Our Benham 33 journey

Duesseldorf - Fantastic news about your DA, hope the CC comes through quickly!
Love your feature wall colour, where are you painting it?
We have chosen Martini for walls & China White for the trims. We have a grey for our feature wall, it hasn't gone on yet, fingers crossed it looks okay.
Martini looks amazing!

We have a meeting with SS this afternoon, so I'm going to take a tonne of photos and update my blog.

Thanks for your comments. Can't wait to see your pics. Feature Wall is in the Theatre Lounge which we are converting to an office/home theatre for me

Yay Koroboo!!!
Hopefully you have some good luck with the demolisher

Jen thats really quick for the tiles! They must be making sure everyone gets in early

Bailey we just made up our own with our own key and everything.. I'd send you a copy but I can't seem to find one.. (we weren't planning on sticking to it very closely) Our estate wanted to make sure it fit in with their guidelines but the council didnt need it..

Duessel Congrats on your approval!!
Your colours will be perfect

Smorgzz i cant wait to see more pictures

I have updated my blog with a few photos.
I'll add some more later.

Everything is on track, plumbing fit off tomorrow, electrical tomorrow, tiling next week, carpet booked for the 10th

Wow Smorgzzz everything is moving. At least your rental wont be a storage facility with all your deliveries

Duessel - congrats on your DA. With the rate that it has taken from CC to site start and now to nearly getting a slab I would say Jan/Feb start is realistic. The good thing is Rawson said they only shut down for 2.5 weeks and if the tradies are anything like the ones we use at work they don't stay off for that long as they get paid if they don't work

First day of forming up the slab today. As it is an H2 slab and the heaviest the concretors have done for a long time they have said it will take 3 days to form and then pour next Monday. As frames have been ordered, hopefully they won't be too long after.

Nice photos smorgzzz! Really liking the overall match of different tiles while keeping in the same colour scheme.

Smorgzz everything is looking great. I love that you have continued with your colour theme through the whole house

lovely day I am having.

Got a nice call from the council

We took out two additional trees. One was leaning towards the house and the other one was damaged when the other trees came down, so it was removed. So I am going to get a letter from the council tree preservation person over that one. They didn't seem to care that we have 27 gum trees left on our block.

Secondly the cut and fill is too big.

On the Rawson plans we were supposed to have a 700 fill at the back of the house as per the elevation below



As you can see, Rawson were going to fill only to the right hand side of the alfresco and then we were going to have a 700mm drop back to the ground. So we made the fill pad longer so that it was usable. Apparently that is against the DA consent and we could only fill where it was on the approved plans.

Same with the front of the block. They said we have cut too much.



That we should have only cut exactly what was on the plans. If you look at the garage at the front of the house we have a 700 cut into the garage, if we left it how it was on the plans we would have had major water problems and the garage would have been unusable. So now we are going to get a letter about that one as well.

Just what I wanted for a Thursday

Ridiculous! I feel sorry for you....

Hey Jen, you poor thing.. I was just thinking about it.

Do you think one of your neighbours complained so thats why council came out to visit ???

No the council came out as they are the certifiers. They came out on Monday to inspect the piers.

I have spoken to the SS and he said that the council rung him kicking up a fuss saying we were removing Koala habitat trees which is a crock of ****. When we first bought the block they thought it might be koala habitat. The Council sent the koala person out and he said there was no evidence of koala activity and it wasnt a habitat. None of the neighbours have ever seen a koala, plus the block is surrounded on 3 sides with people that have dogs, so there is no chance of koalas. It seems as soon as we wanted to build on the block it is a koala area.

They are now saying the block had strict restrictions and that the fill couldnt go past the building envelope. I said that was rubbish as the restrictions said no shed or dwelling. So what the council are saying is we should have a 700mm drop off the back of the alfresco area and nothing else and the garage should be un-usable as we have a 700mm drop to get into it that is only a metre in front of the garage.

Jen, it sounds like your local council are a bunch of twits! I hope you guys get everything sorted out soon...

UPDATE: Still waiting on our second lot of draft plans, I sent them back nearly 3 weeks ago. We signed our tender 2 months ago today and still don't even have plans to council! Our 120 day tender to contract isn't looking good... especially since the Christmas break is coming up..

Hi all, my CSO has told me that the 120 days is working days only. Have any of you been told this? It doesn't say working days only in any of the tender docs.

I'm sorry but that is a crock. 120 working days no one has ever told me that. That is nearly 170 days. I wouldnt accept that, or get them to give you the information where it says 120 working days.

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They are a bunch of twits - now we have to explain the reason we did things. "Sorry we cut out our driveway so we could use our garage. Sorry we cut further away from our house than the metre Rawson was going to cut it so it didnt end up in a 700mm hole and have water problems" "Sorry we extended the fill from the back of our house so we wouldnt have a 700mm drop off the alfresco"



Our revised plans took 3 weeks from when all of the variations were signed off on. We signed our tender mid June and our plans were lodged with council 24/08/12, only because I picked up the paperwork and paid to have the plans stamped at Hunter Water. If it was left to Rawson it would have taken quite a few more weeks.

Question - I have gone through my tender again and noticed that there is a 'fixed' charge in there for provide concrete pump for piers. No concrete pump was provided for the piers. I know it says fixed, but there is an amount for this and they didn't use it. I asked Maree this morning about it and she said she doesn't deal with me anymore now i am in construction and I need to speak to the SS. Should i ask the SS for a credit?

I'm sorry but that is a crock. 120 working days no one has ever told me that. That is nearly 170 days. I wouldnt accept that, or get them to give you the information where it says 120 working

Thanks Jen1977 appreciate the feedback. Think they might be trying to buy themselves some time.... Sigh.... So irritating. Will ask for docs where is states working days.

Hope you issues get sorted out...that would send me wild! Bureaucracy is ridiculous sometimes.

It just makes me angry that the stupid council person says we cant cut anything more than what has been approved, even though I kept explaining that we could not get into the garage he kept saying but you can't cut more. Sorry lets build a house spend a shed load of money doing it, but the garage cant be used as you can't cut dirt without permission.

I guess they have to justify their existence and the council rates they charge

Maybe you need to draw them a picture of how you won't be able to get into your house....

They have the picture it is on the DA plans. Nothing more that I can do than wait and see what my letter says.

Fingers crossed that they see sense!

Jen: I think everyone here on the thread feels your pain! and none of us want to be in the same situation. All the best!