The 2011 Texas wildfire season has taken it’s toll and destroyed thousands of homes. The government and FEMA have posted resources for people, and hopefully everyone trying to get back on their feet will succeed. Having dealt with the insurance company and rebuilt our home, I can certainly sympathize with any fire victim. If you lost your home and are in the process of navigating the bureaucracy of your insurance company, and have any questions, please feel free to comment here or email me: ryan@freeryan.com.

Here’s why…

Being under-insured at the time of the fire, rebuilding the house was no simple task. If this ever happens to you, I hope you’ll be able to simply sit on your (rental) couch and just answer questions from an interior designer and architect about where you want your bathroom, what colors, which light fixtures, etc. In our case, we had to do as much of the work ourselves that we could, to keep from incurring debilitating debt. The loss of home and property is lame, but having to do much of the rebuild work yourself (while still holding down full-time jobs), is even lamer.

Now that we’re back on our feet with a mostly-done house, we went to refinance and had to decide about insurance. I decided to shop around. But I soon found out that if you’ve suffered such a loss, it’s not easy to just switch carriers. After two years of working closely with the snakey bureaucracy of the insurance company it wasn’t altogether surprising to discover that many insurers wouldn’t cover us because we’ve had a recent loss. That’s right: USAA, Geico, State Farm — all declined our business because we’d had a recent payout on our policy.

Safeco has a similar condition, but in our case it didn’t totally apply (the fire started in our neighbor’s house, not ours). So rather than stumble through online quote generators I worked with Juneau’s oldest insurance agency, Shattuck and Grummett. Turns out, our lovely agent was not only familiar with our story, but she uses it when working with customers as a cautionary tale. We’re happy that our experience is benefitting others, but even happier that the agent was able to work with a Safeco underwriter to get us properly insured.

And not only did we get insured, we got *fully* insured. Instead of the measly $169,000 that the old house was covered for, our new one has $468,000 of coverage. And the best part: it costs the same as Allstate!

So, my advice for Southeast Alaskan homeowners or new home builders:

1) Make sure you’re insured for not just the appraisal cost of your home, but for 20% over what a trusted contractor tells you it would take to rebuild. Down south the rule of thumb is something like $180 per square foot. In Juneau I suggest you use $230 per square foot.

2) Work with Shattuck and Grummett.

It’s fitting yet odd that it would so happen that the day we completed rebuilding the house is exactly two years after it burned down. This time two-years ago I was standing in the parking lot watching this:

Today is much different. We’re sitting on the deck of our new house enjoying a glass of bubbly. Tomorrow we’ll apply for a permanent occupancy certificate, lock-in an interest rate on our refinance, and start the ball rolling on closing out our claim with the insurance company.

But now it’s all done.

This puts us firmly into the final stretch. Our next major hurdle before refinance is building the deck and a proper front door entry (because apparently a stump isn’t up to code).

Our original plan was to side the house like it was before the fire, using cedar shingles.

I suppose we were so driven and determined in the months following the fire, while we were planning the new house, that no one tried to talk us out of something so labor intensive.

Cedar shingles are about the size of a really tall paperback book. They’re tapered to one end, and when installed overlap each other like a suit of armor.

Each one is painted by hand. First, with a good coat of stinky oil-based primer and then with the lovely latex-based Rose Lyrical, aka Ashes of Rose, aka Pink. We bought a whole pallet of shingles (thousands) and Laura and her Team Of Awesome powered through priming and pinkifying them all.

Here’s some of them drying:

Since the latex-based paint doesn’t require a respirator, Meadow was eager to dig in on some pink too.

At some point our homage to the original was outweighed by reality and we realized that siding the *entire* house in shingles was out of the question.

So, for the “non-visible” façades, we went with “Hardie panel” — easy to paint, easy to install, and made of cement so doesn’t burn very well (also of note: the walls facing the tiny walkway between houses has about 5″ inches of drywall).

The vertical geometry of the new house gave Laura some room for design, so she decided to do a horizontal belly-band all around the house, and use a different color for siding below. We also used a different style of siding for this: long cedar planks with a taper about the same as the shingles.

