Council approved our plans!!

The title says it all! Today, Monday, June 2nd, 2014, the town planning coordinator said that we can move to 'advertising'. This means that council is happy to approve our proposed plans, considering the locals are happy too. So it's not quite 100% approved yet, but very very soon this will be the case.

Advertising involves displaying the permit for the proposed additions out the front of our house, which outlines what the renovation is, i.e. extension to current dwelling. If I am not mistaken, advertising is for two weeks. In this period neighbours have the opportunity to lodge objections. Council decides whether or not a complaint (if any - ideally none) is worth taking further. From what I've heard, a lot of complaints are stupid and don't have much ground to stand on considering plans are within the guidelines of council. One of our neighbours said that there is a neighbour around the corner (so really, not directly impacted at all) who objects to a lot of plans because she wants the local area to remain unchanged. What I say is, all that anyone will see from the street is the outside of our house from the front. Considering this council is so strict on keeping the facades untouched, the look of the local area won't be dramatically changed by our renovation. The upper level extension even has to be hidden from the street view. I think we are doing the area a favour making our house pretty again. 

Once we get the all clear from council re objections I believe we get final approval. There is a small process of sorting out the nitty-gritty details, like a "walk-through" of the house to decide shelf heights, window designs, faucet types. Well those are the examples I've been given anyway. The proper name escapes me right now. I think it goes in hand with "tendering" which is along the lines of seeking potential builders and discussing their costs. Either way, I think it sounds a lot like what an interior designer decides on and designs for their clients. So it should be right up my alley! We have to go back to the architects for this process. I am not entirely sure if it happens during advertising or after or before final approval or what else, but I am positive I will be learning when very soon.

You might recall the few objections the council initially made about our first submission. My parents went back to the architects to discuss them. The architect sent an email today to the town planner in question. Some of the things we responded with are as paraphrased below (my comments in the brackets):

Issue: That the exterior of the upstairs  addition should match the (ugly unaesthetically pleasing) materials of the west neighbour's second storey.
Response: We do not understand the comment re the materials of the two-storey addition on the west...it is a single storey. 

(They do actually have a two-storey dwelling but it is next door to our garage, not the main house which is only one storey.)

Issue: That the two-storey addition is too close to the heritage roof line.

Response:  The proposed second storey is some 2.5 metres from the existing roofline...entirely generous! 

(I think they were just knit-picking).

Issue: Move the stairs.

Response:  It is difficult to move the stairs off the boundary; in any case it would need to be one metre off the boundary for building and fire regulations, which would result in the first storey being too narrow. The stair direction minimises impact on west neighbours and street frontage. The proposed configuration allows for northern light and southerly sea-breezes. Internally, it allows for optimal spatial configuration and traffic flow. 

(Oh please,  if you have an issue with these stairs, you try designing the house with the stairs anywhere else but the boundary. If we move the stairs, we re-do the entire floor plan. Trust me, I have experimented with SO many stair configurations for this house and this is the only logical concept!) 

Considering after those responses, along with a few others, were sent to the council today that the town planner responded with "Let's go to advertising", I think it is a very positive outcome. I am quite optimistic that we will achieve final approval within the coming weeks. 

Soon we will be shopping for carpet and tiles and door handles and I seriously cannot wait! 

Happy, happy Monday, I hope all of my readers have a super duper week.

XO

Plot twist!

Bad news...the plans were rejected by the council on Monday. It's a slight set-back, but I am so determined to keep moving, so I call "PLOT TWIST!" (I love this quote).

There is absolutely no point sulking about the situation. I do not want to waste time with this project! All that we can do now is adjust the plans to the (vague) criteria we were provided with in the rejection letter and give it another shot.

The list of "no-nos" is filled with phrases like "should be" and "not recommended" which implies we could get away with the issue they're referring to. In particular, the stairs on the boundary wall "would not be recommended for approval". The architect told us we can do that if the neighbours allow it, and when we spoke to them they said they would. So, we'll try. The town planner mentioned something negative about "shear walls" in the rejection letter. I'm still yet to learn what a "shear wall" is (the town planner actually wrote "sheer wall" and when I googled it the spelling was incorrect #grammarpolice). The internet failed me. I didn't understand what I was reading even when I clicked "Did you mean 'shear wall?'".

