Final building permit

Erin says: We've passed final inspection. Let's all stop and say Cheers to that! We do still have a few odds and ends, but they really are just a few, and we're fully living in our new space. Other than the backyard, my favorite area is actually our large hallway. It's a fantastic place to play, and I'm really loving the concrete floors. I'm sure as our little ones get older and I actually am able to spend an entire night in our master bedroom I'll love it, too!

Now on to my wrap-up:

Sixteen months. That's how long our 1200 sq. ft. addition took. Never in my wildest imaginings did I think it could get that bad. It would be easy to say that we have an incompetent contractor, or terrible weather, but neither of those is true. Here are a few things I've learned, for those of you out there who are thinking about embarking on construction or are in the midst of it.

• Do whatever you can to keep a good relationship with your contractor. Vent to your mom, your dog, your best friend, but try to keep things cordial with the guy in charge. It'll take you a long way.
• But. Call him at least every other day if you haven't heard from him. I think one thing that went wrong in our project was way too much downtime. We weren't aggressive enough in making sure that we were at the top of the list. We lost weeks and weeks in November, December and January. When I made it my goal to start calling him every day to check in, guess what? Things kept moving.
• It really, really helps if you trust your contractor/architect's taste. There are so many little things to pick out, and we were lucky that we could trust their taste. With a new baby and a three-year-old, we didn't have a lot of time to research every last grout color.
• Don't underestimate the mental toll. It was really, really hard to be home with kids while this was happening. Imagine random workmen wandering around outside in your yard at 6:30 in the morning, clearly waiting to get in. And you didn't know they were coming. And they're just wondering, do you know what color this trim is supposed to be? Now multiply that by 400 days or so, and add in the trucks blocking your driveway, the constant dust on every surface, the loss of any outdoor play area, and oh, let's not forget the noise. Would it have been better if we had just moved out? Perhaps, but then our budget would have been completely blown, since we went so far over schedule.
• Keep a spreadsheet of expenses. We thought we were saving money by, say, picking way less expensive tile than was budgeted, but somehow that "extra" money always went to something else, and we still ended up over budget.
• Don't do it. And I'm only kind of kidding. Honestly, I wish we had looked around at what was on the market a little bit before we did this. The house is growing on me, but it's going to take me a long time to forget the pain.

But stay tuned -- we'll continue to update; JP is planning a punch list extravaganza. I'm looking forward to our next solar power bill (especially since it's been over 100 degrees here this week), and I'm still angling for an orange front door. After property taxes, that's next. Thanks for joining us on our journey.
-Erin

Return of the Inspector

The inspector is expected to arrive in ten minutes. We seem to have fixed everything that was wrong since the last inspection. We'll post some photos this weekend of what that amounts to.

The main things that have happened are: dimmer switches got installed two days ago for all the can lights, the circuits are all labeled on the fuseboxes, and four paving stones were placed under the main electrical box outside. This meant replanting our parsley and rosemary, incidentally.

Also, as a continued follow-up on the solar panel cleaning, we've been churning out around twelve kilowatt hours a day. Go Sun!

Washing the solar panels

Think of all the things you could be doing right now other than looking at pictures of a guy washing his solar panels!

Dusty panels

Everything finally got submitted for our solar rebate, and we passed the solar inspection! I was up on the roof with John Joyce of Burbank Water & Power when I realized why our daily output had dropped from around thirteen kilowatt hours to fewer than seven -- dust.

So, I bought a giant squeegee, hauled a hose up on the roof and cleaned them all off yesterday morning. By the end of the day we were back up to around twelve.

Final inspection today?

We've been told the final inspection for Certificate of Occupancy is scheduled for today. Angel got the stair rails up last week, which was the last thing needed before the inspection, I think.

We need to walk around and make a punch list to figure out what zillion little things remain that aren't for the C of O, but need to get done. Stuff like swapping the mirrors in the bathrooms, fixing the cracked glass wall in the shower, screwing down the drain covers in the showers, moving the cable drop point, blah, blah, blah.

