The King of Swamp Castle

Yes, I finally closed escrow yesterday, so now I'm the proud owner of huge... tracts of land on a picturesque hillside in the seaside town of Pacifica. Well, maybe not huge tracts exactly, more like seven thousand six hundred and fifty square feet of land, but still... it's another small step along the road to my Holy Grail.

And it's not the only small step - on Monday I expect to finally resubmit my amended plans to the City of Pacifica. Give them another two weeks or so for final review, and then with any luck I will be in possession of a building permit for my Minnie House...

The Song Remains The Same

Another week gone by, and I'm still waiting to resubmit my permit application to the city. I nearly have all of the amended sheets and all of the responses to the city's comments, but honestly, with two architects, one of whom is in Missouri, and two structural engineers, one of whom is in Indiana, not to mention a geotechnical engineer in Burlingame and a civil engineer in San Francisco, it's just like herding cats. Perhaps I'll be ready to re-file on Monday, if I can avoid getting scratched by any of the cats.

And in other news, I'm still trying to get quotes/budgets from general contractors, and get an acceptable quote for the foundations. I'm much closer to moving ahead on both fronts, but I still don't have anyone or anything under contract. The foundation quotes range from $93k to over $150k, and I have to choose between shotcrete, cast in place and Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs). Right now I'm leaning heavily towards the latter, which seems like the best combination of price/performance, and since the forms are insulated you save time and money later on as well.

Yesterday I signed all of the paperwork for the lot and wired the balance to the title company, so some time in the next two days I should officially close escrow and become the new owner of the beautiful little piece of land in Pacifica where I will build my dream house! That's some progress right there!

I have also been working hard at the lot, cutting back shrubbery, clearing the building area, and pulling up weeds and stinging nettles galore. Keeps me busy, and makes me feel like I'm getting somewhere. I even found a rose bush on the site last weekend that I hadn't noticed before...

Creepy crawly

Moving along, very slowly, like a creepy crawly. Still getting quotes for the foundations, and at last I may actually have a couple of options. I think in the end I'll have to choose between cast in place from one contractor, CMU above the basement slab from another, and sprayed shotcrete from a third. Hard to figure out what to do, especially without a GC to help.

I'm working on that, though, and would like to have a GC in place within the next week or so.

Also still assembling the amended plans for resubmission to the city. I wanted to resubmit this week, but t doesn't look like I'll get everything together in time, so perhaps next Tuesday?

And while everything else is constantly shifting forward in time, the same can be said for closing escrow, which was due to happen tomorrow, but is now awaiting a legal document from the seller, who lives in Colorado and is quite technologically challenged - no cell phone, no fax machine. Whaaa? It's 2009!!!

So everything is manana, manana, manana. Trying not to get frustrated, just keep moving the ball down field the hard way, a few yards at time, without turning it over! Every now and then it would be nice to just air one out towards the end zone, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.

While all this is going on, I managed to get a great Craigslist deal on a couple of new Panasonic bathroom fans ($100.00 for the pair!), and I'm also spending many hours at the lot cutting down branches and shrubs, pulling up roots, and generally clearing the site. I can't believe how gorgeous it is almost every time I go down there! Roll on the day this is all finished and I can move to my new neighborhood!

Here's a lovely new movie to play with: this one has my own art work and photos on the walls, and the actual view, or something close to it, from the living room and bedroom. It also show the cypress tree through the side windows in the living room, and West Ham on the TV!

I'm a little closer to something, although I'm not sure what, exactly. I'm in discussion with several concrete contractors about foundations (that I can actually pay for!), and with several GCs about handling the whole project. I'm also close to closing escrow for the land but that is dependent upon getting the OK from the city to build the house.

I spoke to the city yesterday, and although they are not finished with my application yet - they still need to get comments from the engineering dept - they did agree to fax me the comments so far. And there are a lot of them, around 45, so I'll need to get together with all of the relevant parties (engineer and architects) to so that we can resubmit. Then it should only take another week or two to get the permits.

And then I can start... IF I have a contractor in place, and IF I have an acceptable bid for the foundations.

In the meantime, I actually bought my kitchen yesterday, because IKEA has a 20% sale on kitchens, and it ends this weekend. So I bought and paid for all of the kitchen cabinets and appliances. The cabinets are per Rocio's spec, high-gloss white Abstrakt panels on white Akurum cabinets. For those of you keeping score at home, the appliances consist of the Energisk B18 fridge/freezer, the Eldig cooktop, the Nutid dishwasher, and the Hovskar single lever kitchen faucet . If anyone wants to know why IKEA, well - $5K for the lot, including shipping. That's why!

Walkabout

Well now. Here's a very cool 3D walk through of The Minnie House, which I made using Live Interior 3D Pro for the Mac. Most of the furniture is mine, but I can't quite figure out how to import my own art work.

Now, if I can just find a way to actually build it...

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.