Permits and Finalising the Contract

One of the most time consuming and frustrating building tasks is applying for permits. Mainly because once submitted, its no longer within your control and turnaround depends on the workload, red tape or mood of the relevant governing body. It took till mid April to obtain all the required permits to enable construction to start.

An important permit included the one to remove our problem trees. We made good use of the mountain of mulch that resulted in the felling even if it took us about a month to relocate.

It was only when we saw our vacant block for the first time without the trees and mulch that it really hit us that our home will be a reality. A definite milestone.

April was also the month of finalising contracts with Metricon. There's final and then there's variations after the final. The flexibility is great but the paperwork isn't. In the end, you do need a good document filing system along with a great memory to ensure everything you requested is accounted for. The process certainly puts the responsibility squarely on the owner to remember and approve every item. Not so unreasonable really but when the process takes 6 mths to finalise, it amounts to a quite a task.

By early May, our contract was finally finalised. We signed away endless pages of documents and just hoped our lack of enthusiasm by this stage wasn't going to come back and bite us in the butt.