might come that way. There would not be any valid reason to complain thereafter.

In less than 1 hour, I was able to set up the lines, smooth out the sand, as well as laying the outline of the first colour. I was mighty pleased. There was a marked improvement ever since I did my first temporary paving at the garage link. Still, I couldn't do any odd shapes for this pavement. Chiseling these were out of question because these were right in front of the house. As sloppy as I might be, I refused to do a bad job at the front of my house. That was the last frontier, as far as how I was willing to let my pride down. I wanted to do the best walk way to the front entrance on the entire street.

I was lucky enough to be able to place all the pavers from edge to edge without the need to cut any pavers, other than 1 small piece at the drain pipe cover. I promised myself I would sort those problematic edges once and for all when I could. The kids were already asleep as I was still out there in the dark, assisting by only a light bulb in the veranda and my trusty hammer. Jen would come out occasionally to give her opinions and encouragement. By the next morning, it looked pretty good. I thought I had completed the job until Stephen reminded me I should run a conduit under the pavement for future reticulation purpose. Damn!

Fortunately, I found a conduit lying somewhere in a skip bin nearby and I could use it to stand work immediately. That probably saved me $10-20 if I were to buy a new conduit somewhere. I did the final adjustments of the pavers before smothering them in fine, white, cleaned sand (free but don't ask). The final outcome was pretty good.

To my annoyance, I didn't see any pregnant ladies stepping on it ever since. However, I was glad I did that. It was a great, great feeling walking through that every day I come back from work. I walked along the entire street spying on the neighbours' front pavement. Indeed, I had the best one.