The Loan (Ar)Ranger Rides Again!

Hi Ho Silver! Looks like we're back in the saddle, with finance on the way. I've been working with a new lender, and funds should be available to start construction in a few weeks.

I expect to hear back from the City of Pacifica either this week or next, with comments about our application, and after we resubmit it should only take one or two more weeks before we get the permits. If the loan funds in the same time frame, I hope that we can break ground on June 1st.

In the meantime, I've been cleaning up the site, which includes digging up loads of stinging nettles - fun!

Baby Steps...

Finally received the remaining stamped plans from the office of Rocio Romero today - finally! at last! - and that completed everything I need for the building permit application. So as of 9.45am this morning, I have now applied for my permits! I expect to receive comments in 3/4 weeks, and permits a week or two after we respond to the comments.

Of course, I still don't have money to build the house. After Bank of Marin bailed on me (having worked on the loan for seven months!), I spoke to Chris, a former Kickboxing student of mine who is a senior mortgage officer at Chase. Since they are now my bank after their acquisition of Washington Mutual, I thought I might have an inside track on a loan. Yesterday, Chris called me with good news and bad news. The good news is, I have been pre-approved for a construction to permanent loan. Wohoo. The bad news is, the entire construction loan department was closed down, and everyone in it laid off, yesterday morning. D'oh. He might have a mortgage broker that I can work with, but that guy just left for Hawaii...

Spoke to Ed the Contractor yesterday, and he also had bad news. He now has a quote for the foundations from the guy he usually works with. Well, we've allocated $45,000 in the budget (this is to include site clearing, excavation and grading, foundation/basement, retaining walls, driveway and other flatwork, etc). But the quote was $77,000! Ouch! That hurts!

And in other news, Rocio Romero gave birth to twins last week. From the little I know, everyone's doing well.

Happy Colors!

Last week I bought this beautiful, happy painting from local artist Emily Dysinger. One day it will hang in the kitchen of the Minnie House.

A Hiccup

Well, rather more than a hiccup, actually. Yesterday, I finally heard from the Bank of Marin (with whom I have been working since last September) that my construction loan application had been rejected. Their major fear is that, as I am self employed, I may not be able to get a mortgage at the end of the construction process. Unfortunately, nothing I do or so will convince them otherwise, despite my stellar credit rating and despite the fact that I am financing 50% of the entire project myself. Crap.

So as far as financing is concerned, I'm right back where I started, at square one. Now I'm working with a loan consultant at Chase (which is both my business and personal bank) who used to be one of my Kickboxing students. Not sure if that will help, but I'm sure it can't hurt.

I still intend to push ahead with the building permit application. I was hoping to submit the application this morning, but I still haven't received my stamped construction plans from Rocio Romero. In fact, I got a strange phone call from my project manager early yesterday morning, informing me that he couldn't FedEx the plans to me until I had paid all of the associated fees, including the engineers fees. That's more than a little odd and unpleasant, considering that THEY HAVEN'T EVEN BILLED ME YET! Oh well, this is just one more obstacle for me to overcome.

No worries. It's a beautiful sunny spring day in San Francisco, and I have faith that everything will work out OK.

Status Update

We're almost ready to submit our application for the building permit. I was hoping to that next Thursday would be the big day, but we won't have the grading plan by then. If we need that in order to submit, we'll have to wait a few more days. Still, we now have the site plan, the structural calcs, the structural and foundation plans, the soils report, the topographic survey, the letter from PG&E, the permit application form and a big fat check to the City of Pacifica. I don't have my hands on the Title 24 report yet, but we should get that in a couple of days. So we're THIS close!

The rear of the house has changed a little (again!) since my last update. Current thinking is that we'll have one 10' wide x 7' high slider, and one 10' wide x 7' high fixed window, which means we can do all of the basement in concrete, with a 3.5" x 3.5" steel post between the two windows. There won't be any windows for the garage, but maybe I'll upgrade to the Clopay Avante garage door, which will have cool looking opaque windows.

I splashed out this week on a Fagor stainless steel oven that had been on display in a kitchen showroom that is going out of business (a bargain at $450!), and on an LG combo washer/dryer (the same one that I currently have at home - it works great!) from Craigslist. I'm looking for bargains every day, and there are plenty to be had at the moment.

One big obstacle to this entire project is, you know, the funding! I have been talking to the bank for several months, but as of this moment I still don't have approval for my construction loan. I'm running on faith alone, figuring that I'll plunge ahead with the permit process, and then if the bank says no I'll just have to spend more time looking around for someone else to lend me $350,000! I'm thinking that may take a while, though...

Oh, I am also buying a painting for the house. It's a lovely colorful abstract, painted by a local artist named Emily Dysinger. I think it will look stunning on the kitchen wall.

Spring Has Sprung!

Another beautiful Sunday in Pacifica, and there's plenty of color on my lot. This is going to be such a gorgeous place to live!

Random Notes

The picture above is something like how I want the house to look... white walls, as per Rocio's design, and a chocolate-y hardwood floor (at the moment it's a toss-up between Ty Pennington Sambuca Bamboo from lumberliquidators.com, or Yanchi Ebony Stained Strand Bamboo from buildirect.com. The latter is slightly nicer, but it's also more expensive).

In other news:

1. Received my letter from PG&E, granting us permission to build underneath their easement. Thanks, PG&E!

2. Met with Randy the Engineer and Ed the GC, and I think we have agreed to ditch the Simpson hangers and go with a regular floor system, with the joists sitting on the foundation wall.