These long boards not only take less time to paint and install than shingles — they take 10X less time.

Here’s Rob and Tyler going at it.

Siding the house isn’t just a matter of selecting a siding and putting it on. It’s a system of materials that work together to make an impenetrable barrier that moisture/air can escape from.

The first layer of the armor is an inch of plywood attached to the framing. On top of that is Tyvek HomeWrap, which I think of as a Goretex rain coat. On top of the Tyvek is Home Slicker Rainscreen, which is basically a heavy plastic mesh that creates an air gap between the cedar and the Tyvek so moisture and air have a channel to drain/evaporate.

After weeks of shingle priming and painting, the weather cleared and installation began. As luck would have it, we ran out. All that work got us enough shingles to cover only the main floor.

We won’t be buying and painstakingly painting more shingles for the upper level. Instead we’ll use the long cedar planks like below the belly-band, only in pink instead of plum.

So what did we spend mother’s day weekend doing? You got it!

Stay tuned a couple weeks we should have the whole house sided and will get to start on the deck, and then after that: refinance.

We were able to get a little extra time, since the moving truck couldn’t make it up the icy hill. We finished packing while they went and got a more manageable (smaller) vehicle. They may have ended up with a knife in a gun fight, but these two amazing dudes from Reliable Transfer dug in, made plenty of trips (it’s a four block drive), and got the job done.

By the end of the day we were moved in and that night we slept in our new digs for the first time.

Everything from the Blue House was moved except bikes, strollers, a couple pieces of smokey antique furniture, and some outdoor gear. With no garage at the new place and a basement dedicated to construction and shingle painting, we’re a bit short on storage. Four days after the move, most of our “stuff” was still bagged, boxed, and buried. In fact, that night when the power went out all around town we didn’t even bother trying to dig around for candles.

On top of the chaos of boxed/bagged belongings, is a stream of all new sights, sounds, temperatures, textures, tastes, light switch locations, appliance buttons, door handles, etc. Even though we knew the layout of the house and have been in here working for so many months, the feeling of living in it is something new and unfamiliar. I look forward to the days when I can walk around in the pitch black without stubbing my face on a wall or falling down stairs.

The house is brand new, and since we’re on a tight budget it’s not 100% complete. Still a good amount of labor to be done, and still plenty of drywall and construction dust being found in nooks and crannies. I think I can taste the gypsum in the air. We’re spending our free time finding those nooks and adding finishing touches to make it more livable: installing towel bars and toilet paper dispensers in the bathrooms; sanding and oiling wood trim; putting up shower rods and curtains; adjusting cabinet doors; etc.

And then there’s a few/typical bumps in the road. For example first run of the dishwasher found the drain hose not fully connected and the sink cabinet filling with water. So guess who got to crawl in there and fix ‘er up? This guy (me).

For Laura and I, we know it’s *our* home so the feelings of unfamiliarity aren’t too scary, especially as we imprint the structure with our essence and get to know the place.

For Meadow, it’s different. After the fire we were able to frame our situation as an adventure. She took to the adventure and enjoyed living in the Rainforest Cottage for a week, then Baranof Hotel for 10 days (she still calls it “our hotel”). This same momentum carried her into the Yellow House and made a reprise when we had to up and move to the Blue House. But as she’s aged she’s gained more awareness. She was against leaving the Blue House, but warmed up to the idea when saw her new room:

Mommy did a great job making Meadow’s new room a perfect 4yo girl’s sanctuary. Nevertheless, a week after moving in, Meadow asked me: “when are we going to move again?”

But overall, the daze of moving is wearing off and we’re starting to settle in. Indeed, I’ve already fallen in love with a few aspects. Here they are, in no particular order:

Warm Floors in the Morning
Even though the battle against construction dust wages on, it’s nice to get out of bed and walk around in barefeet. The floors aren’t hot, but they’re warm enough so that they don’t feel cold in the morning. And you definitely notice the temperature difference when you step on a non-radiant surface, like the stairs. Meadow also enjoys cuddling with the warm floors:

Awesome Insulation
When the power went out the other day, we didn’t have to run for long underwear and blankets. Even with eight degree temperatures outside and 50MPH winds, there’s nary a draft inside. For more about the awesomeness of our liquid-foam insulation, check out this post.

