This is our exciting picture of the week. To the untrained eye it may only look like a mound of fresh asphalt in the street that the local hooligans tagged, but to Gina and I, it's so, so very much more. Discounting the act of physically moving out, this is the first overt manifestation that we are on the cusp of major-league construction. Break out the champagne and raise your glass...this mere mound of fresh asphalt is the culmination of over 18 months of work and $100,000 in funds. You may make fun of our "mound", but to us (as expensive as it may be), is a thing of immeasureable beauty!!
As insignificant as this mound may appear, it has broken the first-of-many, new construction impasses. Allow me to digress, we are waiting and working on two fronts before the all out construction can begin One is the funding for the Construction Loan (that process will be delved into at some later date), and the other is the Demolition Permit so that the all-important demolition of the existing house can begin. One would think tearing down a house would be easy...gather a few friends, supply them sledge hammers, safety goggles (of course!), and unlimited quantities of beer, and any and all houses in the vicinity would be as flat as pancakes within hours. Wouldn't it be nice if life was that easy!!
Before any sort of demolition can even be thought of, you need to first get your house EPA inspected. The house being originally build back in 1951, many of the state-of-the-art building materials of the time, have since become categorized as toxic hazards. Step one involves scheduling an EPA inspector to come by (that's $500 please), to check out the house. He takes a look at the insulation around the heating system, water heaters and the like, but also look for less obvious material of days-gone-by. At some point, prior owners of our house either split the existing two car garage, or did an add-on to the single-car garage to create a little guest cottage detached from the house. This single room contained everything a person would need to call it home except that it did not have a kitchen. Regardless, since the house itself had been remodeled over the years, it passed the inspection quite well, the guest house in back though, was another matter. Linoleum flooring was a common kitchen and bathroom floor covering in homes from yesteryear. Our little cottage in back of course had linoleum flooring that was identified as hazardous and would need to be removed and properly disposed of immediately before any sort of proper demolition could be considered. The irony of spending $3000 to remove the hazardous materials from a home scheduled for demolition evades me at the moment. We do our best to take it all in stride and assume that it's pall art of the training process. The earlier we I learn that pissing money away is an important part of any construction process, the better equipped we'll be when the real financial hemorrhaging begins. With this lesson reluctantly learned, it’s time to move on!!
OK, now you say we’re ready to begin tear-down? Like hell we are!! Now you have to call up the utilities and make certain they’re all properly notified so they can turn off their respective utilities. Once again, easier said than done!! Before you can schedule them to turn-off the gas, electric and/or water, you have to be able to prove to them that you have completely vacated the premises and are no longer living there. Our foolish attempt (and belief), that we could coordinate this so that we literally carry the last box to the car mere moments before the wrecking ball takes it’s first swing at the house, is proved grossly innaccurate. Drat!!
So this brings up to the reason why we finished packing and moved all of our belongings from the house two weeks ago. It’s some sort of weird-ass deck of cards. We can’t schedule demolition without a permit. We can’t get a permit until the utilities are turned off and we’re ERA certified. We can’t get the utilities turned-off until we move house and the house looks as inhospitable as possible. Properly coordinated (oops, we are talking about the city and the utilities mixed-in with the uninspired holiday work schedules), we have a fairly simple part of the construction process that has now taken two weeks. All of the utilities except for the gas, had been turned off rather quickly. Yesterday, the gas company crew finally showed-up, dug a hole in the street in front of our house, and disconnected the gas line at the main pipe. A considerable distance from the house or any of the new construction, but far enough away so that whatever the construction crew does, they should be unable to spark any sort of natural gas explosion...or so they say!!
The insignificant mound you see is a monument to our progress up to this point. It may not be pretty and it may not mean anything to most, but to Gina and I, it is a symbol of the beginning of the even slower and more painful days that lie ahead.
HAPPY NEW YEARS TO ALL!!
