I think we all thought after what we went through in 2020 it couldn’t get any worse. I still remember how excited I was for the year to be over and for 2021 to start.
Little did we know, aye?
The year has been challenging on many fronts. And the fact that Melbourne holds the record of being the most lockdown city is clearly nothing to be proud of.
But hell, we managed to get through 263 days of lockdown. And apparently, we survived a total of 306 days on takeaway only and managed to get through 162 with our playgrounds closed.
So that is something we can be proud of.
It’s fair to say this year was freaking hard and has left its marks. Running a business over the last 2 years, while also trying to look after little kids has its price. And at times it’s hard work to not let anxiety or depression get the better of you.
It has been a challenging year and we had to say goodbye to some of our amazing Gruen family members. And we are still upset that our design lead and passive house specialist Dee had to leave the country, as her independent skilled visa was not progressed in time. How very sad and frustrating indeed. But we are determined to get her back and hope that we can sponsor her. Fingers crossed.
Despite all this it was also a very successful year for us and our team. And I am very proud of all that we have achieved. We also grew from a team of 11 last December to a whooping 16.
We are working on the design of many exciting passive house projects. And several amazing houses are under construction or have been finished. Sadly we haven’t managed to get any of the homes professionally photographed over the last 2 years… Hopefully we can get that sorted early in the new year ? We can’t wait.
As my coach and mentor Paula Bailey: it’s important to celebrate even the small wins. So here it goes:
March: Zana joins our interior design team and we found someone to relocate the old house from our 20/20 construction site. Say no to landfill – yay!
April: we’ve signed the contract for our 20/20 Passive House with Sanctum Homes and Mykel started working with us.
May: Our interior designer Kitty welcomed her daughter Heidi
June: Susanne our integrator and operations manager starts working with us
July: Janine joins our team
August: we finally receive our building permit and finance is approved
September: I had a podcast appearance with the Buildher Collective and spoke about demystifying passive house
October: Once the lockdown was finally over Liz & Sou join our team and we won Passive House Designer of the Year (Australia) for the second time running
November: We opened our Beechworth and Ballarat regional branch and the team was finally back in the office.
December: Peter, Wafaa and Natalie join our team. And we are now very chuffed to have 5 certified passive house designers amongst us ?
And our 20/20 Passive House has made it to lockup stage.
On top of that were some talks and great webinar exposures for us and our team.
And most importantly, we were able to celebrate Christmas together as a team. Even though some were missing.
But now we want to wish you all a great holiday season. I think we all need to recharge our batteries ?
THANK YOU to the best team!!!!!
And a heartfelt THANK YOU to all our beautiful clients and everyone that supported us through yet another challenging year!!!!
Let’s hope for a better 2022!!!