Custom Electrical

Yes I’m biased since I did the electrical myself, and yes there’s a few adjustments I’ll be making. But overall I love where we put lights, switches, outlets, etc. I’m also confident in my work. When you have precious cargo you happily triple check all your connections. In fact, when the inspectors came through they found a few plumbing issues the plumbers had to come back to fix, but they found only one minor electrical issue (made me add an outlet at the end of a kitchen cabinet).

The Red Kitchen
Laura’s custom designed kitchen had to fit into predefined geometry since we re-used the old foundation, so it may not be ideal placement/size, but we sure do love it! The best part for me is, never in my life, have I had *new* appliances. What a treat! Although, I must say, modern appliances are so over designed! The buttons on the stove are so easy to press, I reset the clock whenever I wipe it clean. Same with the dishwasher, if you lean up against it you might start it. And the microwave: who needs quick-start buttons for Hot Dog, Mac & Cheese, and Chicken Nuggets. I didn’t even know you could make Mac & Cheese in the microwave.

Permanent Lodging for My Family
Probably most exciting of all, is that we’re back in a house we own, enjoying the process of turning it into a home.

For permanent occupancy, we now just need to finish siding the house and install an entry/deck.

Our contractor’s finishing guys installed the vanities, appliances, finished the flooring, thresholds, cabinets, and trim. They got all the doorknobs installed, closet hardware, and did a great job. Alaska Renovators FTW!

Laura and crew did a ton of sanding and oiling to make all the doors, trim, handrails nice n smooth. The oil turns the fir trim from a light blonde to a smooth dusty blonde.

I wired up the stove, disposal, dishwasher and made sure they work. Same for the boiler and hot water heater. So now we’ve got heated floors, hot water in all the faucets. With the help of some pals I trimmed out all the light fixtures, switches, outlets, and got all the smoke alarms networked and beeping appropriately.

The house is now livable. It’s covered in saw/drywall dust and plenty of construction mayhem, but functional.

We thought we got everything done, and just in time for the city inspectors to come out during the last week in February. They found a few items for us to change. Most items we need to fix are in the unfinished basement, but a couple are in the main living areas. Once we finish these, we’ll get our temporary occupancy certificate which will last until the weather clears and we’re able to finish siding the exterior and install a deck.

At the same time Allstate has made it quite clear they’re done paying our rent. So, come March 1st, we’ll be moving out of the Blue House. The only wrinkle is that we have to move out on Monday, the last day of February, but won’t be able to get the remaining work done, and re-inspected, before then. Technically we need that certificate before moving in, but we’re in a pickle, have no choice, and figure the city wouldn’t be so lame as to fine us.

So, onward and upward it is!

This weekend marks the culmination of over 1.5 years of effort since the fire. For all the chaos our family’s been through, we’re enduring just one more weekend of it while we pack, clean, move, clean, unpack, and move another step towards getting back to normal.

The exterior is pretty much buttoned up for the winter. We’ll have to wait for the ground to thaw to finish the siding and build a deck and fence.

Inside, Austyn Schmidt, known as one of the best mudding / taping / wall-finishers in town, has finished our top two floors. Muddy tape, more mud, more mud, a little sanding, a coat of primer and a coat of finish for the “lids” and shabam we’ve got our canvas.

Laura’s been settling the colors out over the last few weeks and tonight she got to put the first coat on the kitchen. The kitchen color is called “caliente”. The unpainted parts in the pic below will be covered by cabinets. This weekend we’ll be trying to get the rest of the house interior painted (if you want to join the fun, drop me a line).

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. Does this mean we’re on schedule? No. But it does mean that we’re not grossly over schedule as seems to have been the case all too often over the last year and a half. So, by only being off schedule we’re feeling pretty good.

We hoped we’d be in by the end of January, but now we’re looking at end of February as a realistic occupancy date. I sent the insurance company a list of tasks that got delayed along the way, and they concurred construction in Southeast Alaska is notoriously slow (and that we still have a boatload of stuff to do).

