building for our future

Well, the time has finally come...the contract is signed, the financing is in place and the architect is working on the final plans necessary to pursue the permits. The application to the soil conservation people should be on its way in a couple days (that one takes six weeks for review) and the septic testing commenced a couple weeks ago with the deep holes and perk is this week.

Not long ago, I met with Michael (the GC) and John (HVAC contractor) to discuss how to locate a chase between the attic and the crawl space. At that time, it appeared that we might have to sacrifice some of the wet bar area off the multi-purpose room. On Friday, Michael and Jim (the architect) sat down with me for a final review and we determined that we could avoid that by extending a wall slightly at the end of the wet bar, bringing the chase up through the master bed room closet in an unobtrusive way. Aside from some window location discussion, things were good to go and I gave Jim the go-ahead to finalize the plans. I also handed Michael the signed contract, making this an official project. With any luck at all, we may be able to “break ground” by February, but it’s largely a matter of how smoothly things go with the soil conservation people and then the township.

In preparation, I already took down the old wood deck and (unfortunately) sacrificed the large flowering tree that was smack in the middle of the area where the addition will live. The cost to move the tree was prohibitive, but I will try to move the smaller dogwood. A temporary stone walkway is laid to the back door from the driveway. It was about two day’s work, using our Kubota sub-compact tractor with the backhoe as a big, orange crowbar. It was almost fun, outside of the manual labor of carefully piling the nail-ridden boards into the dumpster for maximum volume. (I could have used a slightly larger container, but didn't miscalculate by much)

I’ve also started on the cabinetry and have the vanity for the guest bathroom nearly complete...there will be many more projects to do in that respect!