At this point, we’re wondering how many more of these monthly posts I’ll be writing before we get to move in. The original schedule put completion in May, which quickly became unlikely. The next big date is the one year mark, in mid August, at which point the bank can start charging penalties. It’s been a stressful time, since so much is out of our hands. The contractor has drawn 90% of the construction money from the bank and they don’t get the final 10% until the house is officially complete, which is supposed to motivate them. We hope it works.
Based on every other project we’ve heard about, we expected some problems during the course of construction, buy yet the specific problems we’ve encountered are still somewhat surprising. I guess that’s life. The small size of the lot presented more complexity than anticipated. Utilities have been a headache and though we’re happy with out site and our house, the calculation in favor of building on a vacant lot versus a starting with a tear-down house is less clear than it once seemed.
Our efforts this month were directed towards nagging the contractor, re-homing large rocks, getting much better at making up electrical outlets and wrapping up a signature campaign with the neighbors. It took us two and half months to get notarized signatures from the owners of five house with which we’ll be sharing a sewer. Now the paperwork, which just says that we’ll evenly split future maintenance on the shared portion of the side sewer, is waiting on a meeting with the contractor so that we can apply for the next sewer permit and walk the precious signatures over to King County Records.
The big progress this month was on the siding and a few interior carpentry things. The second siding material is corrugated corten steel. It will rust to the color of the picture below on the right.
We’re really excited about this shelf that runs beside the staircase for a couple of levels.
Most of the tile work was done last month, but the accent tile installation is new and I didn’t include a picture of the entryway tile in last month’s update. They also installed some pocket doors and the rest of the kitchen cabinets.
The house was also broken in to over lunch time on a Saturday. A couple of guys were working and in the 45 minutes they were gone for lunch, someone who was creepily watching them, smashed open the door and stole some tools. They got staple guns, but didn’t take the larger saws.
All of the rocks from the rockery are finally removed and we’ve had a second wave of craigslist folks come to pick them up.
Based on every other project we’ve heard about, we expected some problems during the course of construction, buy yet the specific problems we’ve encountered are still somewhat surprising. I guess that’s life. The small size of the lot presented more complexity than anticipated. Utilities have been a headache and though we’re happy with out site and our house, the calculation in favor of building on a vacant lot versus a starting with a tear-down house is less clear than it once seemed.
Our efforts this month were directed towards nagging the contractor, re-homing large rocks, getting much better at making up electrical outlets and wrapping up a signature campaign with the neighbors. It took us two and half months to get notarized signatures from the owners of five house with which we’ll be sharing a sewer. Now the paperwork, which just says that we’ll evenly split future maintenance on the shared portion of the side sewer, is waiting on a meeting with the contractor so that we can apply for the next sewer permit and walk the precious signatures over to King County Records.
The big progress this month was on the siding and a few interior carpentry things. The second siding material is corrugated corten steel. It will rust to the color of the picture below on the right.
We’re really excited about this shelf that runs beside the staircase for a couple of levels.
Most of the tile work was done last month, but the accent tile installation is new and I didn’t include a picture of the entryway tile in last month’s update. They also installed some pocket doors and the rest of the kitchen cabinets.
The house was also broken in to over lunch time on a Saturday. A couple of guys were working and in the 45 minutes they were gone for lunch, someone who was creepily watching them, smashed open the door and stole some tools. They got staple guns, but didn’t take the larger saws.
All of the rocks from the rockery are finally removed and we’ve had a second wave of craigslist folks come to pick them up.
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