December 16th, 2009
This morning, work started early on digging holes to sink the posts for the pergola, while our contractor, Tom, was at the City Code office trying to sort out a permit snafu. When Tom arrived here, he brought bad news. We are not going to be allowed to build our deck until the Board of Adjustment approves a variance and issues us a permit for our garage. Now, mind you, this garage came with the house when we bought it, but had never been permitted — a fact we had never been made aware of throughout the entire house-buying process.
December 15th, 2009
The city code inspectors came today for the first inspection of framing (attic and deck) and wiring (fire alarms in series, which we have to do because we’re having any electrical work done, so-o-o-o, since we’re adding some wiring to the attic, we have to spend an extra several hundred dollars to bring our 1937 house up to 2009 code standards). Our contractor, Tom, was sitting out in his truck waiting for them for 3 hours. (Just fyi, he was absolutely welcome to hang around in our house, but it was his choice to stay outside in the cold).
November 27th, 2009
Our replacement deck got framed in yesterday. It’s so amazing how much bigger it looks in person than on paper! The size is almost exactly the same size as our living room(!) It is less sq. ft. than our old nearly unusable three-part deck, yet seems much bigger. Magic!
November 25th, 2009
Today we are getting the remainder of our old siding removed and having it replaced with Hardie siding. It had been hail-damaged in last year’s hailstorm, so we decided to get the whole thing replaced. Now it will all be the same stuff, applied the same way. The siding crew did a bang-up job on cutting the siding perfectly.
November 24th, 2009
For 3 years, since we started and then prematurely stopped this attic project, we have been lovingly storing 35 sheets of drywall in our attic. The above photo shows about 21 of them stacked on the right. The other 14 block half of the door between front and back attic, making moving crap around a lot of fun….
