I'm amazed that this discussion has carried forward for nearly two years! In that time I have moved to another coastal area (cooler climate and better proximity to children) and this time found most of the discussion still rings true. Finding another home here was an incredibly frustrating journey made all the worse by a mad investor rush in the area just when we arrived to start our home search. That search took the best part of six months and in the end there would only be three or four houses to choose from in any week. Result? A rushed purchase, a desperately inadequate building inspection and failure on my part to notice poor bathroom tiling, shortage of closet and storage pace, just how small the lounge room really was, and etc. I disappointed myself because I had let the pressures beat me and now we are trying to resolve all of these issues in a home designed and built by one of this states most respected project home builders 25 years ago. Having now studied the floor plan with more care I realise it was put together (designed) in modular fashion - most bedrooms have similar dimensions and the living areas are all approximately the same size as if the designer simply juggled three boxes of one size and four of another size and then worked out traffic flow. Then he must have thrown them all in the air to see how they would land and that was design number two! And etc and so on. This house aside, we looked at a great many during the six months because we had to broaden our search above and below budget trying to find something. There were massive termite problems, leaky roofs, asbestos galore, gazzumping at every turn, almost all but the most expensive properties suffered at least one substantial fail for the most basic of needs and to top it off the best home in our price range just happened to be built on flood prone land - approved by council who put the flood signs up less than five years earlier. We live and learn. Then there were the real estate agents, but that would take another two years and I doubt the internet has enough free page space available!!! OK, I hear you, they're not ALL bad...

I am in Australia but a weed is a weed and I agree with Design Solution Group, that I too just pull by hand, unless there are too many rearing their ugly heads, as is the case right now with Spring upon us. I mulch very heavily with wood chips or similar but the weed seeds still blow in from all over the place, so if you think by mulching, you'll have no weeds you're kidding yourself but the amount of weeds to deal with, will be, with good mulching, about 10%, so it's definitely the most important thing any gardener should do, especially, now that many of us have a ride on mower instead of a push mower, we tend to be quite extravagant with the area of garden we now have versus say 50 years ago. I have to say that for me, at this time of the year, I simply don the backpack or hold the hand sprayer, a little Zero or Roundup and a shield on the end of the spray nozzle to protect against drift, and I'm off to spray and I spend perhaps an hour and save allot of weed pulling by poisoning these weeds. If I tried to pull these same weeds, it would take me approx. 2 - 3 hours on my knees to save my back. Just to let the readers know also, that the chemical I've mentioned with Glyphosate being the active constituant, is very safe to use and in fact when my husband, a farmer, did a compulsory chemical handling user course, he learned that this chemical is almost safe enough to drink without actually doing that, safer to use than the hair dye we women use to colour our hair and is safer than a very popular diet drink that if consumed to excess can cause death. So don't be afraid to spray to help lighten the burden of excess weeds at times, less weeds means that the plant you are nurturing and has at times cost many dollars, doesn't have competition from the weeds for nutrients and moisture. It is also an interesting fact that weeds, like simple grass if it's in the wrong place is still a weed, puts out a toxin surrounding it's root system to try to kill its nearest rival to protect itself from peril!! I have attached a photo of an area of my still newish or young garden taken last spring, as I now have another rather large plant bed to the left of the picture. This area is the smaller section of my front lawn and I have also attached photo's of my bulb/flax garden beds, of which there are 5 up the driveway, an early photo of my small cactus garden and a garden area around my fish pond, also an early photo with the plants now quite developed. I honestly do not have allot of work even with all this area with the biggest job once a year being, having to pull all the dead branches from my 40+ flax plants. AND Watering during summer would be the longest ongoing job in my garden!!!

@Karen Hodge, I hear you!! Sometimes I think the estate agent should carry quite a bit of the blame actually. If they do their job correctly like you see in the adds on TV, they should bring these discrepancies to the attention of the sellers, stand on their morals and say if you can't get it better than this, then you'll have to find someone else to sell your home!! I know you can't make everybody "house proud" but the saying "do unto others" springs to mind. I bet if these same people bought a house not up to scratch, "a current affair" would hear about it but they don't think it wrong to simply walk out on a house that isn't being left nicely for the next family!! I have some friends that recently sold a house in Essendon, Melb and whilst the buyers were back and forth selling their own home, my friends kept watering the plants and even did things like painted out the wardrobes because of the scuff marks made over time!! They cleaned the entire two storey house from top to bottom and finished by mopping the floors as they were exiting. The buyers were so taken by the entire home, they bought it with almost all the furniture that my friends had in it!!

Hi everyone, so... 3 years later and after many back and forth we have decided to knock down the house and rebuild. The cost of renovating was just too prohibitive and not to mention the unexpected surprises that surely would come with it. We should start the building of the new home in a month or less. Just wanted to thank everyone who helped in this thread, your opinions were very important and helped us decide. We are not doing a custom build, instead we chose one of those pre-designed homes (Dennis Family) but we are very happy and excited. Cant wait for it to be done. Will post photos when ready.