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.

Our Block

So, what's the good of making a record of things and not including photos, right?



I'll start at the beginning with some snap shots of our block. This first one is standing at the road and looking down the block. As you can see it slopes from front to back as well as from left to right. Some people would say this is a steep block but after having lived and owned 2 blocks of land in the Mountains (one of which we are yet to build on - M wants to do it as an owner builder project so we are strategising ways to make that work) that make this look like it's practically flat, we are not at all put off by it.

This one is taken from about 2/3 of the way down the block looking back up. Clearly it definitely does have a fair slope to it, we are not naive, it's just that we have experience with even slopier blocks and know that buiding on it is more than possible. Plus, the lovely features you can end up with using the different levels are well worth the extra effort.

The block itself is 1119 sqm but the development where it is located has prescribed on each block a set "development envelope" in which you must limit your building. The development is in a national park so they are seeking to maintain as much natural bushland as possible. Outside of the development envelope you can clear underbrush and shrubs, mulch to keep neat, and plant with extra natives but that is it. Everything else must be done in your development envelope. Our development envelope encompasses an area of 425m2 in the middle of the block. Here is our site analysis. The outline of the full block is in blue with the development envelope in red. A very nice sized block indeed.

Behind us is a big wildlife corridoor. They are currently working on the the next phase of the development, which is on the other side of this wildlife corridoor. We had assumed when we purchased our land that we would end up with backyards facing us on the other side of that wildlife corridoor, which was fine as it would just be filtered view of their yards and houses through the pretty trees. We have recently viewed the plan of the blocks and much to our delight it turns out that they are leaving a bush area on the other side of the corridoor so there will just be trees, trees, and more trees in our view to the rear. YAY! Our block in the Mountains backed onto the national park. We like trees.

Recording the journey

I am starting this blog to keep a record of a house that my husband, Mr Together-House, and I will commence building sometime in 2011. Perhaps it will be interesting to some to read and follow, or perhaps not. Just thought it'd be nice to track it all along the way.

Mr Together-House has built before. In the beautiful Blue Mountains. About 10 years ago he sold his fishing boat to purchase himself a block of land. We were dating at the time and talked about building on it and living there together but then went through a bit of a rough patch in our relationship, which meant he did the design and building part himself. He had a builder construct the house to lock-up stage then he finished the internals and all the decking himself. He then rented it to some friends for a few years before moving into it on his own. After a somewhat rocky courtship we did eventually marry and I joined him there. We went on to complete the gardens and owner-build a garage with a second storey "loft" space above it. It was a beautiful house and he did a fine job of it but this blog is not about that house.

We moved from the Blue Mountains to the Central Coast (just south of Lake Macquarie) a year ago, a few months after our twin girls were born. We had no family in the Moutains but plenty over this way so it makes more sense. Plus, I've promised him that one day he'll get his fishing boat back. Well, not the one he sold, but another one to replace it. It was quite a fishing boat, which he had pretty much built himself so it was quite a sacrifice for him. A very willing sacrifice but a sacrifice nonetheless. I look forward to the day we can get him another.

We purchased land on beautiful Lake Macquarie, 30 mins further north of where we are now and about 90 mins north of Sydney, in May. Got a rip snorter of a deal and have since then been in the process of having plans drawn up. The land is in a new development and the plans must be submitted to the owners of the development as an initial thing so they can ensure it meets the design guidelines (which are not overly stringent). Once approved they go into council. Our submission to the developers was last Tuesday (16th Nov). They have 10 business days to respond. So, I guess by Tuesday 29th they'll either tell us yes or they'll tell us something needs to change. We used a drafting company with lots of experience drawing up plans for homes in this development so if there are any issues I think they will only be small. But then of course once you change them and resubmit, it's another 10 day wait for a response. So, could be a long process if they decide to be picky. Not a worry, though, we are not ready to start digging the ground just yet anyway. Lucky because once we get through the developers we have to deal with council and that'll be another couple of months.

Anyway, this is enough rambling for my opening blog. Suffice it to say that we are both very excited to be finally building our together house...