No matter what, the end resut will be TEAR IT DOWN!

If we should happen to not be able to get the financing to work this year, we do get a consolation prize: We get to tear the house down this year no matter what.

I went over to meet with our local alderman last night at his "ward night." If anyone is not familiar with an alderman, its essentially a councilperson that represents a specific area of neighborhood in the city. There are 50 wards in cook county, and each one has an alderman. The alderman is responsible for local city politics, issues like parking permits and trash removal, and any sort of building permit needs to have the sign off of the alderman.

So thats what brought me to Alderman Ariel Reboyras' office - getting whats called an alderman's letter for both the general building permit process, and one specifically for the demolition and excavation. I just needed to sit down with the alderman and his right hand man Carlos to show them the plans, and talk to them about what we are trying to do. This is really just a formality, but its part of the way that Alderman Reboyras gets to know his constituents, and its a good way for people who are applying for permits get to understand the direction and focust of the neighborhood.

Nevertheless, we got the sign off from the Alderman, and he is excited to see the project come to fruition. What I did confirm with them was this: they would much rather have me tear the house down and put up a temporary fence if we dont get the financing, then to leave the house stand through the winter. The reasoning is fairly simple: empty houses are just asking for squatters, and we dont want to foster any of that in our neighborhood. Therefore, this place is going to go down in the 2-3 weeks either way, and for this I am grateful.

If nothing else, it will be nice to have some sort of physical progress on the site for the future of the house. Speaking of which, the trees in the back are coming down on Thursday. Depending on the weather, I may document some of the process just to show everyone the before and after.

Ignoring the fact that we need permission.....

Even though we need the "green light" from the bank, we have to continue to push ahead as though we are building the house. This means working through the demolition and excavation permits. By doing this, we are hoping to avoid several weeks of down time while we wait for the city to approve what we would like to. Also, since we plan on doing this either way, being this year or next, these permits are renewable, and will allow us to be ready when we want to do it. As a result, the money we pay for permits will not be spent in vain.

The process of getting the demo/excavation permit is two-fold. First, the demolition company does their part by applying for the permit, doing the air quality, and rat infestation prevention, and sending approval letters to the alderman, and each of our neighbors. This just assures each neighbor that every possible measure will be taken to ensure no damage will be done to their property during the process. On our end, we are responsible for getting the excavation permit, which means that I have to get signed approval letters from each of the neighbors, and the alderman to confirm they are in agreement with our decision to dig a really big whole in the ground.

One thing that has come up through the course of all of this, is at what distance from the neighbors foundation do we have to be in order to not have to use shoring to protect the other home from having issues due to collapsed land. In the end, this is going to force us to move the house as much as two feet to the west. This will present us with some re-design work in the form of re-creating the north face of the garage so the door is in line with the back door of the house, and if the three in the front yard will then be directly in front of front door. The former will not be much of an issue, but the latter could be a problem, and its something we will know about this week some time.

So, this week we are going to have the two large tress in the back taken down - one is dead, and threatening our neighbors wires, and other is in the middle of the future garage. Once we are done with that later this week, we will be working through the rest of the design to make sure we have things right before we finalize most of the design to go to the permit process.

Firming up the Kitchen Design

The kitchen is something we have really locked down exactly what we are doing yet as we know this is the one place that we have to have just right. I have talked in the past about the size of the kitchen, and the fact that we are going to have more cabinet space then we know what to do with. As a result, we have had windows on the east wall instead of upper cabinets. Until now, the windows shown above as two sets of two, were actually only one window on each side. This is change that I have been pushing for since we decided to put windows on this wall.

Part of the reason I wanted the tall, thin windows was to help elongate the kitchen from the counter top to the ceiling, but to also allow more light into the full width of the kitchen. If we were using two individual windows total, they would have to be VERY large in order to accomplish this. Furthermore, this will give us an infinite number of options for backsplash design as this will give us a far better template to work with creatively if we want to stray from the current thought.

The cabinet style is going to be flat fronted, and the wood stain will be a shade or two lighter and warmer then the floors will be to help slowly bring the color lighter as we move towards eye level. We will then be putting something like a solid white quartz counter top on the east wall counter space to help warm up the space further.

For the island counter top, I have had a design in mind for a while now. My uncle astutely pointed out that the island, and its design, will be the focal point of the main living space, and its something that should think about making very unique. I took this to heart, and since I read this in an email/post from him, I have been thinking about it all the time. I came up with a design idea for a custom made counter top, but I had to find a way to get it made, and not have it cost $5,000. So this is where I called my friend Jonas who is a woodworker and furniture designer. Jonas designs custom made contemporary furniture, and now full installations for restaurants and stores.