Oops

I don't think there's anyone to blame in this situation. But I did wonder if having one of the newer architects from the firm as the main "plan drawer" had a small impact. I flipped through the plans we had submitted and found a few mistakes and noticed the areas that the town planner pointed out as issues. I do agree that the information we put forward could have been clearer. For example, the new window design we want for the WIRs downstairs. The window is currently about 1200m wide and we propose that a perpendicular wall will cut it in half (to form the two wardrobes). In the plans we submitted the windows look like this:

However, no where is there an annotation explaining how this would work or why we are doing this to persuade the council's approval. 

What irks me the most is the second chimney on the lean-to of the old house. It is yellow-brick, falling down, and CLEARLY an 80s DIY addition. We want it gone. Yet the council wants us to keep it - "retain and restore", to be exact.  BUT, again, no where in the plans does it say that particular chimney is not orginal. So the town planners probably assume it is the original chimney. I can tell you we won't give up this fight easily.

 This is a good lesson on being totally thorough with notes and details. They've asked for specifics like paint colours (except I have heard lots of interior designers advise choosing paint colours after your furniture is in the room so that you pick the right colour) and interior wall heights. We will be sure to give them in the next submission. What we put forward won't be a compromise (relevant cliché, "Don't settle for less"), just a different way of doing things. The plans will be an improvement, and hopefully a success.

I've already started drawing potential changes, as you could have guessed. I'll update you again next week once we have visited the architects.

XO

Submitted to Council

It was the 2nd of December, 2013 when we saw the early stages of professional house drawings come to light. This was 15 weeks ago. A process that was thought to take less than a month took three, but I can finally say we are all done! The plans are finished and are officially signed off to go to council. On Monday the plans will be submitted and we will be a big step closer towards the start of the build.

There were a few dramas before we committed to the final  drawings, namely the kitchen and middle entrance. The kitchen's issue was the lack of natural light due to the placement of the pantry. The architects rejigged it to make the pantry basically parallel with the stairs, but it left the flow of the kitchen unsettled becuase it was like the main work space was split up around a corner. 

Here's the elevation:

See what I mean by the corner? It's kind of like an L-shaped cross galley style kitchen. Personally, it's too weird and unconventional considering this house isn't intended to be iconic for new architecture trends. 

The second issue was the width of the door in the middle entrance. It was orginally about 900mm, slightly larger than a standard interior door. However, the purpose of this particular doorway is to make it comfortable for us and the guests when they are coming and going. The idea is to have it so two people can stand in the doorway and not do the awkward, "Come in, come in!" while walking backwards three metres to make room in the entrance, or at the end during goodbyes and you go to get the door with your guests right behind you but the door is too narrow for all of you to be within any proximity of each other that the guests have to step outside while the host leans on the door frame like the king of the castle. #obnoxious 

So, yeah, now its 1200mm . I hope it's wide enough, a lot of thought has gone into this.

The past two weekends saw us over at our neighbours' houses showing them our floorplans and discussing any effects there may be on their property (for example, the ginormous, leaning palm tree needs to be removed, but its roots are underneath the boundary fence, so a new fence will need to be erected.) Both sides of neighbours did not seem peturbed by any of our plans, save for the concern of the garage. The garage of one of the neighbours is dependent on ours, so if we pull it down the other will need to be supported. However, this isn't a problem right now, as the garage is not one of our priorities until a few years down the track.  

Both of the neighbours were appreciative that we had taken the time to come and speak to them personally. If you have been reading my blogs for the past few months you would probably notice the one short-term goal I kept referring to was council submission. And this is finally achieved! I can't wait to tell you when the plans have been approved, so I hope you're checking Casa Almora regularly to keep up to date!

Xo

P.S. To the readers who know me, I got my braces off today