"BD" has been here - Concrete blobs

Lots of holes and digging but no treasure found
What shame - Looks like we have to pay for the building costs ourselves.
"DH" missed a perfect opportunity of hiding the whole family in 6 feet of concrete


The line in this picture is the outline of the alfresco
This

Dust And Dirt Never Looked better

We got a call from our friendly neighborhood supervisor "L" to take a look at our land.
Guess we never thought that bare earth and dirt would look so good and excite us so much.

Cut and Fill has added extra height - something which we have not realized . This is going to make the house look higher above street level. That sure was a nice surprise.

Also another surprise is the slope all around the house - It is going to be interesting and challenging on getting a good garden going.

As for the brats - all trying to work out where each of their bedrooms would be based on the bare earth outline

View From Front


Left Rear Viewing the Front




Right Rear Viewing the Front

3-D Model

This is the 2-D model from builder courtesy "BC"


We hope "BC" does not shoot us for destroying his masterpiece to this......
This is the 3D "DH" has started to create to give us a rough idea of colours and feel of the house.
A note : - A lot of artistic liberties have been taken because of lack of knowledge and not to be confused with the real thing
Main idea is more to place our furniture and give us a feel of space inside the rooms.





"DH" got fed up with "DW" (Guess that's nothing new ) asking a million questions because "DW"'s imagination is atrocious.

It is all starting............

We met our supervisor "L" yesterday at the site.
He ran us through the preliminary process. It is proceeding faster than we thought
According to "L" excavation should be on site by end of next week (Thursday/Friday)
Slab is a definite before X Mas break and maybe frame. Guess that depends on a lot of things
For us after such a slow start it seems to be very hard to see such a rapid start.
Expecting Building permit Monday this week.
"L" realized an issue regarding existing temporary fence which needs to be sorted out.
Our back neighbor who is building -Their temporary fence is on our land. This has to be moved before the excavation has to begin.
People have been using our land for garbage disposal. So we have to clean this up as well.

Contract Signed - signed our way to STRESS

5 of November - Signed our contract (or should we say DH gets mortgage and DW gets the house )
We had already received the contract few weeks ago. So had enough time to review it.
Most of the things had already been sorted. So the actual contract signing was pretty much re-printing some minor issues and heaps of signing.

Thanks to "BC", "B2C" and "JB" - It was all done quickly and no dramas.

Now Roseleigh would be applying for building permit.

We were told "L" would be the supervisor for building process.

Hoping for a last week of November start if all things go OK

Went to the bank and gave them a copy of the contract on 8 November 2008

Now that we are finally here all selections done contracts signed and waiting to start -
Mmmm what it is all for all of us.......

Excitement for DH ( an optimist) thinking of all the good things to come
Nervous for DW (a pessimist) thinking up of all the things that could go wrong
Excitement for DD - wanting to choose all the pinks for her room (Shuddering at some of the things she likes.....)
Impatience for DS who wants to move in cos one of his best friends live a few houses away
Impatience for Amigo (doggie) - Current rented place he is not allowed inside because the whole house is carpeted and he sure is missing that.

Yippee - Planning Permit Obtained

Finally we got the planning permit in 6 weeks
We have been calling the planner every few days
Nagging Works!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was subject to conditions that we plant at least 5 trees.
This was not a surprise. In our earlier discussions with the council they mentioned that the height restriction is due to the house being higher than the tree canopy. House was 8.1m and tree canopy is considered at approx 8m and the maximum height we can build as per restriction is 7.5m
So we felt if we compensated by adding trees we stood a better chance of getting the permit.
So when we applied for the permit we added 2 wattles that can grow upto 8 m and 3 Golden tip that are shorter.
Now they have issued the permit stating that we need to plant at least 5 trees and have not mentioned anything specific. They have agreed to what we proposed.
Whew that was a relief.