Just checking...

In January we communicate with Anthy to confirm that she has everything she needs from us to get the permit application done. She tells us she has.

What kind of roof?

Peter returns on to Hobart on Friday and we get back to Anthy by phone and discuss the possibility of a hip roof with her. We have a busy weekend with the boat out of the water, coming back off the slip on Monday 17 December. That evening we receive new sketches from Anthy. She has drawn up our alternative suggestion for a roof line, but is very negative about it. In a note on the sketch she says it will be more expensive and will “do nothing for the room”. We check with Tony about costs – he says there won’t be a significant difference and that a hip roof will be structurally stronger. We think it will make the room more interesting and give us a better option for a skylight in the kitchen, but we understand that it does create a potential roof drainage issue. On Tuesday we email our comments and questions back, then talk to her on Wednesday. After further discussion of the merits of the two roof options, I give in and we go back to her first gable design, on the grounds that we can amend later once we get a planning permit, because the various alternative options have a lower profile than her design, so any overshadowing will be less.
Our priority at this stage is to get the permit application submitted. When we were in Melbourne we gave Anthy a cheque to go with the application, so now we are leaving it to her to finalise the application and submit. However the discussions over the roof option means that it will probably not be looked at by a Council planner until late January, and it might be the end of February before we get approval. Leigh will not be able to start in January as planned. He accepts this, and we are slightly relieved, as we will need to be in Melbourne before any work starts on our place, and we don't want to interrupt our summer sailing.

Issues with architects

We hear nothing from Anthy for the remainder of November. In the absence of a response from her we agree to a meeting on 12 December with Leigh, Tony and an alternative architect that Tony has worked with before, and write an email to Anthy suggesting that perhaps she hasn’t really got time to help out with a job that has been sprung on her at short notice.

On 4 December, we receive sketch plans from Anthy which are perfectly adequate. We have limited time to look at them because we have guests arriving the next day and we are taking them sailing. But now Anthy is chasing us, so we agree to meet her when we are both back in Melbourne on Tuesday 11 December, the day before the meeting with the other architect.

We return to Melbourne, meet Anthy on Tuesday, but run out of time to make final decisions because Peter has a meeting and I’m off to Seaford to scatter the ashes of grandparents, Fritz and Elsie. We agree to reconvene on Wednesday afternoon.

On Wednesday we meet Tony, Leigh and Daniel Ash, a young architect we rather take to. He has some ideas and comments we find interesting. He seems to have a better grasp of the structural issues and we quickly resolve the issue of how the new wall will be built – as two brick veneers walls back to back. Anthy has been trying and failing to convince Leigh he should build in brick veneer rather than double brick for months. In the discussion between him, the two of us, Tony and Daniel he was convinced within about half an hour, because the structural implications were clearly explained.

During the discussion, Tony and Daniel also suggest that since what we are doing is basically a repair job, fixing things that are decaying, we may be able to go straight to a building permit and skip the planning permit. This seems like an opportunity worth pursuing, so we agree that they will go and talk to a building inspector. I ring Anthy to tell her what has happened. She heaps scorn on the idea that the job can be done without getting a planning permit. However she eventually agrees that we should wait until Tony gets back to us before we meet again and we postpone the Wednesday afternoon meeting sine die.

Later that day, Tony calls – Anthy was right: a planning permit is needed. By now I am in the process of returning to Tas and we both have commitments on Thursday, me in Hobart, Peter in Melbourne. So we don't have time to meet with her again. 

2012: the story begins

Summer 2012

We received occasional messages via Rosemary that Leigh was anxious to talk to us about his building plans. We passed messages back with phone numbers and email addresses, but heard nothing.

April-May 2012

When we came back to Melbourne, we found that Leigh had finalised his plans and started the process of choosing a builder. One of the builders he had interviewed had pointed out that putting up a new wall on his side of the boundary had two issues – first he couldn’t build his wall up against ours because ours isn’t on the property line, so there would be a triangular gap between the two walls. Second, when footings were dug for his wall, our wall could conceivably collapse. He told us about these concerns and we suggested that we might consider rebuilding our wall, and that we should jointly talk to the builder once he had made his choice. He agreed.

Winter 2012

More messages from Rosemary saying Leigh kept asking when we were getting back from Europe. Again contact details passed on, no response.

August-November 2012

We returned from Europe in mid-August. Whenever we saw Leigh he would tell us there were problems, we would agree and request a meeting with the builder. Finally we stressed that we were about to go to Tasmania for the summer and he had better organise it asap and on the morning of 15 November, the day we were catching the ferry, he finally got us, the architect and the builder together. It was all a bit frantic, but we agreed that we would bring forward planned renovations to our place (which we weren’t really wanting to do for 2-3 more years) and have all the work done as a single project, same builder, same architect. I asked if we could build a single new party wall (effectively extending the existing party wall) rather than two new walls back to back and was surprised when everyone seemed to think it was possible. In retrospect, I think there were too many cross conversations going on and no one realised exactly what I was asking.

It then became an urgent requirement for us to get to planning permission stage asap, so that building works could commence in late January, as Leigh had planned. Anthy was to draw up sketches for our back room with a new wall, new windows and roof, but on the same footprint and with everything in the same place as it is now. We asked for a more interesting and integrated roof line than the existing two part roof with an ugly beam visible inside where the roofline changes.

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.