Hats off, shoes shined

The night club from last week is in the system and will be randomly visited by the building inspector, in this coming week hopefully

This week we finished three projects which we were working on for the past several weeks, on the blog you will be able to see a picture of the one house (Barnstedt).

Ever visited the Heritage Western Cape offices?

I spent most of my time there this week, an old age home in a small town in the breede river valley named Touws river experienced a loss when a vintage building in the main street burnt down.

We were then hired to set the process in motion of returning the former glory of this building.
which turned out to be quite difficult...

The Cape Heritage offices are located in Greenmarket square next to the old townhouse, this building has 12 floors and hundreds of government employed pen-pushers who's job is to make sure old buildings are well protected in this province.

So to walk in there with a form that states a vintage building needs to be demolished due to fire damage was like telling a racist joke on stage at an ANC rally, needless to say it didn't go very well the first visit.

Just to clarify a vintage building is older than 60years while a national monument is over a 100, however both are protected equally fiercely. The process to follow is a basic completion of a form which contains all the sections which you could possibly apply for in one neat booklet, accompanying this will be:
-Engineers report
-Pictures of the damage(detailed)
-Contextual pictures(before the fire and after)-- fortunately for us google earth is quite slow in their image renewal database so according to google the building is still standing haha.
-Historical report on the building (previous ownerships agreements etc.)
-Letter of motivation
-Erf plan
-Title deed
-Previously Approved set of Drawings
-Demolition plan

It is quite a bundle of papers in total we handed in 34 pages including photos.

Then you convince them this building is unsafe and needs to be condemned and demolished this conversation continues for about 2hours...

This is followed by an angry outburst, screaming and depending on the person some rude hand signs or language, which i then regretted when i went back the next day....

All in all the papers were accepted now they will be reviewed by the WC council and this will determine the outcome of phase 1 in this project.

can't wait for this weekend its going to be awesome! crayfish festival in Lambertsbaai!

till next week

H.