So, we’ve had a whirlwind holiday season, to match the whirlwind year. But we still made time to have fun. On Christmas Eve we had a picnic at the house:

While enjoying some holiday cheer as a family we also moved the house along at a respectable clip. As I mentioned the walls are taped and prepped for paint. The basement is sheetrocked. The kitchen cabinets are delivered. The flooring (marmoleum for the baths and engineered “wood” for the living room, kitchen, and bedrooms) is on the boat (yes pretty much everything we buy comes via barge). Appliances are all arrived in Juneau and Sears is eager for us to get them out of their warehouse. Clawfoot tub has made it to town and will be delivered to the house in a few days along with seven interior doors.

The plywood sheet and trusty ole combination padlock serving as a front door is replaced with an actual front door. I installed a fancy doorknob of Laura’s selection. It even locks with a key!

But that’s not all, for we also accomplished a milestone we’ve been chasing for months on top of months on top of months.

Our Old Years Resolution was to get this particular task done and sent off before the end of 2010. In between Christmas and New Years we put our noses to the LCD and hammered out the final details. Why this took us so long, I don’t know. There’s a strange psychology (eg: easy procrastination) around making a list of all belongings destroyed in the fire. And after working all day at one job, then working on the house for a few hours into the evening, the last thing we want to do is come home and type out more of the dreaded list.

But that’s exactly what we did and on New Year’s Eve, around 10PM, we sent the rest of our Contents List to Allstate. Now the ball is in their court. They’ll take a while to enter all the items into their depreciation estimation software and then in a couple/few months we’ll find out what they think all our possessions were worth.

Next up? Cabinets install, painting, flooring, boiler installation, mud/tape the basement, and then all the fixtures and a myriad of finish work details. We’re getting close!

When planning out the house it was a no-brainer that we wanted to make it as energy efficient as possible. We made it a priority to get high quality windows, heating system, and insulation.

Our electric boiler hasn’t found it’s way to Alaska yet, but we’re keeping the house from freezing with two space heaters. When it was 20º outside the house was a cozy 55º, with both heaters set on low.

The other day, wall-finish-extraordinaire Austyn Schmidt completed the mud and tape of the top two floors, effectively sealing all gaps on the walls. Accidentally, that night, we left one of the heaters on high.

The next morning opening the front door was like walking off an airplane in the Bahamas. I was sweating before I made it upstairs to the top floor, where the air was thick and tropical. With no open windows or ventilation fan running, heat was locked in. This is a testament to how well the spray foam insulation by Demilec performs.

Demilec makes both an open- and closed-cell foam, and we used a combination of both. They go on as a liquid and instantly expand to 120 times volume. The water/air-blocking closed cell dries to a very hard, plasticy-styrofoam-like substance, while the water–but not air–permeable open cell ends up feeling like a kitchen sponge. Both materials fill cracks and voids forming a constant/sealed surface, and once dry both can be cut with a handsaw or serrated knife.

Below is some footage I shot while the guys were spraying open-cell Demilec in our basement (narrated with Meadow’s help).

For more information on the product here’s the Demilec website: www.demilecusa.com. And below is their promo video which really shows how the stuff behaves when applied:

Here we are nearly a year and a half after the fire. Our insurance guy asked me why it’s taking so long. The only answer that came to mind was that we didn’t start soon enough. That, and: everything with construction in Juneau takes longer than anyone plans, especially after a fire. Early on we had to make changes when discrepancies between the plans and reality were found. Renewing our permit at the end of the summer cost a couple weeks. The windows took three months instead of three weeks. The cedar shingle siding wasn’t in stock and didn’t make it here until late October. The roofer we wanted fell through (not literally) and we had to make adjustments. The Alaskan wind blew and weather changed more than a few plans. The electrical and plumbing took two months longer than estimated, pushing the insulation back, which pushes the drywall back, which… you get the picture.

Nevertheless, we’ve a variety of initiatives moving forward independently or in concert and our impatience towards an end product is not for lack of activity. Here’s a breakdown of what we’ve been up to the last few months.

