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Sunday, March 13, 2011

Red Pegs and Waiting

We visited our block today only to notice that we have four more pegs. They are all within the boundary of our block and all have 3m o/s to int'n. Does any one know what they are for? My guess was that its where they are excavating/filling for the house. See photos below for a better idea of what I am talking about.

Our plans are currently going through the phase of being looked at and hopefully approved by Sydney Water and we are waiting for council to issue the Construction Certificate.

NW Corner Peg
NE Corner Peg
SW Corner Peg
SE Corner Peg

Friday, February 18, 2011

We have the first Approval!!

We have been hanging on the council website and also the regular updates from Wisdom about our DA. The first part of it has been Consent Approved, hopefully without conditions. We now wait for the other services ie. Sydney Water and then we wait for the Construction Certificate to be issued.


We have also been trying to get all the loose ends and final touches done to everything now so (hopefully) nothing pops up during the build. Wisdom are probably sick of me now as I have been in contact with them at least three times a week over the last 3-4 weeks. Thankfully we are nearly there.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

DA Update

We have been advised that we now have a DA Number and a street number. We now play the waiting game.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Good News!

Received a phone call from Wisdom saying that there will not have to be any changes to our plans YAY!! (as previously mentioned in our post about Plans being lodged with council take 2.
The architects picked up a simple mistake in the calculations shown on the drawings. We actually don't know what landscape percentage we are at, at the moment but at least we are over 50% and the plans have been returned to council (with bushfire assessment attached) to keep things moving forward.

And then there was light

Met with Wisdom today to finalise our electrical plan. We originally allowed an additional $500 in the tender for extra power points, light fittings, etc.Thankfully after all the additions that we made we came in just under the $500.

Here is our final electrical plan.


On a side note we visited our block today and the construction fence has finally been removed. We were able for the first time to walk onto our block (officially) and even park in our own driveway.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Plans being lodged with council Take 2!!

Our plans were lodged with council in the weeks leading up to Christmas. So in the first few days after the holiday's when Wisdom returned to business we were expecting to receive a DA number. This did not happen. Wisdom informed us that the plans had not been processed but sent back.
Penrith City Council has a requirement that there must be a minimum of 50% Landscaped area on the development. We came in at 47%!!

This was quite frustrating and came as a surprise as to us it looks like a few of the houses already built in our estate appear to have less than 50%.
This means our plans have gone back to the drawing board and Wisdom is working out a way to loose the equivalent of approx 1 brick in length (or less) from the house to meet this requirement, without making it a noticeable change to the house itself.

Another thing which I knew about but completely overlooked was that our block is on bushfire prone land. We were required to submit a Bushfire Assessment Report with our plans detailing the Bushfire Attack Level on the house. Thankfully this came in at 0-12.5 which is the lowest and should mean no extra changes to the plans or design of the house.

Hopefully this time we can comeback with good news and a DA number.

Kitchen Plans

We have received our draft kitchen plans today, and even though they are in draft form everything appears to be correct so we wont be changing much if anything at all.
We decided to go with the under bench oven and separate cook-top to make it easier to replace in the long run, if it fails. We also added an upgrade to the kitchen which includes the matching pantry and an appliance cupboard.
We changed the location of the sink and dishwasher to prevent the dishwasher door interfering with the oven door when they are both open.

Vanity's Front
Vanity's top 

Appliance Cupboard/Pantry/Fridge space
Sink/Dishwasher/Under Breakfast Bar


Stove/Side
Kitchen