3. It now looks like the rear basement wall will be wood above and below the windows and the patio door, and we'll run the 3.5" x 3.5" steel posts all the way down back of the house. We'll have to delete them from the LV kit, and get them made locally. The advantages of doing this are twofold: first, we get the exact same gap between the windows downstairs as we do upstairs, which will look good; and secondly, it leaves open the possibility of knocking out the wood and replacing the windows with patio doors some time in the future.

4. The rear deck will be cantilevered out using steel beams. I like the sound of that, although we'll have to get them galvanized or somehow treated so that they don't rust.

5. Hope to be able to file for the building permit next Tuesday, March 17th.

Amazing Late Breaking News!

I received an email this evening from our man at PG&E, and he said, and I quote, "Our electric department is alright with the encroachment into the easement as long as CPUC, California Public Utility Commission clearance requirements are maintained." Looks like we're almost there!!! More news soon!!!

Bits and Pieces

Yeah, here are the latest bits and pieces...

1. Still no news from PG&E - and in other news, Glen Miller is still missing (OK, if you're too young to know what that means, look it up on Wikipedia!).

2. However, we've decided that, if PG&E says no, we're going to proceed with an application to the Pacifica Planning Dept for a variance to the rear setback. This will cost at least $4000.00 and take around three months, but after talking to them we're comfortable that we at least have a chance of getting the variance. And if at the end of the day the Planning Commission says no, we can at least move ahead on Plan B knowing that we did everything we could to get the preferred site plan.

3. No need to wait, then -we're going to move ahead and try to get our plans to the Building Dept in the next couple of weeks. They told us they'll do the plan check on our preferred site plan even without permission from PG&E, and will issue comments. They just won't issue the building permits without a letter from PG&E.

4. Ed's plan is to pre-mix the concrete for the basement using a pigment from Davis Colors, which sounds like a good idea. I'm considering either a darkish grey, or perhaps grey with a little green in it, as in the rendition below.

5. Thinking seriously about having another sliding door for the basement, opening onto a deck, along with three other transom windows. Waiting for a quote from 1st Windows for that.

6. Still looking for a roofing system, although Ed got a quote from Standard Roofing for just over $6K for an EPDM roof. I need a little information about that - does it include everything, such as insulation boards? If it does, we could be in business! Haven't heard back from Armstrong Roofing about the sprayed foam roof. Some people just don't seem to want my business. Very strange.

7. For the A/V system, I'm going with an Onkyo TX-SR806 receiver, which I just bought from Amazon (got a good deal on an open box), and in-wall and in-ceiling speakers from The Speaker Company. They are very cheap, but supposedly very good, and they have a 30 day money back guarantee with return shipping paid, so I'll set them up at home and see if they sound good. The distributed audio will be taken care of by the Sonos Multi-Room Music System, which I have in my apartment and at work - it's absolutely awesome.

8. Ed's looking at the cost of Rocio's sub-floor system, which includes load of Simpson Hangers. Ed can't figure out why she designed it with everything hanging off the foundations, and wants to redesign it to eliminate the hangers - which will probably save us thousands of dollars. More on this later...

9. So far, it looks like water and sewage will be relatively easy, which is a big relief. Not cheap, but fairly easy (for example, the Water Dept charges a $2100.00 deposit towards installation, and a $5441.00 'Transmission and Storage Fee' for the hookup!). The fire hydrant is on our side of the street so we won't have to dig trenches across the road, and the sewer line is at the bottom of the lot, down the hill, giving us a straight shot right into the lateral line. All good. The wild card, again, is PG&E. If we can just hook up to the overhead lines for electric we'll be in good shape, but if they make us go underground... well... not so good!

10. Playlist: it's all U2, No Line On The Horizon. Takes a while to get into it, but then it starts to sound really good.

11. Over and out...

The Architect Sketch

A bad week as far as my relationship with my architect is concerned. Let's just say that we don't see eye to eye on best billing practices, nor on customer service. Contact between us will be kept to a minimum, which is a shame, but I have a budget to take care of, a belief that a client should be respected, and a limited tolerance for arrogance.

As far as the build is concerned: I still haven't heard anything from PG&E, despite an email and a phone call. I'm also still trying to select a structural engineer. A local guy quoted $11,000 for all the structural, which is frankly way beyond my budget; so I'm waiting to hear back from Pyramid1 in Indiana, who are the engineers of record on my LV Home. My hope is that they can wet stamp their calcs, and also provide the foundation plan, for a reasonable sum. It turns out that I also need to find a civil engineer to do a grading plan, which was news to me. Presumably that's part of the cost of building on a hillside in the Bay Area!

Ben the Architect is moving along nicely with the basement and garage plans, and the deck plan, and he also has to draw up plans for retaining walls.

So we're a little behind schedule, but not too much.

Today was another spectacular Northern California Sunday, with temperatures in the 70s (uh oh, we're going to pay for this one day...!). I was lucky enough to meet lots of my future neighbors, and we all ate delicious food under beautiful clear blue skies. Thanks, neighbors!

For today's photo, I got a brand new view of my lot, from the tree house at the very top of neighbor Randy's Cypress tree, just north of my lovely little spot. I also discovered that on a clear day, not only will I be able to see all the way past Bolinas to Point Reyes from the house - I'll also be able to see Mount Tam!!!