On Wednesday, I received word from Plantation that our plans had been approved by Council (including our Build Over Sewer application) and that they would start organising the final plans. Then on Thursday, we received the Final Plans (which were subsequently returned very promptly!!). And today, the Bank signed off on the "Authority to Commence Construction"!!
Everything has happened extremely quickly (including the Council approval which only took 4 weeks, compared to the 7-9 we were quoted) and our file has now progressed on to the Labour & Material Allocation stage before being handed over to our Site Supervisor (we don't know who this is yet....). Needless to say, a lot of this is down to our excellent Pre-Site Administrator and her Manager, who have been pushing our file through as quickly as humanly possible, given the delays and frustrations we experienced at the start.
But what is even more exciting is that we now have an estimated site start date of Monday 19 August!! This is only 2 weeks away, and if the weather stays relatively dry (like it has lately), then there is now a very good chance that we will have handover before Christmas!! This would be ideal since we have already "tentatively" set our flooring date for 20 December and would also give us the opportunity to get other things done before the usual Christmas shut-down period (like appliances installed and driveway done). It also means we could go over and paint our feature walls and put up our window coverings over the Christmas break :)
In terms of what we haven't done yet - the only things left are the light fittings and window coverings.......we went out and got quotes for the light fittings around 2 months ago but never progressed any further than that so this is something we will be finalising in the next couple of weeks to ensure we have everything we need in time for the electrician. As for the window coverings, this is something that we will be doing ourselves so we have a little bit more time to think about this.
On the land side of things, not much has changed there really, except we now have 2 trees planted on our footpath. Whilst they do look nice, obviously the developer couldn't be bothered taking the time to read our plans before planting them to realise that our driveway is going right where the trees are!! So we will have to move them and replant them further down our footpath prior to construction starting - not too much of a hassle, but a small annoyance nonetheless. I have put a couple of photos below for interests sake.
Obviously once the building starts, there will be plenty more photos and posts to keep everyone updated :)
Just wondering if you paid for the fast track fees for the council to approve within 4 weeks instead of quoted 7-9 weeks? Or there was no fast track fees paid and council approved within 4 weeks?
ReplyDeleteNo, apparently it wasn't an option with our council. The council approvals all up took around 5-6 weeks so not too bad overall.
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