Now for the detail...

Another meeting with architect Daniel today to give him the necessary information for him to draw up the building plans and specifications.

First delay

Probably the first of many. Neighbour Leigh tells us that builder Tony is now talking about a July start, not June.

So what are we actually renovating?

Basically, the east wall of our kitchen-dining-living area has to come down and be rebuilt, this time actually on our property line.

Since it is impossible to rebuild a wall without removing the roof, and since the present roof is a hotch-potch of mis-matched pieces with an ugly internal beam separating them, we will not only replace it, but remodel it. The new roof will be two gables, with a hip where the room narrows. The ceiling will follow the roof line, making the room look much more interesting. We will also put new, east-facing skylights on that side of the gable roof, and a south-facing triangular window in the new end gable in the kitchen, where it projects above the skillion roof over the mid-section of the house. The walls will be very slightly higher before the ceiling starts, and the new gable will project beyond the end of the house to shade the windows, replacing the current rather grotty pergola.
We will replace all the existing windows with aluminium-framed, double-glazed windows. Those looking into the side light well area will no longer be floor-to-ceiling, but will have a small area of solid wall above and below. There will be big sliding doors at the back, but a door facing into the light well at the north end of the west wall so that we don't have to open sliding doors all the time just to go in and out, and to give us ventilation with a fly screen that is less visible than our present one. The gable above the back sliding doors will be glazed.
The kitchen will stay more-or-less as is, but with a new sink, new benchtops over new cupboard units with all those nice new-fangled things like self-closing drawers. Stove (very old but dearly loved), fridge and dishwasher (new) stay.
So all we have to do now before the project starts is move the fridge into the middle room so we can still keep some food in the house, pack up every item in the kitchen and in the various cabinets in the dining and lounge areas, then find somewhere to store all the boxes, the dining suite, the lounge suite, the assorted occasional tables, bookshelves and cabinets in the lounge room, not to mention removing all the paintings from the walls...
Plan is to move the BMW out of the garage and up to Romsey, then move furniture and contents into the garage. Don't know yet when D-day is, but if it is early June as planned, then we're going to be very busy for the next couple of weeks.

Permit granted!

By Tuesday we have all our new supporting letters signed, and send them off to Daniel, who delivers them in person on Wednesday. He arranges a meeting with a planner on Thursday. On Friday he calls us to say that the planner has completed the report recommending approval, and it will go to his supervisor at 4pm. By 6pm we have had the call from Daniel confirming that the permit has been granted and we are knocking on Leigh's door to tell him the good news.

Submitting the Application for a Planning Permit

Plans are finalised, and on Thursday 9 May we go with Daniel to submit, and pay the fast track fee. The key issue is whether the Council decides that the application needs to be advertised, as this process can take weeks. We submit letters from Leigh and his mother, who owns his house, supporting our application.
We think we have all bases covered, but when we tell the planner that the rebuild of our wall also involves a small relocation, we are told that it may have to be advertised as it will affect 6 Finlay Street and 1A Little O'Grady Street. We point out that no 6 is Leigh who is already supporting the application, and that we own 1A Little O'Grady Street, but the planner still thinks it might not be able to be fast-tracked because of the wall re-alignment.
Frustrated, we dash home and draft four new letters, one from Leigh, one from his mother, one from us as owners of 1A Little O'Grady Street, and one from nephew Nick, our tenant in the house, as the occupier of 1A Little O'Grady Street.

Back in Melbourne, to bad news

In the absence of any response from Anthy we decide to go to the Council direct to find out what they are doing with the permit. We discover that no application has been submitted. We know that Anthy has had some health issues, so we assume this is the reason. We tell Leigh the bad news but assure him that we will now try ourselves to do what's required to get the permit application submitted.
We rapidly realise that we can't do it without more detailed plans than we have so far, so we decide to ask Daniel Ash to help us out. (He is the architect that builder Tony brought to see us in December.) After a couple of meetings we have plans ready to take to the Council.