building for our future

You know your addition project has really started when...the porta-potty shows up!



Yes, today finally marked the ground breaking (well...more like ground relocation... ) for our addition project. While marking things out last week gave some indication of the magnitude of our project, the sheer size of our half-hole (hopefully a whole hole by the end of tomorrow ) really brings things home.



And then there was...the first scoop.



I stuck around for the morning since I could watch the proceedings while doing some calls with my headset in place (and the mute on!), but had to head out to a face-to-face meeting in the afternoon. When I returned home late in the day, we had the aforementioned half-hole and some safety fence in place. IMHO, it may be close in getting the rest of the soil moved out tomorrow...there is still a lot of material to remove, even though this is only for a crawl space. But the slight incline in elevation makes it quite deep, nonetheless.



So...our weed pit has now graduated to a mud hole. (assuming some rain will happen sometime) That's progress!

Tuesday, 24 July 1007 marked what I will call the “official” start of our construction phase when Michael and some of his crew arrived to mark out for the initial excavation as well as for One-Call. (locating service for underground utilities...required when you dig) Alison and I had the same initial reaction to the lines on the ground...“It’s big!”...and it is.



Next Monday morning, bright and early, a large and noisy backhoe will be here bright and early to scoop out quite a bit of soil to make way for the initial foundation work. That will be our official groundbreaking I guess!

Now, this project isn’t unlike any other project, and we have already come up on a few little things, largely having to do with the plans and certain dimensions being, well...off. This alone is a good reason to have a great general contractor--one who can deal with job-site reality quickly and accurately. An example of that was this afternoon when Michael and Jim (his right-hand-man) were doing a little exploratory surgery to locate the exact floor elevation so that the second level of the addition would tie into the loft off our existing great room. Yes, we put holes in the wall. But we now know precisely where we need to end up and that means that the exact top of the foundation can be calculated. Michael likes that to be within 1/8"...and preferably better. I already liked this guy and that just reinforces my feeling that we made the correct choice for our general contractor.

One small thing that Michael cannot fix is the fact that there appears to be some asbestos siding under the “lovely” blue vinyl siding on the center portion of the house. Not a good thing...financially. There are special rules for disposal and we do need it off to accommodate the new James Hardie cement board siding we will be using. Ching...ching...again...

So...these posts should start to come more frequently as the project develops. Stop back often or subscribe. It should be interesting!

What a difference a day makes. This morning (it's Saturday already in Shanghai where I am traveling on business) I received a "GOOD NEWS" email from Michael. He doesn't know how he did it, but we now have our building permit. He's picking it up on Monday morning. My suspicion is that this normally very level headed man who is our contractor got out the howitzers and fired back, hitting the right targets and bringing this rediculous process to an end. Well, and end as far as getting the piece of paper. We'll still have to get through inspections.

So hopefully the "Weed Pit", as Alison referred to that area outside of our home where the addition will go, will soon transition to a "mud pit" and then on to a two-story structure that fulfills our family needs. And in the mean time, if anyone has a spare winning Power-Ball ticket, feel free to send it over...we now move into serious money throwing!

Oh, and I was wrong about Friday the 13th in my previous post. While it was "my" Friday when I learned of the second turn-down, it was still Thursday at home. Friday the 13th actually turned out to be a lucky day after all.

If this were a movie script, it might be funny given it's Friday the 13th as I write this, but it's not funny in the least. I learned this morning that the township has once again denied our building permit application and added another long list of demands that my contractor labels as outragious. This after over a month of waiting for them to actually look at things.I haven't seen that list yet, but Michael is generally pretty accurate when he speaks of such things. And unfortunately, due to business travel, I can't move to do anything about this for a few days.

What I find totally unbelievable and totally unacceptable is that we attended to each and every demand they made upon first review...at a cost of nearly $10,000 added to our project "budget". (It's hard to call it a budget anymore as it isn't a stable number in the least and not because we are adding on things out of whims) Outside of the profanity bouncing around in my brain, one question that I keep coming back to is, "Why didn't they ask for whatever it is they want now upon the original review?"

While a major NYSE-listed builder is constructing almost million dollar crap-built houses around the corner, we're getting hassled on an 1850 sq ft addtion that is well-designed and will be built to the highest standards by a contractor with impecable references. And that's going to be part of the theme when Michael and I personally appear at the township office next week to "discuss" the issue in detail.

Our original intention was to have this addition built and ready for occupancy by the 2007 winter holiday season. Scratch that. It's not going to happen at this point. And I have to wonder if perhaps we made a bad decision in our stay vs. sell evaluation a couple years ago. And I hate questioning that...