Fence does not equal property line.... SIGH

YEAH!!!! we made it through soil test....

Survey results were great as well, turns out the FEMA flood levels for 100+ flood are located within the creekbed! :-)

Thinking we are canceling the flood insurance we have been carrying since we bought the property and were concerned about being on two creeks.

Only one problem.......we have a water district easement on one side of the property. We knew this. It is a 5 foot underground easement. Our designer included the easement in the setback calculations which the city says we cannot do. Suddenly, the side where we thought we met the 10 foot requirement is not so. The other side where we thought we only needed 5 feet clearance now needs to be 10 feet. WOW..... looks like we now need to move garage, etc. two feet over which totally screws with the aesthetics of the front of the house so we are now dealing with that.

How big does a 2 car garage need to be? We are expanding from a one car garage/car port combo to two car garage.... probably will end up being 20x20...... any thoughts on this?

Ready for the next chapter please!!!!

Permit approval..... we hope!

Soil Test...... now that is high tech!

OK.... so now we are required to have this soil test done..... going to cost $5K, I'm thinking this better be fancy.

Our designer recommended that we go with Murray ( http://www.murrayengineers.com/) so we did.

They needed to determine the quality of the soil as well as the risk of liquefaction in the event of an earthquake.

They showed up with a big ole 6625 CPT track-mounted rig equipped with a pneumatic hammer and a dual-tube soil sampling system!!! I know what you are all thinking.... WOW!!! In case you care, details here: http://www.cptinc.com/index.php

These guys were very cool, they explained the whole thing and I got to watch the progress on the computer screen as the probe went through our driveway, 30 feet into the earth..... WOW!

We got the report, and the bottom line is that there is nothing special we need to address and we are not in a liquefaction zone (which I could have told you based on my gardening attempts in solid CLAY!)

Soil report cleared.... good to go RIGHT?........

Getting a Permit --- whoa, wait just a minute there.

On May 9, 2011, Walter went to the city to file for our permit. We assumed it would take about a month to hear back regarding our plans. We do hear back from the city by the end of the month. 25 pages of comments with nothing too bad regarding the general plans, EXCEPT...... for the additional public works requirements because the back of our property abuts along two creeks.

Our two creeks, which we love...... we love the privacy (no one is going to build back there), we love the sound of the running water which is only during the rainy season. They are totally dry in the summer, and then finally the sound of the frogs in the spring/early summer. The frogs literally sing us to sleep. All these reasons and more are why we find ourselves doing a "remodel" instead of just selling and buying something new.

OK... back to the creeks, Regnart is the smaller creek which runs along our back yard and flows into the Calabasas creek which is a decent size creek, but only covers a small portion of our yard.

It turns out that the city is going to require us to have a surveror provide a report which shows the flood plane levels in accordance with FEMA calculations. Even though we are in a greater than 100 year flood zone and have never been required to buy flood insurance.

The second thing we are required to do is to have a soil study done to determine the density of the soil for purposes of the addition of square footage we are doing as well as a determination of the risk of liquefaction in the event of earthquake, which seems crazy to us, but what can you do? When the city says you need to do something; you gotta do it. It added 6 weeks to the time line of our project as well as $7K in incremental cost..... for what? That is my question. The bureaucratic BS is only just beginning and I figure I just better get used to it.

We will see what it all leads to.

Honey, lets do a remodel!

Wow.... seems like we had been talking about doing a remodel of the house forever... we have lived here since 1998 and have never really made any improvements because some day we would do it in the remodel. Two years ago, we decided that we would need a new roof and so we got serious about the project.

After running numbers and talking about our location, etc. we decided that we did want to do a remodel versus move. We got a referral for a contractor that did design and construction from a friend and started talking with them... a husband and wife team. Well, to make a long story short; the project aborted when they decided to get a divorce and he moved out of the area. It really was a blessing, because after now working with our current designer, we see that the first team really did not "have what it takes" to get us through such a big project.

6 months go by, it is now early summer of 2010 and we get a referral for a designer named Walter Chapman from our friend David who has done several remodels. http://www.chapmandesignassociates.com. We meet with Walter and decide to proceed with designs. We signed the contract with Walter on July 1, 2010.

The process with Walter worked pretty smoothly and he came up with some really wonderful ideas for our home. Our main design goals were to utilize the space we have which is approximately 1700 square feet and to open up our home utilizing a great room concept. We also wanted to create more storage space and reconfigure our master suite. The other big change is removing the flat tar and gravel roof and putting on a pitched roof with attic.

During the summer and fall of 2010, we interviewed several contractors, but were not really excited about any of them. But one thing we were able to do through the process is get an idea of our budget which turned out to be about $100K higher than we had hoped. Then at the end of September one of my clients was raving about a contractor. Jack Cannon, we met with Jack and immediately liked him. After checking references and discussing the budget; we chose Jack to do the work. http://www.lynstar.net/

Now all we had to do was to finish the plans and go for our permit.......