Some good news for a change

Our contractor has both our water permit and our building permit. THANK GOD!!!!! There's still lots of stuff to iron out (like the contract with Calvin!), but the construction can begin at any time. Calvin was at the house today parking his hauling trailer.

As I said in the last post, we'll never get there...

Ugh....

We got the water permit today. This allows us to get the building permit. However, the city now is mandating that we install fire sprinklers! My architect is going to get this mandate removed. But, of course, who knows how long this will take.

Asymptotically approaching construction start

Today the PODS people picked up our now full POD and took it off to their warehouse for 6 or 7 months. We also signed the f***ing deed restriction required by the MPWMD saying we'll only use politically correct appliances in our house. Hopefully, by the end of the week we'll be able to get our permits.

Oy vai....

Bureaucracies are wonderful

Our permits are ready to go. But, in Monterey, the Water Department has unimaginable power. We just found out that the MPWMD want:

• An inspection of the existing water usage in the house
• note: the inspector doesn't have an opening for 2 weeks!!!!
• An addendum to our deed restricting the property to low-flow appliances
• this has to be approved by their lawyer
• their lawyer only works 1 FRIGGIN DAY A WEEK!!!!
• after legal review, the changes have to be recorded with the county

This mess of red-tape is now standing in the way of our project getting started.

Living Room Rendering

A nice rendering of our living room:


Click for larger image

I shall now count chickens

I almost hate to post this - I've been burned too many times in the past year. But, quoting Steve Krebs, "your permit is ready for you to pick up."

The home stretch

I just called the Building Department. Our application has been approved by the Fire Department and just needs to be signed off by the Building Department. The person on the phone said we should have final permits by the end of this week. I'll believe it when I see it ;)

Just as well - we're still not finished emptying the house. But, we are close.