We have a DA!

If only that meant we could start building now. But, alas, we must first sell our house in the Blue Mountains. It's tenanted until October so we'll wait a few months before we put it on the market.

So, we wait...

Council Approval. Almost.

I heard from our draftsman yesterday. Council have all but approved. There were no inclusions on the plans re retaining walls so they have requested those. The draftsman has added that and re-submitted to Stockland and then onto Council again. Looks like we should have a DA in a couple of weeks. Shame we are not quite ready to move that fast.

In other news, we approached our tenants in the Blue Mountains as to whether or not they were interested in possibly purchasing that house. They said they are. Very early days yet and lots to be worked out (not least of all a price that is mutually agreeable - here's hoping they don't think the house is worth bucket loads less than it really is. Not that we know what it is worth as we've never had it valued. One of the steps along the way...) but could work out to be lovely and neat and tidy if we can work it out so everyone is happy.

Council. I think.

I believe our plans are now with Lake Macquarie Council. That is, I received the quote from the geotechnic mob and paid them on Mon 17th. The draftsman told me the next day she'd heard from them that the plans were prettily stamped and ready to collect. She said she'd do that and get them into Council. Given it's nearly 2 weeks since then I think we can safely assume this has been done. It takes around 6 weeks so we should get the ok by the end of Feb/early March.

In the meantime, we have asked our agent to advise our tenants that we'll need to sell our Blue Mountains home at some stage this year in order to fund this grand project. Ideally it'd be great if the tenants were interested in purchasing the house. They told us when they moved in that whenever we sold they'd like first right of refusal. So, I need to write to them and ask. Their lease runs until Oct so we asked our agent to let them know that they are free to find alternate accommodation any time (that is if they don't want to buy it) and we will release them from the agreement and ask just a months notice. If this happens, we'll probably move back there for a while and do some repairs etc. You know, make sure it is shown to potential buyers in all it's glory. Not that our tenants haven't been keeping it well. They are fantastic tenants. The reports I hear from our agent and our neighbours are all glowing. We'd just not want to be showing the house empty and there are a few minor things that need doing and it's easier to plod away at this while living there. Anyway, without going into all the boring details of our decision making, suffice it to say we may yet have another winter in the mountains ahead of us and I can't say I'm not mildly excited by the prospect. Love the Mountains!

You Gotta Love Council!

Heard from our draftsman today. She received the plans back all stamped and ready from the mine subsidance board and went on Monday with our cheque in hand to council to lodge our request for a DA. Got there to discover that council has decided to introduce a new checklist of requirements since she was last there to lodge a DA request for someone - just a couple of days before Christmas. They now need a shadow diagram - easy, draftsman went back and did that - and as our site is affected by Geotechnical zones it needs an endorsement from someone to confirm that with it being on a slope, the house won't slide down the hill. As with the mine subsidance thingy, the entire development has already been checked and approved and endorsed by someone but now council wants each site endorsed again seperately. Good if you are the company that got paid by the developers to sus out the whole site and now are going to get paid again by each separate applicant who wants to build on one of these endorsed sites to have it re-endorsed. $450 a pop, no less. Great. Draftsman will orgnise that today and hopefully be ready once again to pay a visit to council on Friday. Hopefully they've not introduced a new, new checklist by then!

Approved

Well, that timing was better! We received the good news yesterday. As mentioned, we re-submitted with the height of the garage roof half way between the normal height they'd suggested and what we had originally asked for. They had one condition on the approval and that is that we make sure the garage door is the same colour as the surrounding brick work. Sure, no problem. We can do that. Our drafting company will now send the plans off to the mines subsidence board for their tick of approval and then it's on into council early in the new year.

Declined

So, 14 business days after we submitted it and 4 businerss days (6 regular days) after they committed to respond, we finally heard from the developer with the news that they have declined our plans. They said our garage structure is too dominant and therefore not inline wiht the design guidelines. I am not entirely surprised as I think we were pushing it but, hey, you can only try. M wanted to push it up as high as possible so that we could use the roof space to constuct a loft for extra storage (of, perhaps, some home gym equipment!). The developer returned our plans with some red pen drawings showing what they thought was more acceptable. They'e pushed it right back down to single storey height. We've asked the draftsman to do it somewhere between the 2 and try our luck again.

I guess all this makes no sense without some pics, though, does it? Thus, I have uploaded some for you. Our floor plan and the externals.

This is the ground floor:
This is the first floor:

And here are the external elevations and the basic colour scheme we are looking at using. You can see we pushed up the roof height of the garage to get as much use out of the roof space as possible. That's what they didn't like. Mr Together-House really wanted it. Despite being concerned that it may be knocked back for being too dominant, I was also concerned that it looks a bit funny with all that cladding area above the garage door. Don't have to worry about it now.

Back to waiting again now. And with the developers delay in bothering to respond last time and them now having ANOTHER 10 business days to come back to us, we won't hear back on this until the New Year, I expect. Oh well, as much as impatient little me would like to know now (well, yesterday actually) we are not ready to commence building immediately anyway. Lucky!

C'mon people!

By my calculations, we should have received a response on our plans from the developer yesterday. They were lodged 16th Nov and they have 10 business days. They were lodged post 5pm so maybe they decided to count from 17th Nov, which puts us at today. So, here I sit stalking my inbox waiting for some kind of news.