My Kingdom for a finial.

A few days ago I attended a mediation session with the council to discuss my proposed house plans and to find a way to get their approval to include a walkway from the balcony to the bungalow and to allow us to gable the roof. I met with our Town Planner the day before and we went through our case. As soon as he told me the main objector, the architect from no 5, wasn't going to be there my optimism soared. Without his vitriolic input we only had to fight the council and as far as I was concerned they didn't have a case.
So armed with a photographic representation of my street and photos of several houses in the immediate area that supported our case, my town planner and I met with the VCAT mediator, the council rep. and the remaining objector - the woman who lives behind me and is worried about her privacy.
I had no problems offering to do anything to appease my neighbour's privacy concerns - I was willing to raise the screen height of the walkway, make it totally opaque and even move the walkway to the south border so that the bungalow itself blocked any view. The council wouldn't allow the walkway to be moved, said maximum screen height is 1.7m and it has to be 25% transparent. My neighbour changed sides and was my friend again. They did say we should narrow the walkway by 20cm and that satisfied them, we were now allowed to keep the walkway.
The second item up for contention was the gabling of the roof. The council had denied us this and insisted we have a hipped roof to "keep with the original roof". Well, bollocks to them, the Victorian era was all about mixing it up, mashing styles together and making it as ornate as possible. I was ready to fight. But then the council girl pulled out her copies of the plans with the gabled roof, lowered, already drawn on. So she had arrived ready to give in. It was almost disappointing, until she started going on about the finials - the pointy bits on the end of the gables, saying how they were an Edwardian feature and not suitable for a Victorian house. Seriously? Is that all you're worried about? You've delayed my plans for over seven months, costing me $1500 and forcing my family to live in a half demolished house, with no bathroom and no safe space for the dogs - because of a finial?? A 30cm piece of pointy wood? I gritted my teeth and said quite sweetly "that's fine, I'll delete those from the plans". I asked about fretwork - no, she said, that was not acceptable. Fine, plain it is.
Then she starts on about the screen on the walkway/balcony, she doesn't like the picket style we had suggested, she wants something more modern. You mean, like something Edwardian??!! I silently shouted, but I bit my tongue and just agreed to whatever she suggested. It will have wysteria growing all over it anyway.
The third problem was that they want us to include windows along the second storey south wall. We don't want windows, we want nice, thick insulation and internally we want a built-in wardrobe and many, many bookcases. "But the expanse of weather board is too much!" She exclaimed, "we need to break it up somehow to reduce the visual bulk!" I offered that we could paint a nice mural on the wall, but for some reason she didn't think I was serious. Eventually I agreed to put a small, highlight window in opposite the upstairs bathroom. So that was it, we had reached an agreement.
So now the planning permit will be reissued, then we apply for a building permit, a hoarding permit so we can block the lane way and the building company needs to buy in supplies and we can start. So maybe the end of January? About the same time as we are moving in. We should have been moving into a house that was almost finished not two rooms, a kitchen and a big hole. I worry about how we will live, we have no idea what to do with the dogs and it's all too hard to comprehend. But at least it will start now.
And the council cannot control what colours we paint, I'm thinking those gables will look nice fire engine red with a spider web painted on. Read more!