Okay.  So the sets are all back in the City for the Building and Engineering Departments. Now the wait for final approval begins…  I have a lot of pent up anxiety as this house gets closer to being permitted and more of a reality.  This Shoe Box has been my home for over a decade.  My husband and I brought both of our children into this world and this is the house where they came home to.  Now as I imagine tearing this place down, I feel sad. I’ve dreamt up every detail of every inch of our new house.  I can see the rooms in my head. Yet, why do I feel this way?  Part of it is the unknown I suppose.  Where will we live during construction?  How will I pack up my house for the duration of the build? Can we actually pull this off on time and within budget?  Will we survive a personal build or will we kill each other?

I feel like it’s our time.  It’s our turn to build the house of our dreams.  It’ll be small but ours.  I want it all so bad but I can’t shake the remorse of what we must lose to get there. Memories were made here over the years within these flimsy walls.  The imperfections seem even more glaringly obvious than usual from the awkward layout to the termite damage to the achingly tight quarters, but this is and has been our retreat.  I can’t help but feel the nostalgia creep in and settle in my heart. When we get that approval notice and the permit to build, will I cry tears of joy or tears of sorrow?  Probably both.  But here we go.  Closer to the next chapter of our lives.  A new house.  A new outlook on life?  We will build this place up eventually.

These past few weeks have been full of devastation here in California.  Several fires have ravaged entire communities and torn them apart.  There are desperate families out there still searching for answers with no roof over their heads and I feel deeply guilty about this too.  My first world problems seem stupid and out of context, but they are real to me in this moment.  They are real for my family.  The long awaited approval and tear-down is another post, but today, I am feeling strangely sad about the coming fate of what lies ahead.  May this home stand sturdy and welcoming for a few months more as we wait patiently and decide on the timing and next steps of our future.

-K

 

 

So we have a palm tree in front of our house.  It lives in the area that is City owned. Visualize: front of house, yard, sidewalk, patch of grass where palm tree is, curb, then street.  There are palm trees all up and down our block and they are great.  They stand tall, proud and stately, reminding us that we live close to the beach.  Some of the palm trees on our street have been removed by the City because of whatever reason City’s remove their trees once in a while…  We have no issue with the palm trees in general: except for when the wind blows really hard and the gigantic dead fronds (that the City should be maintaining) fall off onto our cars and then scatter into the street with their prickly thorns all over the place while leaving unsightly scratch marks on the roofs and sides of our vehicles… that part is slightly annoying, but it doesn’t happen often.  Also, there was that time when a particularly large frond blew onto our roof and then scraped down onto our driveway along with a bunch of roof shingles.  That was also annoying. But it only happened once.

The palm in front of our house is valued at $6,080.00.  How do I know this?  Well, I’ll tell you.  We just got back our Engineering Department corrections and there was a problem. The problem was with the palm tree.  The one we do not own.  The City has requested that we remove their palm tree and replace it with a new tree when we build the new house.  Why? Because we can not pour the new proposed driveway without getting too close to the drip-line of their palm tree.  What is a drip-line you ask?  It’s the area where the roots grow underground and there must be a 5′-0″ clear diameter area around the tree measured from the center of the trunk and our plans show that our new driveway impedes on this 5′-0″ diameter area.  (so much eye rolling going on around here that my eyeballs hurt from the strain)

The City has sent us a request form.  On this form there are three questions.

1. Are you willing to pay for cost of Removal?
2. Are you willing to pay Loss of Tree Value?
3. Are you wiling to pay for Replacement Tree and Labor?

OK.  I get #1 and #3.  Yes, the tree does not technically belong to us, but we get that since we are making the changes to the driveway that okay, we will agree to pay for removal and replacement of the tree and the labor associated.  But come again with #2???  Will you be willing to PAY THE LOSS OF TREE VALUE?  What The…?  So correct me if I’m wrong, but after all is said and done, the city would like us to essentially spend $6K on the removal and replacement and loss of value of the palm tree which we did not even plant let alone own?  Hells-to-the-NO.

How does this make sense?  Can someone please explain this to me?

Annoyed and to be honest, kind of baffled.

-K

I’m sitting here pondering over my cement board siding post and laughing because I just convinced my husband to scrap the cement board and go with a stone product that looks like wood.  Faux wood called Vintage Ranch which looks pretty good but with practically no maintenance. That is a great combo in my opinion.

It all started with the poured in place concrete garage.  The bid came back at close to $13K and the husband and I both had individual mini freak-outs.  Why the hell does board formed concrete cost so damn much?

The answer: Labor.

So do we go stucco down there?  (not at all the look I want…)  So I dug around and found Eldorado Stone.  This company has a concrete looking stone siding called Longitude 24 and Zen 24 which are both modular and pretty sleek.  As I was flipping through the catalogue, I saw it.  Faux wood stone siding for the fraction of the cost per square foot compared to the cement board (which is still pretty cheap), but when you think about the labor it takes to cut the cement board material down to size, it gets up there…  The husband and I were both sold.  Almost instantaneously.  So goodbye painted cement board and board formed concrete!  Hello modular stone siding!

This house keeps getting more and more interesting as we go along!  It’s all still in our dreams, but the numbers are coming together!

Feeling very accomplished today!

-K