Plans back in council

We finally got a new drainage plan from the engineers so our plans are going back to council today. It took us a while to find a solution with rainwater tanks sizes that would fit along one side of the property leaving a clear path down the other. Hopefully council won’t send the plans back this time.

Otherwise we are looking forward to receiving a 3D kitchen design from the kitchen company shortly.

What a mess

We have been instructed that we need to change the drainage design and instead of a charged system we now need to increase our water tanks to 10,000L and the overflow from this can be disposed to an absorption trench in the rear yard. The problem is the engineer has updated the design and placed another 2 massive water tanks down the other side of the house where we planned to have a clear pathway. I have had no luck contacting the engineer to try and either move the tank or change it dimension to be higher but a little thinner so we have more room down the side of the house.
To top it off our Contracts Co-ordinator resigned and had her last day is today. The role is officially vacant for a week and half. I don’t have too much hope of us getting back into council in the next few weeks.

Plans rejected due to stormwater design!!

Here we go. Starting to get problems.

As we are downslope the councils preferred option is to flow stormwater with the level of the land to a downslope easement. However as we don't have an easement on our property we need to contact our downslope neighbours to request access to theirs. If they reject access to an easement then we can look at an alternate design for stormwater like the charged system we currently have a hydraulic design for. However they said the hydraulic design didn't cut it anyway.

So back to the drawing board.

Plans in council, Kitchen Appointment

We have been told our plans have been couriered to council yesterday. Yippee!! Hopefully we won't have any problems with the plans or the neighbours.

We had our kitchen appointment today and can imagine the kitchen will look pretty good. Since we have heigh ceilings we have decided to upgrade the height of the cupboards so the cap between the cupboards and the ceilings will not be so great. Also decided to add a few more drawers in the island and place the microwave in the island out of the way.
A few pics below:

Caesarstone Benchtop.

Polytech Cupboards - Snowgum Gloss

Colour Appointment Done

We had our colour/electrical appointment yesterday which went for about 5 hours. We were exhausted by the end and I think we upgraded quite a bit through the appointment so not really looking forward to seeing the total price.

I have updated the sketch of the front of the house with colours to give an idea of the fascade.

Listed below is the breakdown of some of the items selected.

Externals
Render - Wattyl Wild Yukon

Roof Tiles - Contour Gun Metal Gutters,Downpipes - Colourbond MonumentFascia,Eaves,Posts,Garage - Colourbond Dune Windows - Artic Off white Front Door - Corinthian Infinity Woodgrain Internals
Skirting / Architrave - Wattyl Flokati Bedroom Walls - Wattyl Flokati
Main Walls - Wattyl White Pepper Feature Walls - Wattyl Squire House Doors - Corinthian Impression - Wattyl Flokati

Landscape Plan

I have uploaded a copy of the landscape plan we plan on submitting to council. I simply altered the site plan and added references to new and existing trees around the property. The plan is pretty simple as we don't plan on changing much in the backyard in the short term. The front will be made up of a picket fence, some low hedging and a few shrubs.

We are booked in for next Friday to do colour selection, kitchen and electrical!!!

Contract signed

We got our updated tender and thankfully no major surprises. Actually came in cheaper thanks to us not needing an onsite detention system. So signed off on this and paid our deposit.

Took a few weeks to get our updated drawings and everything is looking good except it was missing a few items we previously asked for. You really need an eye for detail when going over plans/tender.

Signed the building Contract today!! 40 week estimated build time with 5 week break at Christmas so we are looking at around 10 months build time. A little peeved they wouldn't increase the late completion payment from $1 a day. Basically take it or leave it.

We also choose our demolition company (State demo) and paid the deposit to them.

We should be doing our colour selection, kitchen and electrical over the next few weeks prior to submitting plans to council. Wish things would move along a bit faster.