Back At It!

At long last! Work has resumed this project that we affectionately call our “bundle of sticks.” We have had various delays of one kind or another but now some progress is possible. The major work will be handled by Bell Construction for the duration of this project.  I will be posting my journal entries “as is” with very little editing outside of grammar and spelling. For better or for worse. 

The house with the add-on removed

The first order of business was to remove the rear section of the house removed. I for one will not miss it at all. 90% of the problems with this project stemmed from that nonsense. Leaks, roofing, funky construction, bad engineering, and spiders form hell, goodbye and good riddance.

From the Rear.

Oy! The pains of going legit.

Okay so the last entry was around 5 months ago. and since then well not much. The house stands, waiting for us to return and continue working on it.

Actually no, that's not entirely true. We've finally gotten to the point where we can go ahead and start gathering permits from the city. However I've been unfortunately side-swiped by the budget cuts and now the City is requiring that we pay ALL permit fees up front, rather than one at a time. Its a huge chunk of money that I wasn't expecting to have to pay all at once. I mean I understand that when a City or state is hurting that you'd expect that they'd do a little financial trickery to make ends meet, but most people doing renovations aren't going legit.

So then why are they punishing those of us who are trying to be legitimate? I'm not saying no fees anywhere... but how about a schedule of fees and timelines? Possible payment schedules with penalties rather than a huge lump sum? I don't think I'm being too unreasonable? am I?