Rooflines & windows

Been a week now since our meeting with Knott - so much for this being a diary of the build from planning to snagging, more of a recent retrospective.

Anyway, we had a good meeting, with most of the mental horsepower devoted to thinking what kind of roof and side windows could keep both Council and client happy.  I think we may be going for a flat roof or something creatively asymmetric, and a notch on the south face to let light in at the sides, a sort of reverse bay with no forward-facing window.  I'd like to see it on paper before I comment - all I know is that given seven years of professional training plus years of experience I'm hoping they come up with something I haven't thought of.

Meanwhile, following our legal advice to mothball the project, the bungalow is being prepared for going on the lettings market - today is all about getting bathroom taps off that appear to have been cemented on forty-five years ago.  Not really what I originally intended to be blogging about...

Vague and unhelpful

Like Hailey's comet, you wait for ages then it turns out to be crap.  After almost two months we've had our response from the Council, a single vague and unhelpful page of A4 with classics such as "on this side of [name of road] is a line of single storey dwellings... no.[x] to the rear is two storey, nos. [y & z] are more one and a half storey.  Dwellings on the opposite side of the road are more mixed in height and scale."  (My italics).

Anyway, apart from everything she doesn't like integral garages, the overall size, and windows in the south elevation on the grounds that would restrict the future redevelopment of the bungalow to the south.  But a) if we were not to put in any south-facing windows then it would free them up to put in as many windows as they wanted.  And b) all those windows that would be overlooking our solid unbroken brickwork would be, for them, north-facing which would probably be only bathrooms.

We've restricted our north-facing windows because of the bedroom windows across the way which are already there.  Now we have to restrict our south-facing windows because of the windows that aren't there, but might be there one day, but we know will only be bathrooms.

See what Knott makes of this.

Inching forward again

The woman from the Council carried out her site visit on Friday.  I surprised her by being on site.  She didn't surprise me by not having read any of the papers, so my being there proved marginally useful.

In a foolish effort to be proactive I've booked a meeting with the architect for the 14th in the hope and expectation we'll have a written response by then.

Stop your sniggering at the back...