I want to replace the window in the room, which will become the lounge room.  The current window size is one of those small sash windows which don’t open.

The quote from my friendly builder is about $3,000 and another $1,000 to install.  Ouch!

The Love of My Life took me to Macca’s Demolitions in Echuca  (located in north Victoria) where they have a myriad of old things and in particular windows.  I had planned to buy 1 window and ended up buying 3.  Have I mentioned that I am a terrific shopper (terrific is my words not probably what The L0ve of My Life would say).

Two of the windows that I have bought are huge and I now want to replace the window in the guest bedroom and the other one is a perfect size window for the bathroom, which currently has a poxy little windows made up of loovers and glazed glass (poxy is a technical term!)

The price was $900 for the lot.  What a bargain. They are all aluminum and have fly screens.

Now the problem will be how do I get them to Seymour.  This is over 100kms and as I have mentioned they are huge.

Meanwhile I have received letter from my surveyor this week with a letter from the Council saying that they had received my planning application – it seems that  Council will undertake a preliminary assessment of my application and will ask for more information should they need it.  Council is required to make a decision about my application within 60 days of receiving all of the information.  This is now 3 months since I first put in my application.  I had been told that it would only take 3-4 months for a planning permit to be granted and we are now up to month 3!!!!!

It is now 3 weeks since I had received the first letter from the surveyor – just as I was starting to get toey about it a letter arrived.  It had a copy of the letter that had been sent to Council with the proposed plan of the block.  This is the version where the car port is removed.

As the car entrance to my block is located on the other block (I will call it lot 2 from now on)  I will need to have an entrance onto Lot 1.  My plan is to have this from the front which is a main thoroughfare.

I have received a letter from the surveyor with an aerial photo of the house and block, they have included 2 versions of how the subdivision could look. 

There is a car port behind the house and the two versions include keeping the car port in its original position or moving it.  If I keep the first option the second block will be very small.  I have decided to move the car port and this will make both blocks similar in size.

I have to pay $364 to the Shire for the Planning application fee.

Subdivision costs to date $1794

I was looking at purchasing a house which could be subdivided. 

There are quite a lot of houses that fit this category in Seymour Victoria.  After looking at a number of houses and vacant land – I found this one in High Street.  It is a 100 year old house and has quite a chequered history.  It is situated on a corner and has a land size of 1200 square meters.  Quite enough to subdivide.  Across the road is a similar block and the owner told me that he was going to build 2 x two bedroom units.  This convinced me that I would be able to subdivide.

Having never done this before I contacted a surveyor who told me that it would cost about $1000 to get the beginning of the permit which would be given by the Council, the Council staff told me it would take approximately 3 – 4 months.  The surveyor told me to expect about six months. I am planning about 12 months before I would be in a position to commence the construction of my units.

 Once permission was granted I would need to contact all of the services such as electricity, gas and sewerage – meet their criteria which would have costs associated with it depending on what needed to be done.  My plan is to live in the house until the land was subdivided and 2 units had been built.  From there I would bull doze the house and construct more units.