Before we get started

As my previous post indicated, we are ready to go. We went up to the lot yesterday and took some photos that are meant to remind us a year from now what the lot looked like before we started building. It was a bit cloudy yesterday, but hopefully the photos still provide a good perspective of what it looks like. We are sure that we won't be able to remember 2 or 3 years down the road that all this started with a pile of dirt. Here are the photos:

From the street:

From South West:

From North:

From North East:

From East:

Ready to begin construction

It's been a while with no posts on the blog. But that doesn't mean that there has been no activity. We are now ready to begin construction. The past 24 months have been spent on:

Design and Architecture:
We have been working with an architectural firm in Cleveland, OH and finalized our design around August 2015. We decided to stay true to our original design concepts that included a Bauhaus inspired exterior design, open interior floor plan, large outdoor living space that integrates with the interior, highly insulated and air-tight wall and ceiling construction, no fossil fuels used in the house, and passive solar concepts to minimize the energy load to heat and cool.

Our building envelope will be a 2"x8" advanced framed stud construction filled with 7.5" Roxul R-30 mineral wool batt insulation. On the interior there will be an additional 1.5" wall cavity for running electrical and plumbing without disturbing the core insulated wall cavity. On the exterior we will use a weather and air tight system from Huber called the ZIP-system. All joints will be taped to provide an efficient outer shell.

Wall assembly:

Our overall design includes a two-story main house, a 3-car garage and a small second unit. The exterior will all be white smooth stucco and we feel like we were able to create a modern, unique and appealing (at least to us) design.

Front view from street:

View from the back of the house:

Building permit:
The building permit process took approximately 8-9 weeks - exactly as the county had predicted. We received 8-10 small design comments back after 8 weeks of review and our architect and engineers quickly made the updates so we had our building permit in hand roughly 9 weeks after the initial submission.

Construction loan:
We have now secured the construction financing as well. It has been a long process with lots of paperwork, appraisals, and the banks clearly put on a lot more scrutiny in lending nowadays - perfectly understandable after the last financial crisis, but still a bit painful from time to time. On 12/31/15 Ulla and I went to the title company and signed everything. The contractor now has the green light to begin construction. It has started raining in Northern California now, so the first task is to excavate a little bit on Monday 1/4/16 and determine if the soil is dry enough to start the rough grading and the slab foundation.