The Great Neutral Land Grab

It's been a journey but we've finally got there......Sadly it was after moving out though. It all started after we got back from NYC and moved into our pad at Kurraba Point. The kitchen door led out to the side of the building onto common property. You then had to go through a gate to get to our courtyard. Tracy came up with the grand idea to move the gate forward.

The white screen door on the right is our kitchen door. The box on the right of the path is where the garbage bins were stored once upon a time.

This is looking from our courtyard back towards the gate when it was in it's original position.

We did some research and found out we needed to get a bylaw added to give us exclusive use of common property. For those non-apartment crew common property is owned by the strata, ie all the owners. We enlisted the help of a solicitor and had the bylaw drafted and submitted it at the AGM last year. It was approved and off we went. Exclusive use is a pretty cool win. While the area does not come onto your title it's yours under the terms of the bylaw and very difficult to reverse. 

After securing the bylaw we then got a handyman in to move the existing fence. The area we got exclusive use to was about 2.5 by 4 meters or 10m2. Not quite a football field but it now meant we could get to our courtyard without having to go through a gate. This was great for Dasha and also gave a much better sense of privacy.

We recycled the fence and used the existing one and simply moved it forward. This really cut the cost down as well.

The result once the fence had been moved 

The final step was turning it into a more usable space. I have no idea why we waited until moving out to do this but we put a deck in and a box to cover the services. It's such a nice spot under the mulberry tree and being North facing gets a lovely dose of sun in the morning. I'm sure whoever picks it up will really enjoy it. The total cost to do all this was less than 3k and fingers crossed we'll be rewarded at auction.

And the final result with the new deck and services cover. I'd gone for the cheap option of pine and used a merbau stain. Sadly it looks like the deck has been hanging in the fake tan salon but such is life.

Looking from the gate to the back of the garden.