It turns out that this wasnt the exact project that Jonas was looking for, but his friend Mack Terry definitely was. Mack and I talked earlier this week, and he seems to be the exact type of person that I need to work with to get this done the way I have it in my head. Mack and I have a concept of cost, and once we have a better idea on the financing end we are going to talk specifics and see what its going to really take to get this designed. More to come as we get closer to that process, which should be truly exciting.

Plenty of work to be done

While we may be in a holding period waiting to hear word about financing, we are going to have to keep working like we are getting the loan in order to be ready for the bank to say go. This will be happening on several fronts: finalizing blueprints and permits,working on finalizing design choices, and driving down cost by looking for cheaper options on materials for the home.

From an architect's standpoint, we are far from finalized on the plans. While the guts of the home are generally set, we have to firm up everything from the lighting plan to the HVAC setup. We have little less then three weeks to get these documents set, and get them to the permit office to be taken care of. This is a very tight time line, and its going to take quite a bit of effort on all fronts to make it happen. The upside is that permit-wise we shouldn't have too many issues as the place we are building is far under the allowable height and square footage for the zoning. Furthermore, we also have to get a separate permit for the demolition. This permit requires approval by the local city government office (Ward 30) and by both of our neighbors. This way the city is sure that all parties know we are going to make a mess.

The design choices are proving to be difficult to say the least. We are working on straddling the line between nice and cheap. The good news is that there is a line to be straddled, and there are a ton of good products out there that are far more affordable then what can be found at Merchandise Mart etc. The bad news is that we have to get a really good feel for where we are going to cut costs and save money, and then pick the places where we don't want to cut corners. A really good example of this is with our master bath vanities. We found a vanity at the Merchandise Mart that we loved, and knew we couldn't afford ($15,000) but we have found several since then that embody some of the same qualities for 10% of the cost. In this case we are sacrificing the want for something that is EXACTLY what we want for something that is pretty much like what we want because we never really had that $15,000 piece in mind until we saw it. Either way, we have about 100 of these decisions to get an idea about over the next few weeks. That means field trips!!

We are working through kitchen and bath this week, I will post as the week progresses and we make more decisions.

Its officially out of my control.....

Sorry its been so long since I have posted, but I have been buried under the massive undertaking that is budgeting for the proposal that I submitted to the bank today. SO, we have finally reached the point that I have been looking toward for 3 months. I took full sized blueprints of all four floors along with the master electrical plan, and elevations with a line item budget for each basic cost of the construction. Along with this, I included a 5 page description of the home, what we hoped to accomplish, and a floor by floor account of the finishes and design of the interior of the house. This is important because we have to make sure that the bank, architect, and appraiser all can get a good sense for the home without actually seeing it. Clearly this subjectivity is what is really hard about financing a deal like this. Now its up to the bank to do their thing, and that sounds like it will take a few week to get some direction. Its going to be close to 10.15.08, but thats the goal still.

Let me just say that its been a LOT of work. Thankfully, I have had the help of an experienced professional who knows what he is doing, and has been gracious enough to help me through the process the entire way.

Taking rough plans and getting them into a very specific bid number is not easy. I am not saying that I was the one that did all of the wrangling, as I had help with someone who was leaning on his subcontractors to create accurate bids based on the plans. However, taking the bids, and turning a less-then-specific number based on inexact plans and getting them to the point where they are as accurate as possible for the budget, is challenging.

The tougher part was making a decision on some of the finishes in the house without actually being able to see how they will look put together. This was mainly relegated to the tile selection, counter tops, and master bath fixtures. Lets just say that its really easy to spend a ton of money on these things before you even realize what you have done.

More on the design choices, and where we are at architecture-wise tomorrow.....until then, one peaceful night of sleep without having to think about hitting the deadline today.

Progress! Progress! Progress!

We are really starting to pickup some steam on this. Its really getting interesting, and I am starting to get a taste of what is going to be like to "co-develop" this property should we get the chance to build it. We have been talking about windows, doors, molding, and flooring choices. We are really starting to formulate a lot of the base costs for the budget that we are going to need to have in order to put this together right. I am very lucky to have someone helping me with this process, and I know that its already making a difference in the way we work to drive the price of the house one way or other.

The hope is that we will have a budget and plans to submit to the bank by 9.15.08. In the meantime, we are working on lighting schemes, outlet and wiring placement as well as some more specific touches on the place. I have been getting some good advice from my Uncle as well. He is an architect, and someone who I have found I share much of the similar tastes in architecture. We have already implemented at least three of his ideas in our home. Thanks Duncan!!

We are going to see some examples of homes that have been built by one of the General Contractors we are talking to in order to get an idea for both style, and type of materials. We are going to be doing more these types of things going forward as we get closer to building the house. Its going to be important to understand whats being used currently in other homes, as well as what the GC is going to have access to as far as standard materials and accents.

More to come after we see some of these as I will post some pictures.