Demolition

Our demolition was booked for the week from Jan 16. It was very heavy rain on Monday, Jan 16

The fencing arrived in the end of Jan 17

Jan 18, I was surprised to see demolisher working on the site by 8am

Sep 9, 2011Section 96 and delay again from dear designer

We had a fast approval for our DA which was submitted on June 10 and obtained approved on July 22. However, it was painful for us to recognize that Marretta designer had made a terrible mistake that we WERE NOT on the maximal floor space use. Actually, there were still around 10sqm allowance on the ground floor. We were really socking and very much depress as we really wanted to start our build as soon as possible  at the same time we felt it was really a waste that we wouldn't rebuild our max floor space.

In addition, the "lovely" tree officer from the council requested that we should log on with Section 96 for the tree removal. It obviously show that we had none other  choice than lodging with Section 96

Sydney blue gum tree issue

On April 19, our blue gum tree again dropped very huge branch smashing Cua's trampling and clothes lines. We were all scary and angry. NRMA's emergency tree people came to clear our backyard on the same day afternoon and advised us to get rid of the aging tree.

Yes, we can't manage to ....suffer anymore and we submitted our tree removal application with the council without knowing that we will be facing with one of the most terrible fight to get an approval and making our joint-owner of tree to share the tree work's job.

It took a lot of time and effort to find out a reliable and fantastic senior arborist to produce a required report for us. Yes, we had met two wonderful specialists in this tree....industry. Probably for the fist time after 7 years living in Australia, we had met 2 high quality and hard working specialists with golden heart.

We couldn't believe after having arborist report, we also need to get environment impact of the dying tree. How that terrible bureaucrat  procedures still work.....  We have to telephone and learn many things else to evolve in this step.

Finally, with a lot of money, time and effort we fulfilled all paper requirements to remove the tree.

Saga with stormwater and very delay DA submission

Honestly, we couldn't believe that it has taken soooooooooo sooooooooo long with Fo to amend for our wishes. The following is a bad memory of our paper work drama:

1) 9/2011-11/2011: internal floor planning
2) 12/2011: front yard's  tree issue
3) 2/2011- 3/2012: under ground storm water

Floor plan, courtyard and Fowler

We have visited many display houses but we don't want to make our princess so boring, so we had actually not inspected  as many houses as I expected. Our vision for the new house is as belows:
1) bright and airy
2) function plan and spacious
3) fixed price and also affordable price

Actually, Wincrest has nicely modified its popular Kensington VII design to fully match with our desire but there were two things that they couldn't make it such as courtyard and facade.

Wincrest had also made a very competitive tender for us, but Fowler had won our heart because we really like the ....courtyard design. It may sound very funny for many people to know that we decided to build Vienna 36(41) with Fowler because there is a courtyard, beautiful niches for decorative display and modern / functional floor plan.

Story to rebuild our happy home

After inspecting over 100 houses over the intensive 6 month searching from 10/2003-2/2004, we finally bought our dream house from Feb 2004 auction.  We have been very happy with our house location, position and layout as we can't think of any bit better floor plan than the house plan.
http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-33.76516,151.153561&z=21&t=h&nmd=20111023


We really have had a very good time and bad time there but actually we were living in a very happy house. Thinking of rebuild or sell the house to buy another house is not much complicated as we have thought because we love the area/location and we can't afford to buy another good house in as good location as ours. Therefore, the rebuild choice is actually a very good opportunity for us and  our journey was started in April 2010 with intensive search and learn about the knockdown and rebuild project. On June 2010_Chim's birthday, we officially started to go for display home!