The 110k Swap

I thought our interview with Mike Hosking was going to have a bit more about encouraging others to think creatively to get into their first house. Understandably though there was not really much time to fit in everything that was going on. So I thought I'd add a post about how we got into our first house despite it being the hardest time ever to get into a house (which it is every year!) Josh and I were both students and we shared a house with 2 other flatmates. For a year we both received the student loan payments (of around $140 per week) but we didn't spend any of it because we worked jobs while students. When I got my first corporate job after graduating, we bought the above house in a suburb of Auckland near my workplace. Even though banks were lending close to 100% at the time, it was at the height of the property boom near the end of 2006 when prices were through the roof. We bought this 3 bedroom house with a musty smelling rumpus and a separate one bedroom minor

I had a nice chat with Mike Hosking on the Breakfast Show this morning. We talked a bit more about the projector system up for grabs and the dramas with the house build and having to move in unfinished. Here's the audio file if you missed it... Thanks Mike we were honoured to feature on your show! If you are interested in our  Hidden Projector and Sound System  and think you have something to swap for it please get in touch with us: Phone Amy on 0276 354 901 or message us on our  facebook page

In case you've been holding off with your upswap because you're unsure of the quality of Josh's hand-crafted hidden projector unit, I thought I'd post a photo of some of the doors he has made for our house. The one with the white protective coating on it even has a window pane in it! Clearly we've been trying to save on costs left right and centre through this project, so Josh has made some of the doors, all the kitchen and bathroom cabinetry, installed all the door frames, plus many other non-building things like driving the digger for weeks moving soil and mulch around. He even dug a very deep long trench in the clay by hand! Anyway the point is as you can see in the above photo, he's very clever. The doors are made with macrocarpa, but he found out about a cool natural stain made from tea and vinegar. It darkens it to a lovely chocolatey colour and it really brings out the silver in the wood. Plus there's no nasty smell from the stain. And the pr

Having had a very sick daughter and caught the virus myself the last couple of days, one of the things I'm very much looking forward to testing out with this new house is the temperature stability. In the house we're renting presently all the bedrooms are upstairs and living is downstairs, and upstairs gets extremely hot in summer - up to 30 degrees celsius during the day. That's with a ducted ventilation system turned on full. By the time we put the kids to bed, it's still pretty hot in their rooms so we dress them for bed accordingly, but as the night goes on and the temperature drops between 6-8 degrees, in the early hours they can get really cold. I think that contributes to them getting ill, and it certainly contributes to us being woken up by their crying to go in and put more covers on! The floors, roof insulation and walls we have selected in this new house are all supposed to work together to keep the house temperature very stable - cool in summer and wa

Hey someone was asking what kind of thing would be a good swap for the projector system. Maybe a well-used purple polka dot car, a holiday in some unheard-of place, the world's largest candy jar filled with ...? a collection of rare smurf figurines? We reckon this could be a lot of fun if we get creative! Comment below if you have something crazy to swap! :)

It's been one day since we put ourselves out there and so far, no one has come up with anything they want to swap for our amazing hand crafted home entertainment hidden projector system :) Just to be clear, if it makes it easier the item to swap doesn't necessarily need to be anything we might want or need for our family. It just needs to be something we could interest another person to swap for something else again! I'm sure there's someone out there who would love our projector system! Get in touch today with something you could swap for it! Once it's gone it's gone, there's only one of them like this in the whole world! Post a comment here, message us on our facebook page or call me on 0276 354 901. Thanks and blessings - Amy and Josh

We're building a house in Auckland, New Zealand. And we'd love to actually live in it! For circumstances beyond our control, the bank is making us sell it on completion unless we can get $110,000 from somewhere else. Read the full story here . Do you have something you would like to swap with us for a One of a Kind Hidden Projector Home entertainment system? Help us swap our way up to $110k so we can stay in our home. See more details of the offer here . Please get in touch with us ASAP if you have something to swap! Post a comment here, message us on our facebook page or call me on 0276 354 901. Thanks and blessings - Amy and Josh