A little Ado About Everything

Great news today — permit from city is in and okayed!  Loans are signed and closed! Builder is ready to break down any minute!

BUT….

the Minnehaha Watershed district and our environmental survey company are still figuring out something that was started in August 2012, and was assumed to be completed in June of this year.  They will hopefully get their stuff done sometime next week — and then starts the 15 BUSINESS day waiting period for comments from neighbors.  So looks like ground breaking 3rd week in January at best — so our Christmas card will become a Groundhog’s day card.  That fat furry rodent better get outta the way or the wrecking ball will obliterate more than his shadow!

Y’know that post I did a few months ago, “But Daddy I want it Now!”? Yeah, well.  

Originally we hoped to break ground in August.  But, thanks to the late spring and the ongoing “is it a wetland” story line, everything was pushed off, and we weren’t able to start drawing plans until late June.  That’s not a one-time deal — we met every few weeks all summer, and, by November, we were pretty much ready to start the next steps:  bids, permits and finalizing financing.  Slowly, but surely, the wheels started turning.  Or, perhaps a better metaphor would be, the bricks were being lain, one by one? 

At this point we were hoping for a December 1 ground breaking.  

Bids were easy.  Our wonderful builders could handle that, and they did fine.  

Financing was our job.  We did everything right — then were told it would take at least 2 weeks to get everything done, even though we had been completely pre-approved.  Really? And we had not one but two loans:  one using the equity on our current home, then a construction loan for the rest.  Tow loans, two appraisals, two closings, twice the paperwork and layers of bureaucracy.

But financing was the a piece of cake compared to the permit process.  Midway through the plan-drawing process, Mike the architect took the preliminary plans to the Gus the city guy, an old buddy, to get a quick opinion on how we were doing.  Gus said in the long run the plans would probably be approved, but it would take 4 weeks, because it would need to go through planning commission and then general council.  UNLESS we made a change — move the house back on the property.  The existing home doesn’t meet current setback laws, but we were allowed to use a point of it as a jumping off spot.  However, that would require scrutiny.  Screw that — we just moved the house back.  Bam.  Easy-peasy, right?

Not so fast, Mr Wrecking Ball.  Remember that ever-loving wetland issue we resolved in June? Evidently, as we went through the permit process, John the Builder discovered that someone (whom is up for nasty debate right now) didn’t re-submit the paperwork, so nothing official was on file.  So we needed to file again (another 2 week process).  Then, all neighbors within a certain area would be allowed 14 days to comment.  On what?  Hadn’t we all agreed on this before?  The neighbors just want us to get the building started already!

So now we are waiting.  Still. Again.  I am feeling very Grinchy these days.  Our Christmas card was supposed to be of us knocking the old house down.  At this rate, it will be a President’s day card!  Hope your holidays are filled with light and joy.  Right now, my stocking feels full of lumps of concrete.

Our architect just let us know he is ready to share our CAD drawings with us.  Meeting next week — two weeks early!  Maybe we can move up our ground-breaking date  to pre-Thanksgiving.  Something for which to be thankful!

So we purchased a lot we love, and now it was time to take the first baby steps towards making it our home. We weren’t in any hurry — we didn’t plan to break ground until the following late summer or early fall. But I thought I’d get one or two things crossed off our list, starting with a survey.  The home on the property was built in 1957, and there wasn’t a survey on file anywhere.  So I ordered one up, and crossed that off the list.  But hey, we all know projects beget projects, right?

We learned of two potential uh-ohs: the house did not meet current city setbacks, and we had a potential “wetland” on our property.

The first issue we could work with, because we had faith in our architect to create the house we wanted within the confines of the lot.  However, we couldn’t know what those confines were until we determined if we had a wetland, and if so, what were its boundaries.  So we had to have a wetland delieation study done.  So we did. Our guy came back and said “hey — good news!  No wetland!” Yeah, we thought — until the local government, in the form of the Minnehaha Watershed Districct, said “whoa, not so fast!  We think it is a wetland.” Argh…

Wait — I bet you are wondering: what the heck is a wetland?  According to the State of MN,there are various types of wetlands, ranging from seasonal puddle areas, to marshes and bogs.  They matter for a variety of reasons — the number one being that the water in them can effect all the water in our 10,000 lakes (actaully, I hear that number is closer to 13,000, but whatever.).  So our September study lead to their October response, which in turn led to a new report in November from our guys saying well, there might be a little water, but not that bad.  Well, November leads to December,and, let’s face it, that’s winter anywhere you live, and in Minnesota, there is no doubt: nothing grows here in December.  And the government folks said they’d love to resolve this, but nothing more could be done until the snow melted and the natural plants emerged (then they would look to see if any of the plant life was aquatic). Argh!!!!!

