Quite honestly, don't know where to start

Had our meeting with Knott during the week.  Instant coffee.  Big A3 folder full of pictures of other people's houses.  Then drawings of ours...

The main hang-up during the meeting was he was proposing to give us a house with the front third dropped into the ground by a metre or so (imagine a standard house with the gable end at the front, slice the front third and wedge in into the ground).  The rationale being it would give a big house, but one that doesn't look that big from the front, massing in the context of the streetscene being a big issue with the Council.

This was innovative and took a bit of thinking about before coming to terms with.  It was one of those 'oh I see, that's clever; I'd never though of that' moments that we were looking for.

Trouble is, those moments stopped there.

We left the meeting agreeing to cost up what had been produced but, instead, the more we looked at it the more we were surprised, shocked, and appalled at everything else.  Given we had tasked them with 'making best use of light and space' (isn't this, essentially, longhand for 'good architecture'?) they had not just given us a house with four bedrooms at each corner (we were looking for more than just conventional, but it's not a hanging offence), but given us rooms with no natural light, and with the sum total glazing on the south elevation of two slit windows.  Unbelievable.

Seriously, I may try to rework the spaghetti of cables to get the scanner to work and post the south elevation.

We've been working on a written response for the last few days.  I'd like to give them another chance to get it right, but this is so far wide of the mark that we're beginning to wonder...

Greetings from the second front

Whilst the main battle - coming up with plans that will satisfy client and Council - bubbles away in the background in the (we hope) capable hands of Knott and his team - we've been hard at work opening up the second front of getting the property ready to let out in the short/medium term.  Walls painted, shower installed, secondhand cooker bought to replace the one we sold on eBay.  New carpets went in yesterday, letting agents coming around tomorrow.

Given the fact that our least friendly planning officer is the most likely to be assigned our case we may as well hunker down for a long fight and get some rental income in whilst we're at it.

And on the subject of planning, we ran into one of the neighbours a few days back, although not one we've consulted on access issues or offered to buy a back garden from.  We told her our plans, both short- and long-term (can't see the point in being disingenuous given she'd be consulted on any plans).  "You can't do much with the site," she said, looking at the bungalow.  As soon as I used the words 'two-storey' and 'demolish and rebuild' I felt like I just told some Polish peasant in the summer of 1938 that we'd had a lovely holiday and we're thinking of coming back next year to invade.  Probably be the talk of the road by now...

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... 

One step back, err... no steps forward

Message left on the answerphone from the Council that our pre-application has now been allocated and the officer will try to 'get around to it' in the next couple of weeks and see the site.  This is despite the fact that two other planning officers are already slightly familiar with our site.  Frustrating.

Also cancelled next month's service isolations for the time being and have a man in from a letting agency later in the week to see its letting potential versus how much we'd need to throw at it to make it habitable.  

All quiet on the self-building front

Hmm...

Things getting somewhat bogged down as summer moves into autumn.  Legal advice, for a variety of reasons outside the scope of these posts, is to mothball the project for the foreseeable future, although our inclination is to at least get plans drawn up if not demolish.

Ofgem have confirmed that, whilst we can put solar PVs on the current bungalow, we cannot refit them to any replacement dwelling on still qualify for the FITs.  So that the 'making money whilst mothballing' plan sunk.

And the Council have gone over their 28-day deadline for responding to our pre-application and failed to give me an indication of when they might respond.

Off later to try to turn the apple harvest into cider.  Could have a lot of vinegar come Christmas...