In black and white

The paper sent us complimentary copies, bless 'em, so here's the ad.

The site notice is up, too. The full application will go in tomorrow.

We went to see the neighbours this evening and they mentioned that the reason the current extension subsided is that the whole development is on an old quarry. Good to know, if slightly disquieting...

The Master Plans

So here they are: the final drawings of our remodelled house for our planning application later this week.


The front is pretty much as it always has been in these plans and my mock-up below. The window illustrations are a bit closer to what we hope to have, however.


Here at the back you can see the pitched roof extension gable in all its glazed glory, as well as the new patio doors from the living room.


Ehmm, for some reason the application requires a roof plan, and here it is. The two white rectangles are the kitchen skylights. We'll be having a couple of solar panels on the back and one on the side when this is built, I think.


Another dull one: this is the detached side, with the back door into the utility room and the en suite window upstairs. If you remove the exterior wall you get...


... this section through the (anti-clockwise from top-right) dressing room, en suite, master bedroom, kitchen, utility room and TV room. The viewpoint is looking out of the patio doors in the dining area which have a double window to the left of them.


Not much has changed here since the last set: the utility room has moved forward to make the kitchen bigger and 20cm of extension width has been sacrificed to the side passage. The kitchen is very nearly a perfect L and we decided at the last minute to move the front door forward -- we'd like a porch, but we need that space even more.


Upstairs, behold the hotpress! The master bedroom is looking pretty small, but with a separate dressing room that shouldn't be a problem. There was much debate about the bathroom layout, including the logistics of moving the whole right-hand wall about a foot further right to make the right-hand bedrooms fit flush and give more bathroom space. We decided against it: the bathroom has beaten us and will remain tiny, though moving the hotpress will allow some flexibility.

And there you have it. The drawings are done, the site notice is laminated and the display stake is ready for the front garden. On Wednesday, if they do what we've paid them to do, the local paper will print our notice and fire the starting pistol for real.

Planning timetable

It's tempting fate to write this, but given how long we've taken to get this far it feels good to be able to put some definite dates on things. So:

1. This Thursday, 19th April we will be submitting our planning notice to the local paper.
2. On Wednesday 25th it will be published, and on the same day the site notice can go up in front of the house. By then the plans should be finalised so that...
3. On Thursday 26th our planning application will be lodged with the Council. We have up to two weeks (to 10th May) to do this, but there should be no reason not to do it straight away.
4. The expiry date for objections will then be 31st May, and
5. By (and probably on) 21st June we will have our planning decision.

By the end of this process we hope to have everything ready to go for building to commence immediately. We will have the plans certified for building regulation compliance, a specification drawn up, a project manager appointed and tenders issued to contractors.

What could possibly go wrong?

All looking very familiar

New plans, and tantalisingly close to the final version:

Downstairs the kitchen has been repositioned, though we don't think we'll go with that wall jutting out near the cooker. The room is not yet a perfect L but that should be easy enough to amend. The whole extension is now a uniform width, but we suspect it's too wide for the side-passage space. We'll be taking about 20cm off the width shown here. We're also inclined to bring the utility room forward to make the kitchen bigger and take space off the less-essential TV room.

Upstairs:

If the utility room downstairs is moving forward, the en suite will have to move with it. Still we are without a hotpress, but it will be going somewhere between the en suite and dressing room. The glass bricks in the small study have returned and the pitched roof on the kitchen is now visible -- what it needs are two roof lights close to where it joins the house.

Once this checklist has been gone through, we'll be ready to apply for permission.