Glass magnetic whiteboard

My architect recently showed me this new whiteboard product.  It's called Chat Board.  It's made of glass and the big news is that it's magnetic.

In our new place we have designed a workstation area in the walk in pantry.  This is a place which will be used for all the messy stuff that normally clutters up the kitchen bench tops such as junk mail, correspondence, kid's school notices and the like.  It will also be a place where we can plug in phones and laptops all the while keeping them tucked away.  My plan is to have a big white board area that I can use for calendar notes, shopping lists and anything else that might normally end up on the fridge.

So I'm quite excited to see that I don't necessarily have to end up with a boring white slab of board but instead can now choose from a range of colours.

At the moment I would love it in bright red just for something nice and bold.  I'm thinking those white markers that write onto glass will be just the ticket for a very functional and good looking work area.  Will wait now to see what the price is like.  Unfortunately, we need a custom size (isn't it always the way!) so I'm not going to get too excited until I see the price.

The inevitable objection

So, just as we thought, the neighbour has submitted an objection to our side wall. The most pleasing thing (if there can be anything) was that the objection was submitted well before the deadline. So from a timing perspective we didn't have to wait the full 3 weeks. Despite the shadow diagrams showing absolutely no impact on the neighbour's window she has used her rights to object to us building it - fair enough. She also went one step further and 'put us on notice' that she refuses to grant permission to us replacing any part of the fence! Not sure why this is. It's not a particularly new or well maintained fence and it would be done at our expense. Anyhoo, I think we can avoid any fence replacement and that might cheer her up a bit. Not sure that we're going to be life long friends. I just hope that we can get through this next approval stage and get building. From here we have to wait up to 3 weeks for the Council to review all of the information and hand down their decision. Seems ridiculous that this couldn't have all been done at the same time as our last submission. In the meantime, the builders have been reviewing our tender and we had one builder come and have a look at the place last Friday. They have 2 more weeks before the resulting prices are due. We are hanging on with our finger nails to an October start.

Tender issued

Last Thursday our tender was formally issued to builders. They have 3 weeks to respond so we're hoping they get to it!

Our neighbour has until 7th September to respond to our request regarding our wall on her boundary. If we hear nothing then we're all good but if she objects we then have to wait up to a further 3 weeks to get a ruling from Council which could then be further appealed. It would seem to us that if she objects we could be in for quite a delay which would really put in doubt whether we would be able to get building this year. We're very conscious of getting to close to the ramp down pre-Xmas so are fervently hoping this doesn't happen.

Just when you thought it was safe....

So it turns out there's another twist in the planning process that we need to go through. Apparently, the building surveyor doesn't review the plans until a Planning Permit has been issued. So, now that we have our permit, the building surveyor has taken a look and informs us that we need to ask the neighbour for permission to build our side wall as it's within 3 metres of her north facing window. Ok, fair enough...I just wish I understood this process a bit more so that we were more aware of what we have to go through. The neighbour gets 14 days in which to object or consent, then Council gets up to 3 weeks to make their decision. Sigh! More time to wait. If there is an objection then there's a possibility of further appeals but I'm not even going to think about that right now.

In the meantime, we've agreed with the architect that we're going to move ahead to tender this week and hopefully by the time the builder's have had their time to price and we've gone through our various iterations and chosen a builder we will hopefully have our permit! Our October start date is looking decidedly shaky but still possible. We are going to stay glass half full on this one for now.

Today we went and did some further selection and research into sanitary ware and appliances. There's a great E&S Trading showroom that has opened in Moorabbin. It has all the major brands of kitchen appliances, tapware, baths, basins, whitegoods, dishwashers. You name it, they've got it. We compiled our massively long list with a sales guy and he's now going to get back to us with their 'best price'. Should be interesting. Our plan is to buy all of this stuff ourselves and avoid the builder mark up.

Planning Permit has arrived!

After a very long wait we finally have our planning permit. We weren't sure whether our neighbour was going to appeal the original decision so had to wait a very long 21 days and then another 2 weeks of further bureaucracy before it was finally issued.

We popped the cork on a bottle of champers last night to celebrate. Nothing can hold up the start of our build now unless it's us taking too long to review documents and make decisions.

Next stop is the tender. The architects have been working furiously to get all of the paperwork together. So after some review time we will be ready to put it out to the 4 builders that we have lined up. Hopefully we have changed or pulled out enough things that the budget will be more in the range we are hoping for. The timeframe also is the other unknown.

Yesterday, I was at the house with the architect to review a few details for the demolition spec. It turns outs we are really only keep about 5 walls of the house (3 external and 2 internal), the rest is getting bull dozed. This house really won't know what hit it. There won't be much left at all to begin with.