The proposal, and the acceptance

So we went out and met with our CSC at the Warwick Farm office this afternoon and progressed some towards are new home goal.  The CSC was pretty good, we went over the site first and she explained the issues with our site, that being a drop from the front right corner of the agrage to the back left corner of the house of around 1.6m.  What this actually means to us, well and increase in the site costs (about double) and a step down between the laundry and kitchen of around 2-3 steps.

Apparently we're getting 12 drop edge beams out the back, which I understand means we build up the back of the slab to around 12 times the standard thickness, or something like that.  We also end up with a patio from the laundry and one from the back of the house, which we will probably remove and add our own timber deck to later.  The Alfresco out the side will look good I think measuring around 3500 x 7500 or there abouts.

The positives to this is that we'll have normal height ceilings in the front, and high ceilings out the back, which will look pretty good.  The house is going to be set back around 7.5 metres giving us enough room at the front for a turn in and a bigger backyard than we thought, at around 15.5m wide and 20m deep we're pretty happy with it.

So we paid our initial design fee and signed the authority to prepare plans and specifications today and now have around 1 month to determine the outside colours and confirm either timber or tiles for the downstair flooring.  We got a small break in the cost with a free upgrade to double power points throughout, carpets in the bedrooms, 2 TV points and 2 Phone points as well as a $6000 discount on the Ducted A/C, I know it doesn't sound much but every little bit helps in the end I guess.

The only thing that is unknown at the moment, do we need a full DA or have we made it through as a complying development, or please let it be a complying development....