The process for having the plans drawn up was pretty straight forward. Our architect based on photographs we had given him, drew up the design. He then liased with R9WA for the panel drawings, and within a few months of back and forth we had our plans.

Council approval turned out to be a bigger issue. The vast majority of plans that they approve are project homes that use same design, so its pretty much a no brainer for them to rubber stamp something that has been previously approved. Our plans, although designed to the building regulations imposed by the council, were not as easily passed.

The reality was this was a one off design and for us it took longer than in the past when we had used a project builder.

We had weeks and weeks of back and forth adjusting small things on the plan and each time we submitted the changes we were given another list of things to address, frustrating was an understatement.
Finally we caught a break when the person we were dealing with at the council went on holidays and someone else took over his duties, low and behold within a day we had approval! go figure.

So we had plans ready to go and we could start…