Biologist on site!
The county biologist was at our lot on
Monday, with Hardy of The Planning Associates, to determine if we had
any “species of interest”. The general vicinity of our lot is
considered “100% Conservation” by the county (code words for they
want to prevent you from using as much of your own land as they can
without paying for it). Hardy told us that we would just have to show
that our project was not going to disturb the oak trees on the lot.
The oak trees are the main reason (besides the view) we liked the lot
in the first place and we had not planned on disturbing them. We do,
however, now have to get the GPS coordinates for all the buildings to
“show” that we are true to our word. What a pain. :(
So now we need to get a surveyor out
with an accurate GPS device to “show” we are not disturbing the
oak trees (as if four kids and three dogs are not going to have an
impact :)).
More Bids...Finally!
After two weeks of waiting impatiently
for bids to get back to us (we are teachers, we have NO IDEA how long
it takes to write up a bid for framing) I called Jennifer at Reliable
Lumber of Huntington Beach. She had originally recommended three of
the contractors we contacted. She straightened us out about the
length of time it was taking to get responses from the various
contractors. We were expecting a much faster turn around time that is
standard for the industry.
We did however, receive our first bid
for the framing (labor and materials) Today. This was, along with the
foundation, the bid we were most nervous about. Steve Knight, of
Knight Builders, got back to us within 10 days (we played phone tag
for a number of days) and was highly recommended by Jennifer at
Reliable Lumber. His bid came in just slightly above our
guesstimate...very reassuring that we can continue with the build. We
are still waiting for three other bids.
To submit or not to submit...
We need to submit the finished house
(and barn!) plans before the end of the calendar year in order to
avoid the new code cycle at the county building and safety
department. With the end of the year less than three weeks away it is
now time to “fish or cut bait”! Having received the framing and
the foundation bids which were within budget, we are feeling much
more comfortable submitting the plans and moving forward. We will be
meeting with Jim Irvin again next week after the engineering is done
on the barn and we will ask him to submit the plans asap.
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