Yahoo News.<\/a><\/p>\nThe shocking find turned the family\u2019s plans upside down, transforming what they thought would be a cosmetic overhaul into a much bigger and far more expensive rebuild-style rescue.<\/p>\n
The couple, who share their renovation journey online as the Dropout Duo and asked not to have their full names published, bought the Kurwongbah property outright late last year.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg)
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Queensland couple Court and Derk are transforming their $985,000 property in a major renovation. Source: TikTok<\/p>\n
Their vision was to turn it into a long-term family base while setting themselves up for the future.<\/p>\n
Instead, the home quickly became their biggest challenge yet.<\/p>\n
Both Court and Derk work in construction.<\/p>\n
Derk, 34, left school after Year 10 to begin a carpentry apprenticeship, while Court, 30, later studied construction management.<\/p>\n
Today, they work as a commercial site manager and project manager, and have already taken on several property projects together.<\/p>\n
The Kurwongbah house is their fifth.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The couple are renovating a property in Kurwongbah, north of Brisbane. Source: Supplied<\/p>\n
They previously built their first home together, then a \u201cforever home\u201d in Murrumba Downs, which they later sold after about 12 months.<\/p>\n
They also bought a rundown Brackenridge property, knocked it down and sold the empty block three months later.<\/p>\n
That experience gave them the confidence to tackle another ambitious project. But the hidden state of this house still blindsided them.<\/p>\n
After paying $985,000 for the property, they had only about $50,000 to $60,000 left for the renovation.<\/p>\n
Almost immediately, costs began to mount.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The home was riddled with termites. Source: Supplied<\/p>\n
Around $40,000 was spent on machinery alone.<\/p>\n
When they later approached the bank for another $50,000, they were told the minimum loan available was $150,000.<\/p>\n
They have since managed to reduce that mortgage to about $100,000 and are hoping to pay it off within 12 months.<\/p>\n
Their original plan had been to renovate the house for around $50,000.<\/p>\n
That estimate has now blown out to between $100,000 and $120,000, including the house, deck and pool.<\/p>\n
To try to stay on budget, the pair have hunted for cut-price materials and second-hand deals.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The couple\u2019s hope is to build a second home on the property and eventually turn the renovated house into a granny flat. Source: Supplied<\/p>\n
Among their biggest wins was a high-end kitchen from a Gold Coast mansion for just $1000. They also sourced windows and cladding second-hand or as factory seconds, and picked up a container pool for $6000, which is expected to cost roughly $10,000 all up once installed.<\/p>\n
But the damage hidden inside the house meant there was no cheap shortcut.<\/p>\n
The property had to be stripped back to its frame, with new internal walls, windows, cladding and other major components installed.<\/p>\n
Derk has handled much of the physical labour himself, including jobs such as tiling, despite spending the past decade away from hands-on trade work.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The renovation quickly became a bigger project than initially anticipated. Source: Supplied<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t been on the tools or been a tradesman for the last 10 years of my life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe physical side of it for me has been probably a lot more of a shock to my system than what I ever would have expected it to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite nearly flattening the house, the family is now hoping to move in before Christmas.<\/p>\n
In the long term, they plan to build a second main residence on the property and eventually convert the renovated house into a granny flat, creating an extra income stream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Queensland couple\u2019s almost $1 million dream home came so close to the wrecking ball they were ready…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-879066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}