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.