We have a small inner-city backyard with three chooks. They live in a chicken tractor which we built to sit on top of our raised veggie beds. After a harvest is complete, the chooks clean up, till and fertilise the soil. They get let out to free range, and we throw any garden clippings in there, as well as all the food scraps from our kitchen (we have a toddler so there's no shortage of scraps). I buy pellets for $1.50/kg from our local pet wholesaler and they eat about a kilo per week. The coop is totally vermin/fox proof because it's on raised veggie beds, and it doesn't smell at all. It makes our veggie gardens much more productive, with very little work from us. Plus we get 2-3 eggs every day!

How much can you bench press? LOL DO you mean moving it, as in using the same one and changing its location? Because if it is quartz or stone, it will be very heavy and will depend on how much you and your helpers can carry.

one of the biggest problems seems to be lack of ongoing maintenance (regular check under floors, clean gutters etc to react before a problem causes too much damage) and having gardens too close to the buildings...on one property we dug around the whole house to lower the ground level and added surface drains to help shed water away from the building, we've always added extra vents and ensured vents aren't blocked from inside or out, another property we used a DIY injectable damp course and the biggest repair we ended up replacing the whole roof because of damp that was sourced back to leaks caused by the unsuitable roof shape of an old architect designed extension that looked great but couldn't cope with rain so, costs ranged from a few hundred and our own DIY labour to a whole new roof structure for several hundred thousand (including relocating walls etc etc) ..so really depends on the cause of the damp and how much work you can do yourself but, these boring, sometimes expensive, later unseen repairs made the most worthwhile improvements and added to our own comfort much more than fancy decorating but many of us don't seem so concerned about the cost of things that we see every day..

Thank you for your questions. North is top of page. We’re in Brisbane Qld. Breezes come right side (bathroom, rumpus, Bed1). The western sun would hit the master room wall (without the deck) There would be a 1 mtr eave but we've considered more insulation to compensate. And yes good point about bathroom. It was newly renovated before we bought. It is definitely the “spanner in the works" as that's the best corner for breeze and sun. But moving would incur the additional cost of a new bathroom. (And also where to put it. Would require change of staircase) So it would have to be worth it. Any suggestions for alternatives? the alternative is double internal garage. But we’d have to extend out under the deck as it doesn’t leave much space so external double garage (as in pic) is prob more reasonable. That leaves us a a lot more room to play with down stairs. But no lock up garage security and storage. And yes council should allow. (6m carport) It’s quite common in this area, however we'd have to look at the details of sizing and suitability. We have 5.912mts from edge of deck to front boundary ( 7.812 from edge of house) I'll upload another set of plans with clear dimensions but FYI bed 1 & 2 are 3.6 x 3.6. And block is 10m frontage and 40.5 long.