It looks very convincing that the house will be demolished tomorrow morning between 8 and 9. At least that’s what they told us. We plan to be there (they said it would come down in about an hour) to Facebook Live it for those who are not local. So tune in there. I guess they will start with the garage and then push the house into the basement. There’s no real turning back now. We’ll probably have a post up…
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,…
Over the last week we’ve been clearing out the last of the items from the old house (really glad we made the garage a generous 2 car instead of a minimum 2 car) and getting the permit paperwork ready. This is all very not-glamorous stuff here. But it’s still moving us in the right direction. All the utilities were turned off as of today and once the demolition permit is paid for we are A-GO for a wrecking ball. Actually,…
Yes, it’s been over a month in the new rental house. Yes, we’re still moving stuff out of the old house. My mom said pretty aptly that we have a lot of stuff for people who think they are minimalists. We also lost two weekends to an out-of-town funeral and a year-in-the-making girls weekend. So that has slowed our roll. But we are making progress clearing out the house. Today we moved the last of the tools and the massive…
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…
One of the decisions we made to start the whole house project was to build the garage first. There were a couple of reasons why we wanted to tackle just a small part of building before going whole-hog on the house. It allowed us to test out some of the contractors we’d need for the house. It was as much a test for them as it was for us being the GC’s for this project. We had to make different…
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…
Last week we posted some of our larger goals in building the house and said we’d post our house plans along with some explanation of them this week. The plans are in the post below, so now we’re back with some discussion of how we tried to design the house to meet those goals. Goal 1: To build a well-appointed home custom designed for the way we live One of our primary design goals was to follow the trend set…