Light at the End of the Tunnel

The stress of building a house is incredible and as we are coming down to the wire, we are feeling the full brunt of it. Somehow, you have to put it all in perspective and know that someday, somehow, our lives will be back to normal again. It helps to have a 18 month old, whose life is so simple and innocent. When things are getting us down, he usually does something like a little dance, or gorilla-chest thumping that can bring us back to a happier place. Tonight, he was walking around the backyard and stopping to sniff every blooming flower, including the blooming weeds. It made me think about how life is too short to not stop to smell the flowers. Call it life lessons from a toddler.

Today, we shifted our move day one week and will now be making the big move on July 2. Although we were pushing for next week, we don’t want to move into a construction zone. No doubt there will still be incomplete work, but the extra week gives everyone a bit more time- including giving us more time to pack all those boxes. I’m longing for the day where everything I owned and needed could fit into the back of a Ford Escort (that was my freshman year in college). Now, apparently we have enough stuff that the 2 Men and a Truck that we hired to move us will actually need to be 6 Men and 2 Trucks. How did this happen to us?

Quite a bit of work happening this week……The exterior and interior railings at the balconies were installed yesterday, making our house instantly a whole lot safer. I was always in constant fear of having a kid fall off one of the openings. We used a cable rail system for its simplicity and minimal esthetic.

The exterior painting is adding a bit of color……

Kevin has become a regular at IKEA with about 5 trips so far. He has put together a number of shelves and closet systems and has a number of war stories....

May Day Update

It’s May 1 and the house has been under construction for about 3 ½ months. In some ways, the time has gone very fast. In other ways, it seems like we’ve been burning the midnight oil on this project forever. The house is now barely recognizable as the 1940’s Cape Cod it started out as and it’s less than 2 months until this project will be complete.

Here’s a summary of our amazing rocket-fast schedule:
End of Oct 07: First saw house
Nov- Dec: Design and drawings
Jan: Began construction
Mid June: Expected completion
Total- 8 months*

*This kind of aggressive schedule is not recommended if you need more than 5 or 6 hours of sleep at night.
The metal roofing was installed today, along with the gray corrugated siding on the east side.

All the sheet rocking, taping, mudding, sanding and priming happened last week. This week the doors were hung, including this pocket door at the shared bathroom.


The locally sourced and milled FSC red oak flooring is being installed in the kitchen. The floor will have to be stained and sealed and made ready for kitchen cabinets to be installed next Tuesday.

We still have a sand pit in the dining/living room, but not for long. The under slab ductwork was installed yesterday. Rigid insulation, 6 mil polyurethane sheeting and the piping for in-floor heating will be installed tomorrow and then the concrete slab will be poured and polished next week.
The subfloor was installed in the kids' bedrooms and will be ready for the FLOR carpet installation. The wood trim was installed at the windows and base.

The downside of this aggressive schedule (and contractors that work at blazing speed) is that we did not detail the window trim. We were surprised to find it all installed on Tuesday. The contractors did a great quality job- but with the window stool and apron, it wasn't exactly the clean look we envisioned. In hind sight, we should have had them install trim at one window for approval first. We may have ended up with the same solution, as it does look similar to the existing trim. In the end, we can't lose too much sleep over this one as it will be painted out white to match the white walls. Que sera, sera.

Not-so Patiently Waiting

The real estate, mortgage lending and construction loan business are such a mystery to me. Every time we have gone to buy a house, it has seemed we are the first people ever to be buying a house with a mortgage- like we are inventing and testing the process which is changing as we go along and is excruciatingly painful.

We were supposed to close on our house today and it didn’t happen. It’s frustrating having absolutely no control. I believe our mortgage broker and realtor are doing everything they can to make it happen, but the forces are against them.

Lesson #1: We originally wrote our purchase agreement to close 4 weeks from the date of the offer. We wanted to start construction before the ground froze and the sellers agreed. In the process of finding the best loan for our situation, we quickly realized that we needed about 8 weeks. We had to agree to pay the sellers a per diem amount for every day beyond the original close day we suggested. Next time (although there won’t be a next time), we would just use the standard 8 weeks and then work to move it up if possible.

Lesson #2: The closing cost will always go up.



On a good note, the drawings were submitted to the city for permit review. There were a few calls and comments, but nothing too major yet. They were curious why the roof was structured for such a heavy load. I think they thought we were going to be hosting parties up there. It’s actually structured for an addition 29 lbs per square foot for the green roof.

Blowin' in the Wind

With the last week’s temperature and this weekend’s snowfall, we are definitely feeling like winter is here. We were hoping to beat the cold and get into the ground prior to this, but no such luck. This fall, when we were contemplating purchasing the house, I thought a winter start would be too difficult, if not impossible. We quickly found out that we had options.

We still have not closed on the house, but have an agreement with the owners to put insulating blankets on the ground to prevent it from freezing. These are specially designed blankets for this use. You can even get blankets that plug in and warm the ground to allow for a winter construction start. Straw or hay is also an option, but it has to be secured so that it doesn’t all end up in the neighbor’s yards. (Great way to start off in a neighborhood!)

The blankets were put in place last weekend, but when Kevin was at the house the other day, the blankets were all out of place, blown by the wind. He was able to put them back in place and our contractor came out to secure them down- but we’re not sure if the ground was exposed for too long and how deep the ground may have frozen. We’ll find out when they’re ready to excavate if the electric thawing blankets will be needed.

Every project has things that don’t go ideally and for us, the schedule definitely fits into that category. We put in an offer on the house after we were confident that we could come up with a workable solution (although we didn’t know exactly what that solution would be). Because we wanted to do a construction loan for the purchasing of the property and the construction, we had about 1 month to develop a design and do the construction documents. Although we would have liked to spend months debating design decisions, we just can’t afford that luxury on our schedule. It’s a good thing we’ve been able to agree on decisions (most of them anyway)- which is a rarity for 2 architects!