The old garage |
Being a good procrastinator I did not start doing actual work on this until several weeks after Timothy was born. It was then I discovered I needed council approval to demolish and construct a garage - I also discovered that council would not give yes or no based on questions over the phone or in person, they really wanted me to submit a development application (DA). Fortunately the shed company we chose would (for an extra fee) provide all the documentation for council.
We decided not just to replace the carport and garage. This project would include a replacement, stencilled, driveway going all the way to the road (the current one is old, cracked and ends at the property boundary not the road) as well as a water tank connected to the laundry and toilets. This was also important as we discovered (after moving in) that the storm water all drained into a pit under the backyard and this was not working well as the drainpipes overflowed in heavy rain. As both our street levels are higher than most of the property this required a pit - it is most likely 50 years old and full of silt which is causing the drainage issues (especially with the wet summer in Sydney in 2011/12).
As the carport is right next to the house we decided to replace that with a single garage first and demolish the asbestos garage later in 2012 - so we could get a large backyard. The new garage was going to be a very wide (at 4.2m) single garage as a double garage else would not fit next to the house. The first DA went into council just before christmas and it was picked up by council in on 3 Jan 2012 (first one they looked at by the DA number). Shortly afterwards council asked to modify the plans. They had two concerns. One was the driveway onto the corner was not in compliance with Australian standards (and therefore dangerous) and the second issue was the drainage plan was not complete.
Plan A - Simple...until council was involved |
I did speak to the council contact to try and understand their issues and suggest a few options so to hopefully save time. The guy from council was most unhelpful and said he had only just been given the project and he would never commit to any answers. A co-worker suggested turning the garage to go directly out to the street (90 degrees instead of 180 degree turn). This seemed a better option. I called council again as I was concerned removing the tree would be a problem but they said it was generally ok to remove trees but would not commit to an answer about moving the garage 90 degrees. We submitted again to council on 18 Jan.
Plan B - Just move everything 90 degrees |
At this point we realised we needed to go away and dream it all up again. After a chat to Mum & Dad (who were visiting just before we left for our trip) we came up with a basic redesign which was to replace the old garage and demolish the carport and old driveway. However, there was no time to do this before we left so I asked for an extension. Council refused saying that we had already had done one change (this was the third thing they had not indicated in their previous communications). So I tried to get things organised in the day before we left. In the taxi on the way to the airport council indicated that the changes we were proposing were "too large" and a new DA was required - though they would refund most of our DA money. At that point I gave up and decided to enjoy our holiday. To say I was pissed off at council was an understatement - luckily our trip to San Francisco and Seattle was a welcome distraction.
The distraction only lasted for a time. After 2 weeks in the USA I started thinking about the garage again and decided to start enquiries with the shed company and get the new plan (Plan C?) underway and to (hopefully!) learn from the lessons of the past 2 months. This new plan involved doing most of the work in one go instead of several stages as originally planned. We would demolish both the garage and carport, replace the garage with a double tandem garage, put the tank where the carport was, remove most of the concrete of the carport slab and the old driveway, extend the side fence to go through to to near the front door and remove the fence on the patio. This plan also meant a lot more money (probably double the first plan's $15K).
Plan C - just make the project bigger |
Plan C version 2 - Approved...sort of... |
I thought we were getting closer, however this (as well as our next holiday) will delay construction...