Holko House, Day ?

I don't have the time or energy to figure out what day we are on for the house addition project...I know Day 1 was back in July, though. Let's call this the beginning of Month 3.

There will be no pictures to accompany this post, as there has been no visible progress. However, there has actually been some serious movement toward the goal.

We got in touch with a drafter to first take a look at the plans in the state of completion the Ben was able to get them to and provide us with comments. It seemed like we actually had a lot of the information we needed there and Ben had done a good job with the drawings and details. We were just missing a lot of the information that seems silly to me...like the correct forms for FAA regulation compliance (it's a single story house...?), demolition recycling agreements, things that have absolutely no bearing on whether the structure you are proposing will stand up or not.

Anyhow, after reviewing our drawings with the drafter, we decided it would be easier (though obviously more expensive) to have him get the drawings to a point where they could be presented to the city. I knew I would not be able to halp with the remaining work that needed to be done, and would have felt bad if Ben had to spend the next few weekends and every night buried in drawings. I'm glad we made the decision to have help. We also needed to have a structural engineer provide a few calculations (I will not get into how irritated I am by this...at least not now).

Last Friday, Ben and the drafter took the completed drawings to an initial meeting with the City Development Services Department. From what I can tell, it sounds like there were no major issues (this is NOT a complicated project...there should never have been any issues) and we should be on our way to a permit someday. When is someday? Well, that's entirely up to the City of San Diego at this point. Thus far, every employee I've talked to has mentioned how understaffed they are and how hard their jobs have become. Surely they'll get right on it and push this thing through.

Next steps:
Get bids from contractors (at least for foundation and framing)
Receive the permit to start work
Have a baby (somewhere in there, this needs to happen)

I'd love to post some progress pictures soon. For now, I'll just be happy with my bathroom.