The Windows

As I mentioned, the windows took a lot longer to get ordered and shipped than we planned. Most of this was due to the back and forth between us, our builder, and the company in Colorado. We opted for Serious fiberglass windows which are generally higher performing than your typical vinyl windows. We also didn’t go off the shelf but instead created a custom grille pattern to match as closely as possible the windows on the original house. The picture above shows the windows from the inside, with some holiday lights we tossed up for a little inspiration.

Painting the Siding

The side and back of the house (not visible from the street) are now covered with pink Hardie panel, which is an easy to install, flame retardant cement board. Once all the Hardie was painted, Laura and her awesome crew of volunteer painters (thank you Claudia Wakefield, Sarah Bosma, Cynthia Eckert, Angela Noon, Jill Taylor, Jay Donig, Jorden Nigro, Claire Fordyce) went to work on all the trim and cedar siding. For the cedar, first step is to prime it with a most noxious substance: Killz. This oil based primer will give you a prolonged head rush if you don’t wear a ventilator. We were lucky enough to be loaned warehouse space for painting. But as with all good things, they can’t last forever, and neither did our painting place, which we had to vacate shortly before Thanksgiving. So now we’ve got a *lot* of primed shingles sitting in our basement waiting until we can turn them pink.

Many of you have asked if the new house will be pink. And the answer is: yes, mostly. We’re using the same main pink color as previously, with the same blue trim color. We’re adding additional trim including a belly band. Below the blue band we’ll be using long cedar boards instead of shingles, and as you can see from the picture below, they’ll be a darker shade of pink.

If you’re hoping to get some of your painting groove on with us, do not despair. There are still tons of shingles to paint pink and the whole interior of the house to paint. So let us know if you want to get on the helpers list.

Finishing the Electrical

A couple months ago I took a crash course in residential wiring from my brother-in-law, and I’ve used my newfound knowledge to forge ahead and wire the whole house myself. This endeavor culminated with my successfully wiring both my electrical panels and getting a yellow tag from the city inspector which allowed the power company to switch us over to permanent power.

Our original wiring quote was $23,000. Less materials and pizza for helpers we saved over $10,000 by doing it it ourselves. I had help, so thank you Simon Taylor, Joe Hosey, Markus Beckman, Colin Osterhout, Jay Donig, Bret Connell. Also thank you Alcan Electric whom I hired to install the meter base. There is no need to mention the unquantified costs like all my time, frustration, or the 6 stitches in my left index finger. I learned a ridiculous amount and now know enough to NOT be dangerous (which is important when working with electricity).

During the process we also dug a 30ft ditch on the property so that the electrical and all utilities can travel underground. This means the house has no aerial wires attached to it and the power company’s meter base is out of the way on the back of the house.

Finishing the Plumbing

Learning the electrical had me plenty busy, thank you very much, so we’ve paid to have the plumbing done. This included the installation of all tubes for water (including the radiant heating ones), plus the propane piping for the fireplace and oven. Below you can see some of the drain plumbing and all the tubes for the radiant zones where one day (hopefully soon!) a manifold will be mounted.

Larry, Alden and the team at Harbor Plumbing are graciously giving us a $500 donation. They’re also great to work with. Maybe it’s the fact that this is a large project and I’ve only previously hired plumbers for one-off tasks, but it’s nice to have a relationship with professionals like this who really know what they’re doing. The main guy on our project is Alden, and he breaks the stereotype. Contrary to cursory assumption he isn’t afraid to let his emotions show, as he did when he came in to finish a task and found some of my electrical wire run through one of the holes he’d drilled. He’s also strangely intuitive. When I called him up to ask for a training in how to join two pieces of the radiant heat tubing together, he said: “which one did you accidentally cut?”

Once more of the finish work is done we’ll add hydronic baseboards in the basement and an electric boiler to drive it all. The electric boiler looks very promising on paper, we’ve heard great things, and are looking forward to a house with no oil tank.

One interesting plumbing decision we made (contrary to current standard industry practice) was to use copper pipe for cold drinking water to the kitchen faucet instead of the easier, cheaper, more plastic PEX tubing.