As my husband was steaming (seriously:  I think I saw steam shooting out of his ears like in old cartoons), I decided to play the calm, cool, collected, I-wanna-be-helpful-and-do-things-right-golly-gee-whillickers kinda gal and visit the Minnehaha folks myself.  I professed a desire to be educated, stressing that we did not want to do anything to hurt the environment, but was curious as to whether we would even be able to build on our lovely new lot (Rich was starting to think they’d find a spotted owl preserve somewhere next). The woman I spoke with was great!  She reassured me that no matter what they found, she was sure we’d be able to build whatever we wanted.  The problem, of course, was we couldn’t do any plans until we knew the boundaries of our little wetland.

So we waited for spring, like we do every year (as every Minnesotan does — except for the crazy people who love snow so much they’d like it year round.  You know who you are…).  But in case you didn’t pay attention, winter did not want to leave our lovely state this year.  Normally, we call March the the month of mud, as everything is thawing out.  But this year: we even had snow in MAY!!!! Seriously??? So my plan to be ahead of the game was quickly shelved by Mother Nature (probably shouldn’t have used that Parkay margarine).

Good news is, our little wetland was easily 50 feet away from where we wanted to build, which was more than two times the required buffer.  Now we could actually meet with our architect and builder, and get started on the real plans.  We had already spent countless hours drawing up potential floorplans on websites and software programs.  Of course, his plans and my plans didn’t quite jive.  It was the beginning of the want vs need discussions, and the my ideas are better than yours wars.  Thank goodness our architect called himself a part-time marriage counselor!

An uber-abbreviated post, just cuz I’m excited!  Think I finally chose all my kitchen appliances — wahoo!  (I know this is kinda skipping ahead from my last post, bt I promise I’ll fill in all the blanks eventually.  If I skip something, feel free to post on here and I will try to respond as best I can!)

Next up:  plumbing! Specifically, the architect is jonesing for my bathtub dimensions.  Wondering if tubs come in double-wide like trailers, for my ever expanding hips?

I suppose I should explain why we are building a house.  Lots of folks ask us, because our current house is just fine.  We bought it 16 years ago, when our son was not quite one year old.  My husband worried it was too big for us — and it was, but I knew our family would grow in number and stature, and I swore I never wanted to move again unless the company moved us.

Well….

I am eating those words now, and hearing his echo in the back of my brain, because the then 10 month old is now 16 years old, and his sister is 13.  Within five years we will be empty nesters, and the house will not only be too big but impractical.  It’s three stories (including the basement), and my knees hate it.  He swears his don’t mind, but my husnaband is a marathon runner, and it is inevitable that at some point one level living will look mighty fine to his legs as well.

So we have been looking, talking and thinking for years.  In the mean time, we have done tons of improvements:  quadrupled the size of our inefficient laundry room to be the cadillac of mudrooms; added a screened porch to enjoy the wonderful Minnesota summer evenings without being the main course for the mosquito, our state bird; added built-ins and a fireplace to our master to make the 6-month-long Minnesota winter bearable; and redid our whole basement, transforming it from kidland to a  teen and adult haven.   But there are some changes we want that we just can’t make in this house, like a luxurious spa bathroom, ginormous master closet, and that all-elusive first-floor master.

Last year, when property prices fell, we looked in earnest.  I interviewed architects and builders, and put together a team we love.  With the help of our trusty Realtor (hi Mike!), we looked at vacant lots, teardowns and fixer-uppers.  I wanted a decent piece of land, with enough space that I didn’t always have to close my curatins if i needed to walk down the hall not quite ready for public viewing.  But I didn’t want anything too big.  I am a social person (ok, I hear some of you giggling about that understatement), and I need to be in a neighborhood so I can hear other voices besides my own.

I also wanted to make sure we didn’t make too much of a location change.  We love our friends, neighbors and schools (and my husband likes his short commute), and have no need to leave them behind.  I literally took an old-fashioned compass (shades of HS geometry), and drew a circle on a map around our current home.  I wanted to create a search radius, so that we made sure we didn’t move so far from our frineds that they would not feel inclined to refuse last minute invites, or fear a late-night drive home.

Took a few months, but we found a place we thought would work.  It had only been on the market a day, and I dragged our builder and architect over to see what they thought.  They liked it, and the lot’s possibilities (it’s a teardwon — I’ll get back to it another time).  We bid, but so did someone else, but we bid better. So, last August, we purchased the starting point for our forever home.  And that was just the beginnning.