As you’ll all know architects and architect meetings are the bane of my live and have the ability to get under my skin as i feel it’s a dark art that is often quite closed and the information flow in the beginning just isn’t helpful to the process, but today i feel enlightened once again. We met with the new architect we are looking to engage with and she was a ray of light. There was no (perceived) BS, no agreeing to everything we said and there were talks of time scales, project management and planning pitfalls this lady was clued in and immediately put me at ease as to her ability to help us achieve our goal. So today, here and now I will call ceasefire and draw a line in the proverbial sand with my bitterness towards this skilled profession.

Hopefully very shortly we’ll be sharing some of the final proposed plans and within 4 months we are hoping to have a yes or a no to them. However we have been warned that at the moment in the recession the planning authority seem to be generating work for themselves as its very quiet and people are having plans returned for further clarification, it seems even “Eurocrats” are having to justify their jobs.. That said Charlotte is very clued in and i’m feeling more relaxed about the whole thing already..

In another stroke of good fortune today while driving back from Never we drove past a house local to us that has EXACTLY the same barn door windows and dormer seatings as we have had in our plans… We were advised previously that these are not in keeping with the area and we’d have trouble, however we can now prove 100% that they are. It must have seemed strange us stopping outside a house to photograph it, but don’t worry we did knock to ask the owners about it but alas they weren’t in, we’ll be going back.

Below are a few images just to give you an idea of what we’d like our barn opening and dormer windows to look like.

Today was a good day for the renovation… Time for a Leffe to celebrate i think