Post 3 - It's Official. We're building a house.

Dear Mum,

Approve

We are very very excited to tell you that our planning permission has officially been granted! We have been tracking it online and it just popped up to tell us that 'permission had been granted' last week. I couldn't believe it! We did not expect to get the planning permission so quickly and without any changes to our design, it makes the process an awful lot smoother and quicker now.

The words we were waiting for!

We then got a call from our architect to tell us that the next stage was what they call the 'working drawings'. It's from these that the house will be built. We are meeting with him next Tuesday, and once we got those sorted, we will apply for building permission. I am told it is a much more straightforward and quicker  process, so we'll see. Once that's done, next stop is foundations. And THAT is when it starts to get scarily real! When we meet on Tuesday, we will discuss our heating systems and any renewable energy systems that we are going to have, so I will update you more when I know what our options are.

In the meantime, we went out with David's brother and girlfriend to celebrate! We went to the Harbour Bar in Portrush - here are some photos...

David and Conor

All of us

Dave and me celebrating!

So, I'll be able to give you a more in depth post about things after our meeting on Tuesday. If we ever come down from cloud 9...

Til next time,

Lots of love

Cath x

Post 2 - An interesting phonecall from the architect..

Dear Mum,

Today I got a call from Joe Diamond, our architect for the house. After a few months of nothing really happening, he told me that the roads service had emailed him with details of layouts they would be happy with and these have been approved by the planning service, and...

..he expects to have the planning permission in his hand in the next 2-3 weeks! :D

We could not be more thrilled! We really didn't expect it to be passed on the first round with no changes to the design at all. The next step after this is meeting with Joe to discuss the spec of the house in terms of heating systems, materials, etc. Which is very exciting!

It is a strange feeling, because until now the house had been a dream. Quite literally. Nothing was real, except the gaping hole in our savings account where the planning permission fee used to be. Now that we are a (pretty huge) step closer, it all is starting to feel more real. Which makes me have fluttertummy.

This has been an excellent news week, in which I have received good news about our house and got a pretty big promotion at work. Tomorrow Dave and I fly to Glasgow to spend the weekend with my amazing uni friends. Life is pretty good right now! :)

I'll update you soon when we have more information and I'll send you some pics of what we've been up to.

Til next time,

Lots of love,

Cath x

Post 1 - picking the site, applying for planning permission and waiting on the answer...

Dear Mum,

I thought I would start this blog to let you know the progress as the house build comes along. Primarily, this blog will serve two purposes. One is very evident from the name. I want to keep you informed, along with any other family members or friends who have the slightest interest, of all the developments in our exciting new project. The second is that when we're old, grey and incurably forgetful, we will have a written record floating in cyberspace of, what will without doubt, be one of the most exciting times of our lives.

For those who have stumbled onto this blog, either by design or accident, and don't know our background story, I should maybe start there. (Dear mum, you can skip this bit.)

My name is Cathy. I am 27 years old and I live in Ringsend. It is located in County Derry in Northern Ireland. I live there with my fiancé, David, and our cat and dog, Boo and Tumble. David and I met in Loreto College, Coleraine, where we both attended school. We got together when I was 18 and David was 17, and it is hard to believe that we will soon be together for ten years. We got engaged on Christmas morning in 2012, on a seasonal visit to my parents in Toronto (where they emigrated in 2009), and it was the happiest day of my life. We are getting married in May 2014, in the chapel at our school where it all began, Loreto. We recently decided to build a house in Ringsend, where David's family live. And now you are caught up, you can resume reading my open letter.

So, the first major event in this process was meeting Joe Diamond our architect for the first time. We talked about options for the site we might choose and we gave him rough (very rough) sketches of what kind of house we were looking for. He was talking us through the PPS 21 policy, for building in the countryside, which is what our site will be passed/refused on. Basically, because the land is a working farm, we are entitled to build a house. But we can't just plonk it down anywhere, no matter how much begging we do. We are limited to fields directly beside existing farm buildings, so we keep the buildings on the farm visually linked and in a cluster. So, with this in mind, we went to find an ideal site.

David's family home is the registered address for the farm, so we have an option of three fields here. There is a field directly beside the house and to the left, one behind the existing workshop in the main yard and a third option across the lane (again beside the main road).

Our chosen site

However, we ideally want to build further from the road, and the only option we have in this case is right at the very top of Dave's line, half a mile away from the road. At the very top of the lane, you would barely know the road was even there. The views are amazing to boot. However, there are two potential problems with this. Firstly, getting services up to that site will be extremely expensive. There are approximately 20,000 reasons why we shouldn't even try! Secondly, we might not actually get permission to build there as the registered address is Dave's family home - which would mean we would have to choose one of the sites closer to the road. We tink we will opt in the initial application for the site further away, and if we get refused we are perfectly happy to build down closer to the road.

After much discussion and problems with one of the fields mentioned earlier, we chose the field across the lane from Dave's parents' house, right by the road. We also had our plans drawn up and we have to say we are extremely pleased with them!

Front, back and side views

Floor plans

The plans were submitted for planning permission on July 18th, and we have been tracking the progress online. This week it moved from 'consultations have been issued' to 'under consideration of the development group'. Which would suggest some movement! Very exciting indeed. Ideally, we are hoping this mild weather will continue this autumn and winter, and all being well with our planning application, we might be able to get our foundations started this year. :)

So you are now all caught up on our house build, a journey that will be as long as it will be enjoyable I am sure. I plan to use this to keep you updated with stories, photos, decisions, tears, laughs and everything else that comes with building your dream home!

Til next time,

Lots of Love

Cath x