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April is flying by and we still haven’t broken ground.  The wheels of government turn slowly, and all we can do is try to be prepared for the next step.  After we get Lillie’s Pad approved, we will be ready to begin grading.  We have three bids for the pool construction, and as soon as we make sure everything is apples to apples on the bids, we’ll be ready to choose a contractor.  At that point, the city will meet with the pool contractor and Bill Brown, the builder, on site to make sure everything is in place. After that we will receive our Land Disturbance Permit for the existing home. Then we can begin cutting into the dirt in a big way to make way for the west wall.  In the meantime, we are doing our best to make sure that there are not stumbling blocks or speed bumps to hold up progress once we begin.  

The transplant effort went well, and we worked on some more of the same over the weekend.  Most of what we have here we are trying to keep on site, but much of it has to be relocated to avoid being ruined with the dirt work.  It is a bit tedious to dig up plants and move them knowing that we will only move them again in a few months, but at least we will have some nice sized plants to install once the dust has settled.  

We’ll keep you posted of any progress!

Finally!  The kids are back in school, and my work has returned to normal.  Not that it is a finely tuned machine, but my system works for me.  

Here is the update.  The revised plans were submitted to the City on Wednesday of last week.  I will request a plan from Dave Skillen today that will have the exterior changes to the main house on it.  After we receive three copies of that, we will be ready to submit for that building permit.  

We have received two pool estimates and we are waiting on a third.  So far the estimates are higher than we’d hoped, but each one is lower than the previous.  With a little luck, the third estimate will be right on the money! 

Because of each item of the project being dependant upon the next, we are finding it very difficult to phase the project as we originally intended.  It seems that we will have to at least begin construction on all areas to be efficient about the construction.  The retention wall on the West side is also the back wall of the pool house and the end wall of Lillie’s Pad.  We need to get these structures enclosed at the very least even though we will not have to finish the interior of the pool house until we have completed all construction on Lillie’s Pad.  The pool needs to be plumbed and poured before we complete the landscaping so that all equipment has access and nothing is damaged.  Of course, the driveway to Lillie’s Pad needs to be layed out but not poured for construction traffic.  This is where we will use our excess dirt to fill in for the drive.  Hopefully we will come close to breaking even on our dirt.  If not, we will have to make arrangements to remove the excess.

I can’t believe that four days have passed since I last blogged!  It is Spring Break week here so both kids are out of school, but the project is still whipping along.  The revised plat has been approved.  We have made the necessary changes to the site plan, and I am waiting to receive it from Dave Skillen.  As soon as it gets here we will submit it in the place of the previous plan.  Hopefully, all will proceed smoothly from there. 

In the meantime, the client and I are making plans to try our hand at transplanting some of the less moveable plants.  Evidently some types of plants transplant better than others.  For instance, azaleas and dogwoods prefer not to be disturbed, but they will sometimes accept the new living conditions if all is to their liking.  Since there habitat is going to be disturbed anyway, we thought that we’d attempt to transplant those on our own. While I do enjoy gardening, transplanting large bushes is hard work, and well outside the scope of my typical services, but we have decided to take on this experimental project ourselves for the sake of the flora.  

We are also getting estimates for the pool construction.  We should have a pool contractor by the end of next week.  It is necessary to bring the pool contractor on at this time because the City will not release the Land Disturbance Permit (LDP) until they have reviewed the plans with the contractor. 

Yesterday I was so busy taking care of business that I didn’t have time to update you.  Here’s what took place.  The Mylar copy arrived.  (For those of you outside of the design world – Mylar is a thick, translucent product that is used to reproduce images upon which additional information can be added.)  We expedited it to the City to discover the One-More-Thing rule was in play.  We needed one more signature from the Department of Health to proceed.  The Mylar was taken to receive the appropriate signature, and then it was returned to the City with the necessary fee.  It is officially submitted.

Later that day, Design Details met with the client, Bill – the builder, and Hugh- one of the landscape team members.  We reviewed a sketch that I had concocted of planting areas and pathways.  We established a rough square footage number for the pavers, and we determined the type of paver we’d like to use.  We will be viewing paver samples and wall samples in about a week.

We also reviewed the initial cost for Lillie’s Pad with Bill.  The numbers fell right in the middle of the range that he thought it would be, and we are hoping to keep the cost to the lower end without cutting any corners or sacrificing any of our quality or energy saving items.  These items are sometimes more expensive to begin with but the payoff over a longer period of time is usually well worth the cost. 

Next we discussed changes to the existing house and what our first steps will be on that front.  The plan is to begin with the laundry room build-out.  This will tie-in to the upper level, and allow the bedroom above to have a private bath.  Even though this built-out will only project about three feet beyond the current house frame, it will be necessary to obtain a building permit for this as well.  Another plan must be made!
 

Today we have progressed.  We have the revised plat in at the City.  We are waiting on a Mylar copy from the survey company which we didn’t realize the City needed.  That should arrive tomorrow.  We will take that to the City with the appropriate fee and within a week or two we should have the revised plat. 

I have already spoken with Dave Skillen, the landscape designer.  He is working on making the appropriate revisions to the site plan so that we will be ready to submit that immediately upon receiving the revised plat.  The revisions are minimal, and should only take a moment or two. 

In addition, I discovered that we will need to have a pool contractor on board before the City will release the permit.  To expedite this process I have contacted the recommended pool company and I am hoping to establish an initial meeting with them later today.  While the City is currently making a final review of the information they have, we expect to hear from them within a few days.  At that time they will want to establish a meeting with the pool contractor and the City engineer to make sure that everything is progressing appropriately. 

In the meantime, I’m designing the details! 

On weekends and days off, I try to focus on anything but the project.  The idea is that I will be refreshed when I approach the project again on Monday, but the truth is that it has a wonderful side benefit.  The project slides to the back burner of my brain and simmers while I focus on other things.  Then, almost by itself, the solutions to the last troublesome issue will present itself to me at the most unexpected time.  My example of this is this weekend.  While I was busy with my children and all of the business that comes with a family and a home, this project was stewing in the back of my mind.  I wasn’t thinking about it, and I wasn’t working on it, but it was there simmering.  Then when I pulled into the driveway of the existing house, the solution of how to make the changes to the front of the existing house look seamless suddenly presented itself.  While a suggestion that Hugh, one of the landscaping team, made for the entrance solved part of the problem, I was struggling with how to make remaining area work.  I think this idea will be the solution, but I must put it on paper to work out the details!  Onward and upward!!

It seems like we’ve figured out the problem.  Apparently survey that we had done last summer had been marked as a forty foot setback, but the actually measurement was thirty-five feet.  Since I was only concerned with the buildable space, I hadn’t double checked the surveyors measurement, and since the landscapers concern was about the remaining space, they didn’t check it. . . until we put it all together on an official plat. 

To correct the problem we must do an official plat revision.  This means we go to back to the survey company and get them to move the line five feet.  Then we run this revision through the city and the county to make the records correct.  Next we need to make any necessary changes to the plot to make everything fit within the new setback lines.  Finally we resubmit this revised plan to the city for the permitting that we need.  

With a little luck we can get the plat revision to the City next week.  Hopefully we can have the plot ready to go as soon as we get approval on the plat.  Maybe we can push this through with just a couple of weeks delay.

In the meantime, there is plenty to keep the designer busy.  There are elevations to draw, electrical plans to create, and plenty of details to design.  You keep designing too!