waiting for our DA

We need to have an approved Development Application, a Construction Certificate and an Owner Builder's License in order to do most of the big ticket work on the house.

The official line is that council should approve or decline an application within 42 working days of lodgement, however our council is notorious for taking much longer. The neighbours immediately behind us had plans lodged at council for two and a half years, the people accross the road for three and a half but theirs involved a little Land and Environment Court action.

We lodged our DA in December and whilst it hasn't been without hiccoughs the latest news is that it should be approved during the April council meeting. We've been lucky that there have been no objections lodged relating to our plans, the council itself (now) has no objections, so we are optimistic that it will be smooth sailing.

What we haven't needed approval to work on is the upstairs bedrooms. There are no structural changes or developments, just the replacing of what was damaged and broken.

Rahul has done much of the work upstairs himself, with Theo as a consultant. Taking down ceilings and walls has proved to be very messy, and unfortunately for me whilst I don't do the hard work upstairs I do the cleaning up downstairs. We've worked out that the cat wee smell is associated with old plaster walls, so we've had to deal with a very unpleasant odour while the skip has been sitting outside. It left last Friday and we breathed a sigh of relief.

The next tradie to visit will be a gyprocker which we're really excited about. I think new walls will suddenly make us feel like the room is progressing forwards, not getting more and more destroyed. It's amazing how you have to trash something before you can make it new again.

The doorway to our bedroom (taken from inside the bedroom)

The doorway to the second bedroom, again taken from inside the bedroom. You can see the crappy wall filling.

Evidence that ceiling removal really is dirty work (but happy work)!

Skip 2/3
These doors will be replaced this weekend. Once we have our DA approved we will be able to remove the enclosed balcony and have a pretty proper one.

Ceilingless and old roof. We have a new Colourbond roof now, it looks hilarious as it's the only new thing in the house.