For those who know us it will come as no surprise that as a couple we have different levels of tolerance for financial risk. We generally run our household very conservatively and stay safely in the comfort zone of all household members. We consulted with a financial advisor before taking on this project and he remarked that he rarely worked with anyone who lived so far below their means. We always knew a project like this would be risky and…
After waiting 10 weeks for permits, the foundation has gone amazingly fast. It turns out building is a bit slower this year than last, so our foundation crew is “twelve basements behind” where they were this time last year. They called JULIE (the agency that marks all your underground power and water lines) the same day the permit was approved and were out staking the site within 2 business days. (To make that all work I ended up dashing out…
They say one of the hardest things about building a house (even if its all done by contractors) is the endless stream of decisions you have to make. I started my day yesterday at 7 AM with 3 emails from our framing contractor, which I answered from the exercise bike. Should we stick with 24″ OC (on-center) framing over the recommendation of our framer, an old-school builder who would prefer 16″? And if the lumber quality from the lower bid…
OK, so its been ten weeks from the time we first submitted for permit until we finally got approved this week. What gives? First of all, let me say before I go into any other details, that Inspector K has been uniformly friendly, responsive, and endlessly patient in working through all of this with me. I really couldn’t ask for much better. But that said, this friendly patient man is enforcing some really tight rules. I have heard from many…
Demolition is very exciting and it certainly looks like visible progress. But you may be wondering what else we’ve been up to for the last month and what comes next. Well, as we said in our last few posts, we finished salvaging anything worth keeping and we filed mountains of paperwork for permitting. Then things got a bit stalled (which I’ll get into in a moment) and so in the meantime we did some finishing work on the new garage….
I must say, when we started in on all this, mountains of paperwork were not a part of our dream. I finally got all the documents for submitting the permit (I think). Its 25 documents in all, and still I’m sure that some of it will be inadequate or missing. Multiple floor plan views, framing diagrams, wall cross-sections and other visuals, combined with pages of written specifications and spreadsheet-style schedules of materials. Lot diagrams showing proposed construction, grading and drainage,…
Last weekend we moved into our rental house, and we’ve been here just a week now. Experiencing this place has served as a clear reminder of why we are doing this build in the first place. Mind you, this is a nice rental property. Its a good sized ranch home in a nice neighborhood of varied houses. But there are subtle and not-so-subtle annoyances to be found. The furnace is absurdly loud. It sounds like someone is idling an old…
A key part of our overall logistics for this project was to build the new garage in advance so we could use it as storage and staging space during the main house demolition and new construction. As we were a little slow on the draw getting it started last summer and a very wet October put the foundation on hold, the whole garage build has been elapsing in slow-mo. Amy, my brother Neil and I put the roof on back…
…but planning is everything.” –Dwight Eisenhower It probably won’t surprise you to know that when building a house you need house plans. I posted some pretty ones up here a little while back. But the ones that tradesmen use aren’t nearly so pretty. In fact they are usually cluttered and nearly indecipherable. Looking at examples online is enough to make your eyes cross in double-knots. One of the most thorough, readable (and high resolution) versions I could find was from…
Serving as your own General Contractor (or GC, in the common parlance) can save you a fair bit of money and it lets you build things just the way you want them. But it also involves doing all the work that a GC would usually do for you, like contacting subcontractors to get bids, answering all their questions, and following up on them to be sure you get what you need. This is the part I have been least looking…