Insulation

I’ll be writing a separate post about this, but once the wires and tubes were all in place, we went through and sprayed expanding foam into every nook and cranny. It’s great for insulation and sound proofing, but not so great when you need to run wire or pipe through it. In the pic below you can see the coax wires I installed at the last minute, after the insulation was in. Luckily there was enough room to sneak them in without having to cut out any of the foam.

Ordering Tons of Stuff

We’ve been selecting appliances for a long time, adding them to a spreadsheet with purchase links, details, etc. We decided to get everything from Sears since we’ve had great experience in the past with their small local shop. They don’t carry everything, but can order anything off the website and we don’t have to pay extra for shipping. They also have a lot of sales.

So, one fateful evening we brought our list to them and sat for a couple hours getting everything ordered. It was a one day sale, 15% off certain items of ours that qualified. We also got a discount on all Kenmore items. By using a Sears card we got further discount on some items. And the pièce de résistance was getting the senior’s discount by bringing Laura’s mother with us. All told we came in under our appliance budget and have two refrigerators, oven/range, microwave, range hood, and washer/dryer en route.

We’ve also been painstakingly discovering the specs, selecting, and placing or beginning to place orders for all kinds of other household necessities like kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities, flooring, countertops, doors, two bathtubs, sinks, and light fixtures.

Budget

Ahh, the dreaded budget. It’s quite simple when you look at it without all the zeros, or without all the nitty gritty receipts. Or as if it were Monopoly money.

The gist of it is that with our insurance coverage + our savings and PFDs + donations from last summer + the change from between our couch cushions we’re about $60-$75k short. Originally we were shooting (hoping) for total costs to land around $220k, but as these things go we’re looking at actual expense of around $300k. That includes contracted work plus all the labor done by ourselves and our lovely volunteers.

We’re talking with our bank about making up the difference through a “cash-out refinance”, which means we would refinance our current mortgage into a new mortgage with the extra chunk of change added in. For this to work the house has to appraise at considerably more than the original one, which we’re hoping will be the case since it’s new construction, in a great location, super energy efficient, modern amenities, etc. We figure, if we come out of this with a gently increased mortgage payment, with a longer term, and a brand new (albeit empty) two bedroom house with large basement, that we’ll be off to a good start.

Sometimes I have these fanciful thoughts of what life would be like had we been insured for a proper amount: $500k. This past year and a half would not have been nearly as stressful and draining. Instead of spending all our evenings and weekends working on the house while our daughter is at playdates, we’d have been able to hire an interior designer, a project coordinator, or whoever else is required to make it so that all we have to do is sit back and select colors and answer questions. Alas, if wishes were horses…

Currently In Progress? Drywall

I have hired the drywall master, Doug Stiner, who is a machine. He will drywall anything. If I didn’t tell him to stop at the front door, he’d be drywalling the tree, bushes, and car in the driveway. There’s a lot of “rock” to “hang” in the house, both on the walls and the “lid” (no they don’t call it a ceiling). We’re also using the thicker 5/8″ instead of 1/2″ in a few places, just because thicker is better (or because I ordered the wrong stuff, you decide). Here’s a pic of Meadow and I in our mostly drywalled living room:

What’s Next / Timeline

Next in line: finishing the drywall, getting the boiler installed so we can have proper heat, mudding and taping, painting, installing cabinetry and major appliances, flooring, and then all the trimming out and fixtures.

We’re desperate to be in our house months ago, and have now grown accustomed to the reality that projects like this take longer, and continue to take longer than anyone plans. As such, our new hopes reside on moving in by the end of January, as do those of our insurance company, which is tired of paying our rent.

I’ve been spending my evenings and weekends doing electrical rough-in. This consists of a lot of head scratching, figuring out the best route for the electrical wires, and then boring the holes and stringing the rubber-bound copper throughout the house. My brother-in-law Joe, a journeyman electrician has come through for us big time. He and I have spent the last few weekends pounding it out, a couple more weekends and we’ll be all done. I’ve been learning the electrical theory behind it all, how to “trim out” outlets, and he’s been patiently teaching me and doing the hard parts.

