More delays!

Now the foundation and other digging is scheduled to start on May 17th.

We're waiting for our archeological permit. We thought we had it but apparently not. Although we knew that building on the beach would be complicated, we had no idea that just getting underway would take so long.

Meanwhile in our Seattle home we're finishing up a little remodel to allow us to rent out the basement. We have two lovely tenants who are excited about being here, sharing the backyard, and taking care of Maki and the house when we travel. This  makes selling the house less urgent. Hooray!

So we're enjoying our mutant tulip

and a sweet pair of ducks I just shot- (oooh... with a camera!) Perched on our roof, ready to settle in on our neighbor's front yard.

Enjoying the garden

And just being lazy!

A little setback

We had hoped to go up to Camano today to photograph the digging of the foundation,  (there's a 7x14 bump out for the guest bedroom). Alas the county has thrown us another curveball. We need to get a permit to allow the work to continue if the archeologist should find buried skeletal remains. Apparently the comment period will end May 7th so we should be rolling shortly after then.

The good news is that this allows us to concentrate on the downstairs project here in Seattle. We're getting ready to rent out the basement. We already have a tenant, thanks to Amy. She'll be moving in May 19th. Meanwhile we're putting appliances in the laundry room which becomes the apartment kitchen. We're also putting a washer and dryer on the upper level, replacing  carpet, and  adding outside lighting. There has been a lot of downsizing to make this happen and it feels good to shed our unneeded stuff.

The Agony and the Ecstasy and Whatever's In Between

OK, OK, I'm cribbing a title line, but that's how we feel.

We've been trying to build a home on Camano Island for over two years now.

About 7 weeks ago, after our permit had been with Island County Planning for 7 months, they told us they'd come to a decision. But they wouldn't tell us what it was. And they wouldn't tell us when they could tell us.

We'd been struggling with this Planning Department for a long time. Ever feel like you badly need to just break something? Yeah. Friends would ask how things were going, and we'd just shrug our shoulders. At one point we considered having T-shirts made with the words "No, not yet!" on the front.

Finally, we received their determination. It was a page long and said we could build (Yay!) but we had to raise our foundation height 2" because we were in a brand-new determined flood plain. Two inches.

We were pretty invested at this point, so we had drawings redone and reengineered for the new foundation extension and flooring.

Then, with happy hearts (see previous posts and pics), we went off to empty out the house so it could be deconstructed and we could begin building our new home.

We spent several days emptying everything out of the house. Huge props to our adult offspring and SOs for pitching in with a will - we couldnt' have done it without them. We gave a LOT of stuff away and stuffed everything else into a heated storage unit.

Yesterday, after all this work, we received word from Island County Planning that they'd made an error - we needed to raise the foundation 2 FEET, not 2 INCHES. This was based on a pre-emptive US Army Corps of Engineers survey that had been done that contradicted the FEMA survey. See how weird this shit can get?

After some conversation, Bonney and I realized we couldn't build the foundation 2 feet higher - it would look incredibly stupid and ugly. It would also have way too many stairs for a home where we hoped to live to a ripe old age.

When I tell you that Bonney was in tears, I also tell you that this was breaking my heart.

We went to bed. Slept poorly, woke early, sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and eating buttered toast (a sovereign remedy for most ailments). Then we got a call from our builder; our architect had rung in on this. As it happens, the Corps of Engineers used an incorrect datum point for their survey.

The result? We didn't have to raise our foundation 2 feet. We didn't even have to raise it 2 inches.

You might think we'd be dancing in the streets - and we *do* like to dance - but we're really feeling whipsawed. On my part, I just don't know how I feel, I'm only mildly glad that we'll be able to build our home and am still infuriated at a county planning division that took over 200 days and much heartache to issue a permit. Unlike in the private sector, we have very little recourse outside the courts to recover any of the money we spent due to Island County Planning's errors.

OK, we're going for a walk. If you see a couple walking in Seattle holding hands spontaneously burst into a few steps of Merengue - it's probably us!