I've also got a call in to Burbank Water and Power to see if everything has finally been submitted by California Solar for the reimbursement.

Solar eclipse

We've been having lots of trouble getting the company who installed our solar panels (California Solar) to turn in the correct paperwork to Burbank Water & Power.

This paperwork is needed before we can get our inspection.

We need to pass inspection before we can see the correct power consumption on our electric bill.

We also can't get our rebate until the paperwork is done. It's a large rebate.

We aren't happy.

Here's what we've learned a little too late: If you pay the company doing your solar the full amount, they don't have much motivation to process paperwork. If you hold back the amount of the rebate check, they turn things in quickly.

Feeling out the space

We've started to move a few things into the new part of the house and spend some time back there. We love it. We put the daybed and a small table in the guest bedroom. Ronan and I have been playing LEGO soccer back there while Beatrix toddles around -- it's fantastic to throw open the glass wall and live indoor/outdoor.

We aren't finished yet, but it sure is starting to feel real.

In more technical update news, the solar inspection is going on right now, hopefully that goes well and they officially hook our meter into the billing mechanism. We've been pumping solar into Burbank's batteries for a month now, without seeing any benefit on our bill.

The plumber's son said he'd have the washer/dryer moved out to the laundry room by next week. The side of the pantry where they will vacate from is to become my espresso bar. I'm a bit of an espresso fanatic and I can't wait to have a proper home for my machine and grinder.

We need to run out and buy some exterior and interior lighting fixtures before the inspection. I kind of like these:

The day the power meter stood still

They fired up the solar panels and the regular power consumption meter slowed to a crawl. Hurray for solar! Hurray for planet earth!!

Also of interest: the solar power meter/inverter/box/thing is from Germany and its name is Sunny Boy. We still haven't figured it all out, but it has a digital readout for how much energy you've produced from the sun that day and over all time. If any clever engineers out there can figure out how I can get a live feed of that info onto a web page I'd love to do so.

Solar panels in a holding pattern

Here they waited, moments before they became self-aware, assembled themselves into a larger, more powerful collective panel array, and hovered up to the roof to lie dormant, supplying us with precious energy until the day of their reckoning arrives and they in turn enslave us all. Sorry.

Loads of stuff

There have been lots of things happening at the house over the last few days:

• The painters have primed and prepped the interior of the addition.
• They're sanding window sills and other trim and have been taping off the front porch to prime and paint out there.
• We've finalized the trim color to Dunn Edwards's Iron Fixture:

• The plumber moved the water heater and removed it's housing so the back wall can be stuccoed.
• The siding is almost entirely done, just a small section remains to be done over the balcony.
  
• The railing has been installed on the balcony and looks very cool (despite having changed the design from horizontal to vertical rails to avoid the whole "toddlers think it's a ladder" issue).
• The balcony floor has been sealed with some noxious smelling stuff.
• The solar guys are installing the solar panels. Erin said she took some pictures of the panels before they were hoisted up, so I'll post those later.

It's very exciting to see so much happening all at once.

update:

• Concrete patching to fix a plumbing mistake from eight months ago will happen this week.
• Cleaning, sandblasting, and sealing the interior concrete floor is scheduled to begin next week.
  

Six Weeks?!

J.D. thinks that the house will be done in about six weeks. That would be awesome, as I'd been envisioning twice that.

We passed the latest stucco inspection two weeks ago; there's no clear reason why that crew hasn't come to finish it yet.

The guys hanging the siding say they'll be working this weekend and next and then be done.

We cut the $4000 interior door budget in half by going with plain solid core doors @ $60 (and hollow on closets @ $40) instead of the single-panel doors with square sticking. Did anyone out there know that interior doors cost so much? Around $150 a door for the panel doors, pre-hanging adds another $120-ish. We're doing 13 doors.