Here’s the bathroom switches from behind. First I plot out where all the wire will run and to and from what. Then drill and pull the cable:

Last weekend Laura and crew painted all 28 4×10 Hardie planks. This is the cement board siding that will go on the back and side of the house (the non visible portions). This weekend we’ll start on painting each individual cedar shingle, which will go on the front and visible facades. Here’s Sarah and Claudia slinging the pink:

Meanwhile Alan’s crew has been busy continuing the weatherproofing mission. We now have an almost completely shingled roof!

I can’t tell you how good it feels to be doing things with my hands. After over a year of plodding along through bureaucracy after bureaucracy and working mostly with information and concepts, I’m finally able to do something that has an immediate effect. With our very limited budget, the task is daunting, but it’s something real now, so I feel more in control of my family’s future than I have since the fire.

Back when Basin Road was known as Basin Cart Road, this photo was taken of the Dull family outside their modest home. They’re sitting at what is now a fenced off area next to the parking lot, but what used to be the town water supply. Shortly after this photo was taken they began construction on the Basin Road Dorm house which contained a number of rooms they rented out to laborers.

It is clear that our neighbors are losing a cherished view. This view, above our old house and past the 10-foot setback, was one they came to love, but don’t own. As they put it in their public statement, one day they got out of bed and instead of the view there was the side of our roof.

Their emotion doesn’t let them see that any house built to modern code on our lot would take away that view. Instead, as shown in the pic in my previous post, the only view they have any legitimate claim over is the one within that 10-foot setback which is filtered by a tree, and as the Planning Commission agreed, the loss of which is not excessive.

Outside of the setback our zoning height limit is 35-feet. Had we sold the lot, any developer would probably have gone higher than what we built, which is only up to 23-feet. And any single family home, with code heighted ceilings, would block the neighbor’s view. Through the city’s code there’s no recourse for anyone wanting to prevent a neighbor from building as high as zoning allows.

It gave me no pleasure to hear our neighbors speak, and I truly feel bad that the needs of my family negatively effect another. It’s not fair that a fire burned the Basin Road house, not fair that it destroyed ours, and not fair that it took another neighbor’s view. But the fact is, the view they cherished is outside of the setback, not part of the equation, and would be blocked by any new structure on the lot.

Keeping my emotions together at the meeting was difficult, especially seeing how many people came out to support us. The room was full of friendly faces, many of whom spoke in our favor. And even more of you signed our letters and wrote your own letters to the Commission. I could tell they read them and the community outpouring certainly made a difference.

So thank you all and we’re looking forward to getting this show back on the road!

Incredulous at their opposition to our plight, I asked if they wanted me to put a miner’s cabin back on the lot and their reply was “well, that’s what you bought.” Even if I tried, the city wouldn’t let me. The old house had 7ft ceilings and a shallow sloped roof that wouldn’t pass modern code.

Their view was such that they could just see the water over our old house, when standing at their window. Bringing our basement and main floor alone up to code is enough to alter their view. Here’s a pic taken from their living room window, you can see our dormer and their view which still includes plenty of sky, mountains, trees:

It’s been a rough year for my family. One thing after another. When my neighbor called at 7AM last week, I didn’t tell him that Meadow had fallen on her head and we’d spent half the night at the ER.

I also assumed he’d be human enough to have a concept of our overall situation since the fire burned our home and all our possessions: broke; descending deeper into debt; house-less; over-stressed; trying to navigate the wiles of the insurance company, bureaucracy of the bank and city, and overall complexity of new home construction. He didn’t. Our conversation began semi-civil and quickly devolved into confused emotional blustering on both our parts. We hung up unresolved. I got in the shower, and came out to find a voicemail from him in which he told me we need to “figure something out before push comes to shove”.

I didn’t return his call, but did do some research. Everyone I talked to, including officials with the city, said we were OK. We had a permit and were following all the rules. The city’s planning department issues permits for just this reason, to make sure everything is as it should be. Indeed our neighbor had gone to the city and reviewed the plans, told them of his concerns, and they turned him away saying there was nothing to be done since the permit was issued.

So instead of continuing pointless emotionally-charged “conversations”, we wrote our neighbors a letter. We tried to explain our family’s necessity for a proper house. We tried to appeal to them to put themselves in our shoes, and then make a gracious decision to let us continue.

