Feeling happy enough to post again :)

The last month has been a sea of emotion. Should I continue.....just give up and sell the block......poor me....toughen up princess...blah blah blah.

The good news is:-
1. Yesterday I received two packages from QBE insurance. One was the release of the contract and all the information needed to complete our home with another builder without legal ramifications. The second was the 5% deposit we paid to Cosmopolitan minus their cut. Yeah I feel a tad richer.

2. I have obtained 6 different tenders. They ranged from $20,000 to $140,000 more than Cosmopolitans quoted. Since budget is a big issue we are probably going with the second cheapest as they also include flooring.
I am hoping they can start asap.

So the journey continue. I can't wait to see what the next surprise is around the corner.

Here is the floor plan. Isn't it Cute, Compact and Totally Functional. It's the perfect house plan for someone who hates vacuuming.


Bottom Floor

Top Floor

How the house sits on our block

Isn't it the cutest, most compact house for our family of five. 

Cosmopolitan has gone into liquidation

On Friday Afternoon I heard on the radio that Cosmopolitan Constructions have gone into liquidation. I thought....that couldn't be right, this can't happen.  But it is true. I feel so bad for the staff especially my building coordinator Julie T. She was the best, I hopes she's ok.

This was posted today
http://www.cosmo.com.au/

What does this mean????
We have home warranty insurance, so I assume we should get the deposit back minus $500. Such a sad weekend.
;(

Update on pipes and boundaries

The engineers at Donovan's associates have finished the boundary redefinition and found the ancient pipes. They sent the information to the Land and Titles Office so we legally own our land with accurate boundaries. I now realise how important this is on these old blocks. If we had built a few inches onto council ground or a neighbours property they have the right to ask us to knock down our house and move it. Thanks Cosmopolitan as this was a potential life saver (or building saver). It will hopefully be only another 2 or 3 more weeks till we can do peg out. Yeahhh!!!! (only 9 months till we can move into our new house....hopefully).

Another Set Back

In my ideal world of fantasy peg out would be done.

Back to reality they can't find the pipes running past our place to hook the house up to. I asked the engineer who has cost $3000 so far why.....his explaination "The pipes running past your place were put down in the 1800's, they are made of clay, they were put in by men who we believe were very drunk as they can be between 20cm and 2m below the ground. This is all dependant when beer o'clock was back on the day it was laid in 1890". So they have to find the pipes then send the information into the department of land and property where they will take up to 4 weeks to stamp and THEN we can start peg out.

Demolition started

1st September
The fence went up today, unfortunately they have fenced around all the illegally dumped rubbish which made it very hard for the council inspectors to try and figure out who dumped it...(its not hard as they left their mail amongst the dumped rubbish).

2nd September
Riad started demolition. I have to do a quick plug for him. Nationwide demo has been awesome, We got a quote over a year ago thinking getting a DA through council was easy. He has stuck by us all this time and is doing a quick job now. He consults with you throughout the process to make sure everything is right...Thank you NATIONWIDE DEMOS. Here is a link to his website. Highly recommended for inner west Sydney demolitions.  http://www.nationwidedemo.com.au/ . He gave our kids a sit on the digger machine which they loved.

Demolition in full progress. We are retain the back fence as requested by our neighbours. The 242m looks a lot bigger with the garages removed.

This is the slab of the garages is being removed on the 3rd September.

A pretty yellow skip bin. A lot more stylish that those white ones, I must say.

The Story So Far

31st August 2011.

For my Family and Friends to follow and in the hope of helping others through the process of knock down rebuild in heritage sensitive areas. I have started to blog our journey to build a home for ourselves and 3 children.

In May 2010 we bought a very small triangular shaped, 242m2 block of land in a back laneway of Summer Hill, Sydney in the hope of building a small home for our family.

                             Here is a picture of our block with the two story house on it. ;)

The block:
-has a previous expired DA and is classed Residential 2a (this means we can build on it).
-It has 6 old garages on it which will require demolishing.

Choosing Cosmopolitan Builders was easy as we wanted a builder who was environmental and built small homes which would fit on our irregular block. Affordability was an issue as we are on a single teachers income. They ticked all the boxes.

The next few months were spent doing the usual building design, colours etc etc. In November we attempted to lodge our DA but was rejected. We organised a meeting with the heritage advisor in February. He gave us much advice and the plans were changed again and again as we bounced back and forth with council until we had a plan (that looked nothing like the original) but Council and the heritage advisors were happy with.
Hurray for Cosmopolitan. They quickly made numerous changes for council without charging extra.
It was now the end of May 2011.

Submission to Council
We lodged our DA and notification happened in June. 3 neighbours wrote letters of objections and one door knocked and did a signed petition.
Feeling absolutely crushed, our neighbours already hate us.
Looked into selling the block, its not worth this much trouble.
I visited an excellent RE agents/property developer who spent 2 hours going through what to do and told me not to give up we were almost there.

JULY 2011....
We went back and forth with the town planner to Cosmopolitan architect changing the plan more to suit the neighbours requests ie lowered the house as it is 2 story, it is now dug in a bit, windows are now sash hung frosted etc. We even had to change the paint/brick/roof tiles. It killed me that I have to have Terracotta, Sydney Red roof tiles...they are a revolting colour of orange. But we also more desperately want a home for our family so I will paint it pink with purple spots if council requests it.

                                          This is what our block looks like at the moment.