THE RENOVATION DIARY · 01
WE’VE OFFICIALLY MOVED OUT: 3.5 WEEKS UNTIL OUR RENO BEGINS
After living in our Victorian terrace for the past year, we’ve officially packed up and moved out.
We’re now living in Drew’s mum’s granny flat, about an hour away from the house. Is it the most convenient location? Not exactly. But after a year of living in a house that we’ve been measuring, documenting, designing and preparing to renovate, having somewhere clean and calm to come home to already feels like a very good decision.
Drew works full time and I run my own business, so we wanted to be able to separate the renovation from our everyday lives as much as possible. Somewhere we can cook dinner, have a clean bathroom, get some work done and generally not live amongst dust, trades and construction.
The plan is to spend most weekends at the house once construction begins, while keeping the granny flat as our relatively sane little base away from it all.
And with around three and a half weeks until we start on site, things are suddenly getting very real.
THE FINAL PUSH FOR OUR CONSTRUCTION CERTIFICATE
My main job this week is getting everything we currently have packaged up and across to our certifier.
I’ve just received the final documentation from our structural engineer this week, so I’m working through our drawing set to make sure all of the relevant structural information has been incorporated and checking everything against our Construction Certificate checklist.
There are still a few outstanding items to come through. We’re waiting on the dilapidation reports for the neighbouring properties, and we still need to finalise the required tree protection and arborist documentation.
So yes, we are cutting it a little fine.
Rather than waiting until every last document lands in my inbox, I’m sending our certifier the package we have now so he can start reviewing it. Then, hopefully, the remaining documents can be added as they come through without holding the whole process up.
Famous last words, perhaps.
WE’RE STARTING TO ACTUALLY ORDER THINGS
The other big shift this week is that we're moving out of the designing and specifying phase and into the slightly terrifying actually paying for everything phase.
Some tile samples have arrived at the house for me to check this weekend. I already have a sample of the burgundy tile we're using, so I'm comfortable going ahead with that one. There are two green options I want to see in person and double check before we place the tile orders.
We're also planning to order our windows through Stegbar this week and are getting pricing together for the skylights.
And then there's stone.
I've received one quote for stone from China and I'm waiting on a second so I can properly compare the two. I'll share more about this once we've actually made a decision because the process of sourcing materials directly from China probably deserves an entire post of its own.
THREE AND A HALF WEEKS TO GO
There is still quite a lot to organise before anyone actually starts pulling the house apart.
But after spending so long working on plans, approvals, engineering, selections and documentation, we're finally reaching the point where decisions are becoming orders and drawings are about to become an actual building site.
For now, my day today consists of construction drawings, certificates, checklists and probably far too many open tabs.
Not particularly glamorous, but this is the part of renovating that doesn't tend to make it onto Pinterest.
3.5 weeks to go!