We were relatively confident that nothing would come of it other than grumpy neighbor relations, until today when my builder informed me the city issued a stop work order on the “west 10ft of 3rd floor”. Our neighbor’s attorney had sent a letter to the city, causing them to go back over our house plans with a fine tooth comb. And… they found something.

As anyone would, Laura and I are trying to turn this lemon of a situation into lemonade. Our design calls for the addition of a long desired dormer to the top of the house. For financial and structural reasons this dormer will extend from the center of the house all the way to foundation’s edge in both the front and back. Our designed house is the same height, and our dormer the same style, as found on many other Basin Road homes, like this one:

As it was explained to me, the code for our area says you can build up to 35ft so long as you’re 10ft back from the front property line. It’s common for old downtown houses to be directly on the city property line, and the code (written decades after the house was built) says that if your house burns down your rebuild is grandfathered in at the same footprint. The code doesn’t address height very well, but as it was explained to me, essentially, the front 10ft of our house above what previously existed isn’t grandfathered.

When you want to do a “projection” on an existing/grandfathered house you have to get a Conditional Use permit. This is done through a public hearing where the Planning Commission hears testimony from the public, reviews evidence, and makes a decision to allow or deny.

The city failed to catch this when they reviewed our plans back in May. They stamped them and gave us a permit. Had they flagged it, we would have gone through the conditional use process months ago. But they didn’t. In the meantime we’ve been ordering and building in a tight deadline before winter. The windows are paid for. The custom trusses will be here in two days.

The city would probably have let the permit stand as is if it weren’t for the letter from an attorney. So I went to talk with my neighbors. At first it didn’t go so well. I tried to keep myself in check but my entire body was vibrating with rage and I may or may not have used some choice words.

What it boils down to for them is that they can’t just “roll over” and let their view be taken away. They feel they should’ve been part of the design process and that the neighborhood should have a chance to chime in on the dormer. Had the city told us this was required back when it was feasible for us, we would have been happy to oblige. As it is now this ordeal threatens our entire project. If the Conditional Use is denied our entire floor plan has to be redone.

I went back over to the neighbors this morning to plead with them to just let us have our house. They won’t budge. So, another chapter in the Pink House saga begins. Looks like we’ll be having a public hearing in front of the planning commission. I’m curious what the community and other neighbors will have to say.

Not pictured: cedar shingle siding. As you can see from the latest pics in the slideshow. Things are moving right along!

Now we’re looking on to framing the internal walls, the roof, siding, windows, and then some.

Also, I’d just like to say for the record how wonderful it is hearing from everyone who walks on Basin Rd everyday and is seeing the house built first hand. Laura, Meadow, and I aren’t alone in our excitement at seeing something physical after the past year’s turmoil.

Once the buttress wall and lingering foundation repairs were squared away, Alan’s team was able to put up the main beams. One runs the width of the house and many more form the perimeter.

Beams in place, the builders were able to create a plumb and level square on top of a wonky foundation. Once that square was made, they wasted no time getting the floor joists in:

Once the old foundation was cut according to plan, plumbing was laid and concrete poored over it. Talk about installations you can’t adjust once they’re done!

Then the real fun began:

This buttress wall serves multiple purposes. Since it’s perpendicular to the rear foundation retaining wall it will help keep the hillside at bay. Since it’s pretty much right in the center of the floorplan, it will be the support on which much of the main floor sits. The previous floor in the pink house was held up by columns, which broke up the downstairs space in an odd way. This buttress solution was designed by our engineer and our draftsman designed around it so it will flow with the floorplan. The cutout you see in it will be where the staircase descends from the main floor to basement.

This list contains over half of the items lost in the fire and represents hours of time. It really only begins the process of claiming our policy coverage for possessions and we still have the other half to finish, but as Mary Poppins says “well begun is half done.”

For nearly a year now we’ve been using a spreadsheet to list everything item by item, line by line, estimating costs and recording important details in the correct columns (so Allstate doesn’t confuse a $400 Milwaukee drill with a $4 Milwaukee beer).