AUGUST 2013 – BACK TO WORK

So after a long period of permit revision battles, and all summer waiting for the framer to have an available slot we are back to framing.

We now have the living room, dining room section of the roof approved, so the house will look more like the final goal.  We are not approved to remove the last bit of the old section of the cabin, so for now, we are just building the new roof over the old cabin, weird I know, but that is the way the game is played.

2 jackhamers and an excavator

Tags

building a home, hometime, maple forest cottage

So yesterday, I went out to the work site and found they had swapped one of  the excavators for another jack hammer.  They are really pushing to finish the excavation by Saturday.  October 1st is the county deadline for dirt work in the watershed area.

Conveyor belts

Tags

hometime, maple forest

So we are renting a total of 7 conveyor belts to haul dirt up the hill and off site.  I could not get a picture of the entire line because of the lighting.

Really digging now

Tags

hometime, maple forest, maple forest 2011

Work is going well, the contractor was even out on Saturday.

Digging the foundation

We were able to get a small excavator on site, but almost immediately hit a big rock ledge.  Now we have two small excavators on site – one with jack hammer.

Here we go!

We have permits! We received our permits on Friday afternoon 8/19.  I went straight to the chackteau and started demoing!  My husband and children joined in.  Can you tell we had a little pent-up aggression toward this building?

 

Institutionalized incompetence

Today was my deadline for the county to have my permits ready.  As it turns out the county really doesn’t care about my personal deadlines.  I’ve recently heard a term somewhere that seems to fit the situation here, that is “institutionalized incompetence”. I submitted my application for permits on April 08 2010. It is now Aug 18, 2011 that’s a processing time so far of 1.3 years.

Once again I’ve been delayed by someone’s absence.  The person who was supposed to sign off on our last detail left on vacation.  Who goes on vacation mid-week?  Even more stunning was the number of details left undone that were uncovered by our probing.  Not that they don’t have what they need, they just have no follow through.  They ask me for plans, studies, and other info, but apparently there is no thought of processing that stuff as it is turned in.  I would just never get away with that kind of nonsense.  The disappointment is huge, and the tension is mounting.

Under Protest

For those of you who are looking for Pictures of the construction of our version of the Maple Forest Cottage, they should be staring soon, I look forward to sharing progress with you.

Today I learned a new term, “Paid Under Protest”  A google search of this phrase seems to indicate that its most common use is in relationship to property taxes.  However my truly knowledgeable Real Estate Attorney suggested that I use it to protest the permit charges that I expect to be bludgeoned with as the time to receive my building permit approaches.  Our county bills permit charges “by the hour”, which seems fair, the more complicated a project, the more your eventual permit will cost.  However, from what I have heard I can expect to be billed for any number of hours without any explanation of how those hours were used.  I feel this leaves a lot of room for inaccuracy.

Under most circumstances I would never recommend that a disputable bill be paid before the disputed charge is resolved.   In this case we are quickly approaching an 8 month building freeze which is imposed every year from October 1 to June 1, with the last day to actually begin construction of Sep 15th.  If I try to dispute charges now I will most likely miss the opportunity to start construction this year.

My Real Estate Attorney advised me to do a couple of things to make sure that I end up paying only reasonable charges.  One of these things is to create a letter of charges “paid under protest” to deliver at the time of payment, I am very curious to see how this all turns out.

While I’m on the subject I just want to say how valuable it is to me having such a well-informed Real Estate Attorney.  I used to think that such a specialist was only for large corporations and millionaires.  Really the cost of lawyer services turns out to be quite reasonable and a great service to someone who does not deal with the bureaucracy and brain-deadness of the people who process building applications.  I was referred to this attorney when I first started this project 3 years ago.  I have called upon him to advise me on building codes, a boundary line adjustment, water rights, preparation and execution of an appeal , general protection of my property rights, and letters of dispute.  Yes the hourly rate of around 300.00 p/h is a lot, but the charges are billed to me in portions of an hour, say he spends 15 minutes with me on the phone or responding to an email, he only bills for 15 minutes or 75.00.  If his assistant delivers documents for me or types a letter, I am billed at a lessor rate for her services.  I don’t think that my project could have been fully successful with out his advice and support.

MY OBSESSION WITH WATER

One of the many issues we have had to deal with is water.  If you don’t have a water certificate or space to drill a well you could be held up indefinitely.  I personally have spent oodles of time thinking about water and how to get a share for our shack.  It seems odd to me to be so obsessed with something that our area (Western WA) has so much of.

As it turns out, the State does not own the rain.  So I was able to solve my dilemma by putting in a cistern.  This was a last-minute design change when our request to grandfather our current lake water system was denied.  This option was not available to me when I started planning my project, but is really fortunate that it did become available because it will eventually allow me to demolish the rest of the original shack and finish building the Maple Forest Cottage – the livingroom dinning wing.  I was limited to a “remodle” without a water rite.

And we wait….

If there is one thing that anyone that wants to build a home these days needs to know, it is that waiting is what you spend most of your time doing.

You wait for septic and well testing.  You wait for survey, environmental, and engineering reports.  Then design, design and revise designs to meet all restrictions and limitations.  After that you start the permit process and the waiting really begins, here’s a list of some of the reasons (excuses) my permit process has been held up:

1. 2 month leave for maternity leave – ok but this was a dude!

2. 1 week – emergency appendix surgery

3.  1 week – sick days for common cold

4.  1 day each month county-wide furlough

5. 1 day each month federal holidays

6.  3 months lost to dispute needing to go before our hearing examiner.  Then when we got before the hearing examiner, the county xlkserklja12!’s admited that they made a mistake and I was really correct all along.

These are just the excuses I got in person on occasion of personal visits to the permit office.  This does not include all the days that are lost for no known reason, just no action, no communication, and no idea what is happening.

I submitted a plan in April of 2010, it is now August of 2011, I expect my permits to be issued any day now.  But get this- its taken well over a year – and my plan and its details have not changed in any significant way.

 

Here is a picture of the Shack teau today,  what a mess.   And we wait……