Category: House

The kids were thrilled to see frost on the grass in the front yard this morning. You would have thought it was snow by the way they were acting. It is very rare that you see any frost on the ground. I’ll sure be glad when it starts to warm back up. It’s a battle getting the kids not to wear their shorts. Ya, I know, we are very spoiled weather wise out here.

The plans for our remodel/addition were dropped off with the city today. They said it will take 2-3 weeks to get back to us. Hopefully they won’t require a bunch of changes to the plans. Once they approve the plans, we will be able to start the demo phase.

The final plans for our bonus room remodel project are done! The contractor has copies of them and has passed them out to his sub-contractors for firm bids. The contractor has a number of them over today to see the house and get a first look at the plans. The plans now have to go to “plan check” with the city, which can take 4-6 weeks. Looks like demo won’t start till after the first of the year.

I spoke with Brian today. He said the plans are almost finished. He expects the word to be done by next Friday (10/13) at which point, the plans will go to the city for approval. Then we will be able to start demo.

There have been lots of big spiders around lately. Today one of them built a huge web in the backyard play equipment. It spans from the top of the fort down to the slide. I was going to go wash it off, but now my neighborhood has no water. I sure hope that gets turned back on soon!

We met with the planner this afternoon to go over the details of our remodel project before he starts work on the final plans. He also had to knock some holes in the ceiling of the garage to see which direction and what size the beams are there. He said he sould have the plans done in around 2 weeks and then hand them off for the structural analysis, which should also take around 2 weeks. He thinks it can all get done in 4 weeks, but said to plan on it being 4-6 weeks. He will also go to the city and get the approval for the permits once the plans are complete. In the meantime, we will be very busy clearing out the garage and the bonus room.

We finally got an estimate for the cost of our bonus room remodel. The cost came in around what we had expected. This week we have to figure out how we want to finance it. There are several options available and we need to decide which one will work out best for us in the end. Once we sort out this out, we will call Bryan and get the final plans started. Since that takes 6-8 weeks to finish, we are looking at November for actual construction work to start.

I asked Ken how long it will take to get the job done once demo starts and he told me around 4 months. We also found out that we will have to remove everything in the garage in addition to clearing out the bonus room. Looks like we will have to rent some storage for the duration of the work. That means we have a lot of work to get done before the demo can start.

We had a meeting today with Brain (the planner) and Ken (the contractor). Brian finished up the preliminary plans and presented them to us and the contractor. We will end up with 2 new bedrooms, a office, a bathroom and a study alcove. The next step is for Ken to come up with a ballpark estimate of the building costs. We will have to meet with him to discuss which parts of the project we are going to do ourselves and then it will take him one to two weeks to get back to us with the estimate. After that, Brian will do the final plans and get the structural analysis done. He said that will take 4-6 weeks to complete. That means we are look at October before any work at all will start.

The guy who is doing the plans for our bonus room remodel came by today to measure the house. He was her for around 1 1/2 hours and measured the entire house – inside and out. He said it will take 1-2 weeks to get the preliminary plans done. At that point, we will be able to give them to the contractor to work up an estimate for the materials and labor.

This is a picture of the huge sunflower plant in our backyard. I put Talia and Falyn in front of it so you could tell how big it is. We didn’t plant this, it just started growing on it’s own a few months ago. The seed for it probably came from sunflowers we had planted last year. I can’t believe how huge it is! You can see a slideshow of some more pictures of the sunflower (along with some other flowers from my yard) here.