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Hi All
I've lurked here for a while but am diving in to ask the question now - go easy on me. We bought our first and only home (ex state house) in Auckland 12 years ago and set about improving it over time. What started out as a cash strapped but enthusiastic young couple just getting on with things (painting/decorating) has led to us doing things that fall outside of the limits of what we should have done on our own as our skills grew. For example we relined and expanded the bathroom, reconfigured rooms, removed freestanding chimney and moved locations of items in the kitchen (incl drains and cooker) without consent. All of this was done 10 years ago and was done to a high standard - we still enjoy the outcome of what we did. Our driver has never been financial - simply to build a nice place for our family. Any electrical work and plumbing work was done by a registered electrician or plumber. In addition our home is a state house and the plans with council are just two boxes - ie no internal walls are shown.
We're now in a position of wanting to put in a second bathroom, and we're well aware we should get consent for this (we've grown up a bit!) - and we'd like to get the paperwork. Our concern is, what are the implications on getting this based on the work we've done previously, are we opening up a massive can of worms. By the way - our intention is to stay in our home, not to sell it - but it's also to have a home that one day we could sell - things can always change.
Our options seem to be:
-stay on the same path - just build the bathroom and use it for our enjoyment, don't inform council, and do full disclosure if we sell one day.
-don't do any more work on the house - we're making an existing situation worse
-Go to council and say 'errr, sorry.....this is what we did 10 years ago, please give us a certificate of compliance.'
-Do something else that I hope you can help with!
We know this is an imperfect situation - any pragmatic advice please? (we don't need to go back and be told we should have got consent for everything - that moment has gone
)
Thanks.
I've lurked here for a while but am diving in to ask the question now - go easy on me. We bought our first and only home (ex state house) in Auckland 12 years ago and set about improving it over time. What started out as a cash strapped but enthusiastic young couple just getting on with things (painting/decorating) has led to us doing things that fall outside of the limits of what we should have done on our own as our skills grew. For example we relined and expanded the bathroom, reconfigured rooms, removed freestanding chimney and moved locations of items in the kitchen (incl drains and cooker) without consent. All of this was done 10 years ago and was done to a high standard - we still enjoy the outcome of what we did. Our driver has never been financial - simply to build a nice place for our family. Any electrical work and plumbing work was done by a registered electrician or plumber. In addition our home is a state house and the plans with council are just two boxes - ie no internal walls are shown.
We're now in a position of wanting to put in a second bathroom, and we're well aware we should get consent for this (we've grown up a bit!) - and we'd like to get the paperwork. Our concern is, what are the implications on getting this based on the work we've done previously, are we opening up a massive can of worms. By the way - our intention is to stay in our home, not to sell it - but it's also to have a home that one day we could sell - things can always change.
Our options seem to be:
-stay on the same path - just build the bathroom and use it for our enjoyment, don't inform council, and do full disclosure if we sell one day.
-don't do any more work on the house - we're making an existing situation worse
-Go to council and say 'errr, sorry.....this is what we did 10 years ago, please give us a certificate of compliance.'
-Do something else that I hope you can help with!
We know this is an imperfect situation - any pragmatic advice please? (we don't need to go back and be told we should have got consent for everything - that moment has gone
)Thanks.
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