House Progress

I have been bad lately about updating the blog for the purposes of the new house.  Here's some of the progress....

back of the house

prepping for the 2nd floor to go up

standing on what will be the second floor

2nd floor up!

back of the house - 2nd floor up & roof on

garage - windows ready to be installed 

the boys peering out the guest room window

view from the master bathroom

stairwell looking down

front of the house

windows in & shingles started on the roof

behind our house - nice tree cover

The Big Dig

They have started the house!  The foundation was dug yesterday (on Shannon's 13 month birthday). 

The Lot

Tom and I went to the site of our new home yesterday and went over the position of the house on the lot.  You can't really see the stakes from the photo (unless you click on the photo - then you can see them), but they are there.  They mark out all the corners of the house's foundation.  They plan to break ground on Tuesday!  We had one unhappy surprise when we met with Dan, the Buchan employee who will oversee the construction.  There is an easement on our property in the back corner (totaling about 800 square feet) that belongs to the City of Sammamish's Water district.  We don't know what they'll allow us to do with the easement.

Because it is in the back corner of the lot and serves as a turn-around for their trucks, they may not allow us to fence it into our backyard, essentially negating the 800+ square feet from our yard.  One reason we bought this lot was for its 16K square feet and now we're loosing nearly 1,000 square feet of it.  If we'd known this, we wouldn't have purchased this lot.  We're waiting to find out what the city will say we can do with the easement (fence it in, or not; landscape it, or not).   If we have to do anything other than what we want with it (ie. putting trees in the back corner of the lot), it will probably bother me every day...that's an unfortunate thought when we're supposedly building what will be our house for many years to come.

The lot staked for the "big dig" on Tuesday (5.31.11) Click on the photo to see the stakes.

Building Permit & Consulting

Building Permit for the New House

On a rare post on an off-Shannon topic; we finally have the building permit for the new house!  We meet today with the team to discuss where we'll dig the foundation.  Then they will mark the lot & begin to dig!  At this point, we're probably 9 months out from the house being completed.  The timing will be perfect as it pertains to our rental home.  We have this house through the end of March & we don't want to stay any later than that...we also don't really want to be in the position of having to pay a months rent in the rental & a mortgage payment on top of it, but it may be inevitable.  From what I understand, our builder (William Buchan) runs very much on time, even a bit ahead of schedule.  But it sounds like the timing is going to just about perfect....if we close a bit before we're out of this house, we can move some of the stuff ourselves over time, rather than all at once.  We're getting excited & can finally feel like we're not stuck in this small rental where 2 of 4 bedrooms are packed to the ceiling (no exaggeration) with boxes!

one of the 2 bedrooms now serving as storage

Consulting Work

I'm going to begin to do some consulting work for a company called (currently) Ivivi Orthopedics.  They are a new company & are a in the midst of changing their name.  Their product is actually an existing FDA approved technology from the parent company Ivivi Technologies, but will function autonomously from Ivivi (hence the name change) & only be responsible to Ivivi Technologies for a percentage of their revenue.  I have a meeting next week with them to discuss the scope of my projects.  This consulting work is also a potential precursor to me working for them on a full time basis if both parties find this mutually beneficial.  This will be a good trial fun at re-entering the work force without any strings attached.

Blogging again

Yes, it has been a while....sorry!  We moved into a rental home at the beginning of April, and it has been hectic getting organized.  The blog went by the wayside as we organized and settled into our rental home for the year while the new home is being constructed.  Here's our rental:

It isn't super fancy & we lost 1,000 square feet of room, but it will suffice for a year.  Right now, our "new" home looks like this:

There are homes directly behind our lot...well, there were homes when we bought the lot.  They are in the process of tearing the old homes down & a new neighborhood is going to be constructed directly behind us.  We are going to be living in construction noise hell for quite sometime I fear.  Oh well...nothing like the sound of a nail gun all day long, right?  Ugh.  

They continue to sell homes & construct in our new neighborhood which will be 38 homes in total.  There are only about 6 or 7 at this time that are actually built, and only 1 which has someone living it in it so far.  We are a long way away from having that "neighborhood feel" we are moving there for.  Fortunately, our rental house is in a wonderful neighborhood that has super neighbors.  We can walk to the grocery store, bank, and Starbucks from our house now.  That won't be the case when we move unfortunately....but oh well!  Here's the neighborhood map of our under construction home (we are "lot 8").  I use the term "under construction" loosely here folks, they just applied for the permit to build on Monday, so it is a field until they get the okay from King County to build.