Other victims of the eleventh-hour budget reality check include:

• Pocket doors for the studio. Gone for now, though the pockets are in place, hidden under drywall.
  
• Underfloor radiant heating in the master bathroom. Gone. We live in Southern California, so we won't miss it that much.
  
• Glass panel doors for the bathrooms and laundry. Gone.
  

I'll reserve writing a post-mortem until things are, well, post-mortem, but I will reflect on the budget for a moment:

For one thing, we intended to be more involved with selecting less expensive "allowance items" than those in the contract, but having small children left little time for that research.

For another, we added things (change orders, in contractor-speak) like solar power, can lights, and a skylight.

Lastly, the unexpected $8000 city mandated fire sprinkler system didn't help matters.

Solarcap tiles

These nifty tiles are solar powered and covetous. At around $170 ea. I won't be doing the whole courtyard in them, but maybe a nice accent. Could also help small aircraft land at our house.

Design meeting at Leanarch

Erin writes:

We visited the LeanArch offices for a design meeting last week. Cool office space, but no air conditioning! It was hot.

But now on to more relevant points. I guess I was kind of expecting one of those HGTV design boards with all the sample colors and tiles neatly arrayed. But it's never quite that easy, is it? James had tons of cool samples, and told us we have to decide if we're going with natural colors, or synthetic.

Hmmm. My kitchen (orange, lime green and blue) is definitely synthetic. JP and I have decided that the exterior of the stair tower will be orange. And that will be carried over into either the front door or trim. We want the master bath to be calm and spa-like. So, do orange exterior and spa interior equal a natural theme? I guess there are things in nature that are orange, right? Like leaves changing color! Oranges, of course. And... sea anemones or something.

We're 99% decided on going with the solar panels. There was a great article in the LA Times this weekend about how solar power adds to resale value in Southern California. Getting our energy bill yesterday helped, too. Plus, according to the BP Solar website, it's the equivalent of planting an acre of trees and will eliminate the production of thousands of pounds of CO2.

It's just the right thing to do.

Oh, and lastly I just want to give a shout out to our contractor, JD. Nothing rattles him. Thank god. As you've read, there's enough drama from all the subs, so it's nice to have the guy in charge be unflappable. Plus there's nothing he doesn't know. I'm glad he's on the job, even if I'm worried about his cellphone earpiece becoming permanently attached to his head.

Solar electricity

We just got a quote for doing photovoltaic solar cells on the roof. Everything looks good as far as south facing clearance goes, and there are a bunch of tax breaks and rebates that will bring the cost within reach.
The solar energy will be connected to the grid in a scheme called "net-metering", which means you don't need batteries. Instead, you still draw from the grid if your consumption outpaces the amount of solar electricity generated. If your solar output is greater than your consumption your meter spins backwards. This energy is bankable throughout the year, but resets to zero annually.

Fun stairs

I'd love to know why all stairs don't have a slide built next to them. This is great fun.

Here's the writeup from daddytypes.com:
Minimalist architect Alex Michaelis first made news when he bought a 4,000-sf vacant lot in London for £750,000. (Apparently, several centuries of concentrated building tends to deplete a city's supply of vacant lots.) Then, because local zoning boards restricted him from building anything higher than the 6-foot high wall around the property, [??!?] he designed the whole house to be underground. And incredibly eco-friendly, from the self-sustaining water and heating systems to the insulated walls, solar panels, and grass roof.

Oh, and it's beautiful, modern, and light-filled, thanks to carefully positioned windows, lightwells, skylights, reflections off of the swimming pool, and thanks to painting every built surface a blazing white...

Oh, and it's a kid's paradise, with a climbing wall, a built-in slide, play terraces, and wide open playspaces for his three (four?) kids. Oh, and the pool's optimized for kid-sized swimmers, not adults. It all adds up to make them the most popular hippie mole people in their school.