Cast and background

Cast

Leigh	No 6 (neighbour on east side)
Michael	No 10 (neighbour on west side) lives with wheelchair-bound mother.
Anthy	Cousin to Michael (or family friend). Hired by Leigh as the architect for renovations to no 6.
Nick	Nephew at 1a Little O’Grady St, also owned by us, directly behind no 6 Finlay, potentially affected by any changes to no 6 or no 8.
Tony	Builder selected by Leigh because he had done a good job for a friend. Not one of the builders that Anthy had recommended to him, so no loyalty or past experience between architect and builder.
Rosemary	Neighbour over the road who looks after our place when we’re not there
Us (Helen & Peter)	No 8, trying to keep everyone happy and on side. Trying to summon up the strength for one more repair/upgrade to the house to last the rest of our lives.

In 2011, or thereabouts…

Leigh did some renovations to the front of his house years ago, but the back has been gradually falling into worse and worse disarray. He has been talking about a large and serious redevelopment of the back of his house for years. He decided to use Anthy as his architect. In 2011, he produced plans for a 2-storey reno which we reviewed remotely from Queensland. We were not all that keen, more for the effect on 1a Little O’Grady St, than on us. Later he changed his mind and produced plans for a one storey reno, but with a very high new section at the back. We saw these later in 2011. We still had some concerns about overshadowing and the possibility of noise from a new airconditioner, but not enough to protest formally.

Structural issues

The two houses have mirror image plans in three sections: two rooms under a hip roof at the front, two rooms under a shared skillion roof in the middle, and then an area at the rear which was originally a kitchen and outhouses. On our side, these have been progressively removed to produce the current arrangement of kitchen-dining-living. Issues arising are as follows:

·         The middle section of the two houses have a common skillion roof (taken together they make a single gable roof). The party wall stops just above ceiling height. Rafters and what was the original gable-topped back wall of the houses are shared. If you get up into the roof you can crawl from one house to the other. This would not pass any modern fire regulations, and means that soundproofing between the houses is poor.

·         Leigh’s existing outbuildings are built up against our east wall – they have no side wall of their own.

·         Our east wall is not on the property line, but starts about a brick width inside the line, at the door into the kitchen, then converges on the property line as you go back

Our east wall is not in good shape – it has bulges in the brickwork as well as holes in the mortar.