building for our future

So where do you want me to start? It’s been awhile since I’ve updated this BLOG...my apologies. Life is that way sometimes!


So, let’s start with the good. We chose our contractor, Michael Lohman, for a number of reasons. His baseline budget for the project was detailed and after rationalizing with the other contenders (so that we were comparing numbers for identical scope of work), about $20K lower. He spent a lot of time considering everything, including making four site visits that included conversation, questions and generally useful interaction. He even brought two of his important sub-contractors (plumbing and HVAC) out to get their council in order to provide as accurate a cost estimate as possible. He’s also a really nice guy...and that’s very important to me since I will likely be a major pain in the butt due to my intense interest in everything about construction and home improvement.

The bad is that the budgetary cost for the project is a “bit” more than we originally anticipated. Well...more than a bit. But when we look at how things cost out, reducing the footprint, etc., will have little effect on the bottom line cost. We did make some changes to our specifications for the roof in the latest budget, but in order to accommodate HVAC needs and adding in our flooring choice (to match the rest of the existing house), we only knocked off about $15K from the original bid-spec budget. Now, as part of this project, we are also re-siding and re-roofing the existing structure to unify our home, so in the scope of things we are in-line with local square foot figures.

The ugly is that our existing, nearly new (2000) on-site septic system is not installed with the necessary flow rate to match a 5 bedroom home. (Septic requirements are based on bedrooms, not bathrooms) This adds an unexpected uplift to the outflow of money for the project. Fortunately, the county health department has indicated that remediation will likely “only” require the addition of one or at most two additional pressure dose trenches to the existing leaching area...and that is going to keep the cost down. We may need to replace the pipe in the existing three trenches, but until the design firm calculated things out, we will not know for sure. But the tank is more than large enough and the same holds true for the pump tank. And in the scope of things, remediation of the septic system is far, far less money than the cost of moving...
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I’ve been spending a lot of my free time working on the landscaping along and around the new driveway. Outside of the more convenient and safe access, one of the major reasons we installed the new drive is to more fully enjoy our almost 4 acre property, so some areas that have been unfortunately neglected can no longer stay in the background. Fortunately, all of the heavy work is getting done with our handy-dandy Kubota tractor. Having a loader and a backhoe available is really wonderful...especially for yanking very large boulders around. ’Can’t lift most of them with our small machine, but I can still move them to where I want them! Slowly, of course....