The planning application is in!

After a couple of months going back and forth to the planning officer, around 3 iterations to the plans, we've finally submitted our formal planning application.

Interestingly, our original brief was to produce plans with elevations that were fitting for the surrounding properties. The original feedback from the Planning Officer at an informal meeting was that he found it too bland!

Second iteration and we increased the window sizes to the corner of the property that would be seen upon approach to the house and added some Arts & Craft features... still not enough, it was becoming a little frustrating.

After that feedback, we decided to leave it with the Architect to come up with some bolder suggestions. The result was to be a 2-storey window providing a feature for the entrance hall and gallery landing. It's actually something we had wanted, but had avoided as we thought it would introduce excessive costs. Though as we had also decided on block & render for most of the build, the costs more or less balanced out.

Some other good news over the last couple of months, particularly given the current market conditions, is that we've sold our current house. Admittedly, there was some incentive for the agent - we agreed they'd get their full 1.5% commission if they achieved a sale within 4 weeks of initial marketing, otherwise a flat fee amounting to ~1%. No surprise, we'd sold by week 3! Though it was also probably helped by a full page spread in the local paper :-)

So, now we wait for up to 2-months to see if we get permission. It's probably going to be at least 3-months before the build actually starts, making it over a year since the purchase was agreed!