The Journal - Ryan and Leah's New House

During our lunch break, Jackie and I drove around town, gawking at the beautiful architecture and happily taking pictures with the studio's super-fast and sharp 3.2 mega-pixel Sony Cyber-shot (MUCH better than my slow little HP). Here was my favorite:

Ryan and I have changed our minds about having a flat roof on the portico. This curved roof will better run-off rain than a flat roof (can I make "run-off" a verb? where's Mrs. Scott?) and make our house not so completely square and symmetrical. I guess SOME curve isn't so bad. Maybe we should have listened to Rob when he first suggested this portico to us and we emphatically shook our heads no. Oops ;)

I like the house color, though...it's very subdued and overall the house looked very warm and inviting right away, which I sometimes forget is an important end goal in my quest for that "period house." But would this house be too plain without shutters?

This house we loved for the colors. So fun! Jackie owns a bungalow, so these colors were especially inspirational for her. I have been tossing around this kind of sage green for a while now, but again, without shutters, where's the contrast? At least some color is better than no color.

P.S. Ryan's parents bought their new house today!! So exciting. We're going down tomorrow night with Lori and Jay for the weekend to help them get settled in. I think they're very happy to be homeless no longer. Congrats!

3:11 p.m. — June 17, 2004
Things are moving along...slowly. We have our FINAL final set of house plans (I mean it this time!) back from Rob, who has been oh-so-patient with our ever-changing minds, and I am hoping to submit them to the township first thing on Monday. Also slated for early next week is a meeting with the contractor we expect to be using for the addition. Here's hoping his estimate doesn't significantly increase at the second meeting, as happened with the LAST contractor we thought we might use.

The really GOOD news we received this week came from an unlikely source: asbestos.

Our house is sided in large asbestos shingles, which are not overtly harmful unless they are broken up and the particles are airborne. We've discovered that nailing into this siding usually splits the shingles into large chunks...still not COMPLETELY harmful, but we would rather not have a whole house covered in broken asbestos chunks hiding beneath new vinyl siding. But none of the contractors we spoke with was willing to remove the shingles or dispose of them.

So what's the good news? We've discovered that our nearest landfill (maybe an hour away) will gladly accept asbestos shingles as garbage, so long as it is still in chunks and not in tiny bits. And get this — it will only cost us $75 per TON. So when deciding whether to spend thousands of dollars for an asbestos abatement company to remove and haul away our 800 square feet of siding, or to carefully remove and dispose of it ourselves, guess which option won out?

HEPA masks and $1 disposable rain ponchos, here we come!

4:27 p.m. — June 18, 2004
Some people buy one house and spend all their time and energy and money turning it into the home of their dreams. Other people, like my brother, buy MULTIPLE houses, rent them out after making them livable, and take three-week trips to Europe on the mortgage money they're NOT paying.

Sometimes I feel like we're going about this all wrong...

(Seth, center, chilling with our relatives Else and Helmut in wonderful Mundelsheim.)

12:45 p.m. — June 25, 2004

Monday — Submitted plans to the township Zoning Dept; were told it would take 5-10 days for approval or rejection
Tuesday — Called Rob (whom we are not officially allowed to mention to the township for some silly reason...something about homeowners taking full responsibility for unsealed plans whether or not they hired a professional to do all the calculations and make sure the house wouldn't collapse) and asked him to tweak just a few more things (really...does it ever stop when you think about the house night and day?); told him we didn't need the changes until early or middle of next week
Thursday — Received call from Zoning Dept saying we were approved and ready to submit to the Bldg Dept ALREADY; panic because we are not prepared but don't want to waste any time...when does a govt office ever get anything done EARLIER than estimated?

Here are things we still need to get done BEFORE we can submit our plans to the Bldg Dept for permits and final approval:
1. Get final estimate and signature from Contractor
2. Get final estimate and signature from Plumber
3. Get final estimate and signature from Electrician
4. Get final estimate and signature from Mason
5. Fill out environmental form, saying how many trees we need to cut down for the addition (um, which would be none now)
6. Fill out the Bldg Dept form in its entirety; figure out what the heck it's asking
7. Get final final FINAL plans back from Rob

Funny how when it rains, it pours. And once we've submitted to the Bldg Dept (hopefully next week), we'll be in another dry spell...unless they take LESS than their estimated 4 to 8 weeks to approve or deny us. Somehow, I don't foresee that happening.

Once the Bldg Dept is done, we can have Frank from church (the mason) start his work, and everything else should follow from there. Being the General Contractors on this whole thing is a lot of work, which we were expecting, and a heck of a lot of coordination and communication (a.k.a. badgering), which I suspect we'll excel at by the time we're done, though we're not so excited about it now.

The asbestos news keeps getting better. I was finally able to get a hold of a 2nd landfill, and not only are they much much CLOSER to our house, they charge LESS per ton than the first landfill. Definitely enjoyed that news. And then at the dad's day BBQ we hosted this past weekend, my ever-clever dad informed us that only the sides and rear of our house are covered in asbestos shingles; the shingles on the front of the house are wood. So now the contractor can do whatever is easiest for him when siding the front of the house...cover over the shingles, tear them off and chuck them out, it doesn't matter.

And we tried so hard to avoid buying a house with a façade =)

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