Just when you’ve dragged yourself through years of the grit, grot and gross insanity that can be renovating hell, your neighbour decides it’s his turn. What do you do when he wants to build a McMansion extension in a street of little terraces?
I’d always wanted to buy the house next door if it ever came onto the market. It’s to the north, and I thought that I could design it so that it didn’t impact too much on my house. Oh, I also thought it would fun to renovate it. Yep, that’s obviously before I renovated mine!
In any case, it was bought about a year ago and as it’s almost the worst house in the street renovation was inevitable. When the plan for the proposed extension was advertised by council however I was shocked. Minimising bulk and scale had gone out the window - literally. Not only did my new neighbour want 4m high ceilings in the upstairs bedroom, he also wanted to build over the window that I have in my northern boundary wall.
You can see the bulk of the proposed development (it’s the bigger house to the north) and the over-shadowing that would result.
Loss of sun #2 from RENOVATION SURVIVOR on Vimeo.
Naturally I objected. Despite the fact that the council planner recommended that the application be approved, it was sent to a council meeting for their decision. After presentations by my architect - whom I had roped in to model the impact of the proposed plans on my place - and me, council decided to visit my house to see the impact for themselves
At the next meeting the councilor present recommended that the pitch of the roof next door be reduced to minimise the bulk and over-shadowing, and that a lightwell be incorporated to avoid building over the northern wall window. We lost the latter point (this was an interesting Building Code technicality - perhaps a post on this later on), but the roof pitch reduction was agreed and added to the development’s consent conditions
I was quite keen to see the amended plans with the reduced roof pitch. After I found out that council had approved the construction certificate I rang them to see if I could look at the plans. Initially I was told that that might be difficult because of “privacy” but in the end, the elevations were sent to me.
It won’t surprise you to know that the roof pitch on the new approved drawings was not 5 degrees at all but over 10!
That meant council approved construction certificate plans were in conflict with the council issued development consent. All was well in the end however, as after more letter writing and phone calls, new plans were submitted with a complying roof pitch.
Of course that’s all about getting it right on paper. Now the challenge is making sure the built version complies…This is proving not to be as simple as following a set of plans!
You might wonder who the neighbour from hell is. I know my neighbour thinks it’s me. (But if he’d only follow the consent conditions everything would be straightforward….)
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