Our architects name is Stuart. He has been fantastic to deal with and has helped us out immensely - and in fact, continues to do so.
After getting his details from James (at Renovation Junkies) I contacted him to arrange a meeting. He was able to accommodate our work schedule and the kids and came on a Saturday morning.
We talked through what we wanted to achieve from renovating and showed him some of our scribbled drawings about how we thought it might all work....or not work, whatever the case may have been.
(We also learnt that we needed to get some surveying plans of our property done, so I enlisted a surveyor who drew them up for us and forwarded them on to Stuart.)
Stuart walked around the place, asked a stack of questions, measured this and that, and took some photos.
Once he was done, he headed off to do some initial sketches of a couple of ideas to show how we could achieve the dream renovation. He told us that this stage of the process should take the longest. Working with the sketches is the easiest and cheapest time to change your mind on the design of your renovation. Once the plans start and ultimately the construction, you want your design to be set in stone.
Stuart returned a couple of weeks later with two sketch ideas, the one above and the one we didn't choose. Both were great ideas and incorporated things that Hubby and I hadn't thought about. As soon as I saw the light well/courtyard I was pretty much sold on the above design. We did tweak the kitchen a bit, but everything else was a slam dunk.
The next step was for Stuart to create all the DA paperwork and plans that were required to submit to the council to get our renovation underway. These documents consisted of....
- Survey
- Site Plan
- Floor Plans
- Elevations
- Sections
- Statement of Environment Effects
- Waste Management Plan
- Soil and Water Management Plan
- A4 Notification Plans
- Basix report
- Schedule of Materials
- Cost Summary Report
- Heritage Impact Statement
We met with Stuart again to view all the plans, read the reports and sign everything. Then Stuart was able to submit our DA to the council!! Now the waiting game....
No comments:
Post a Comment