One of the big issues that has hung over our heads over the last decade is the fact that we never completely finished the planning process for the cottage we built in the back garden, here at our house. For years we have known that one day we are going to have to get the plans approved and (possibly) pay back any extra rates that we should have been paying. There’s never been an inspector come round and do the final inspection, yet the cottage has been occupied since 2002! In January 2017, we got a guy in to look at doing the plans. He quoted a whopping R23 000 to get them through Council. Mike decided to put it on hold.
Last week Mike went to the Council to get the plans for the Echo Road property. While he was there, he also ordered our house plans so he could work on the cottage plans. Early this week I got an email to say the plans were ready. Today we trundled through to City of Cape Town offices in Plumstead to get them scanned.
We got there at 12-15 and expected a few hours of sitting in queues. We walked in and there was no one in the queue! The guy at the counter had our plans right there and he started taking them all out so we could see them. There were two pages for the Echo Road house and four for ours.
As he opened up our house plans, Mike looked at me – ‘these are the cottage plans?’ “What?” How did that happen? There amidst our house plans were signed off plans for Granny’s cottage we had built in 2002. I knew plans had been done, but they hadn’t been finished, so I thought, and Mike had definitely not submitted them to Council. How in the world did they get here? We were euphoric! After all those years of thinking we had unfinished business, suddenly, we didn’t. We were ecstatic!
We danced out of there to take them to Plan B to have them scanned.
As the guy in Plan B scanned them in for us, we pondered how the cottage plans had got submitted and signed off. As Mike thought back over the years, he figured that the builder who had built the cottage for us must have submitted them. Life was very busy for us at the time and we just thought it hadn’t been done, especially as we know we’ve never had a building inspector come round. Perhaps he did and we weren’t there.
We felt we had been given a gift! What a blessing.
#765 of my 1000 thanks – the cottage plans!
That was so unexpected and we were thrilled. We were also excited to get the original plans for the Echo Road property. They were passed on 11th April 1949. The house was built for Mr. Thomas Cook.
We hope to meet with our the lady who will do our plans on Monday.
Isaiah 26:4
Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
Amen.
These are the days.
Keep the smile going.
God bless you.
In His Grip,
Helga xx 🙂
Gym:
- 30km bike ride – 1 hour 16 minutes.