Remodel

Had an impromptu meeting on-site today as they had electricians and plumbing folks there and ran into a few problems.

So our tiny kitchen got it's first remodel. We drew it out on the floor. I'm sure it'll be fine. Today, it felt challenging though. It felt as if the little storage we had already was going right out the window. It felt like they still don't understand our vision.

However, progress is being made. Siding has been ordered (the cedar has already been delivered, which is crazy). We picked out exterior doors and exterior lights, shower and kitchen faucets, and house numbers (yay!) last Thursday. Next up is the bathroom vanity and sink, I suspect.

Windows and Walls and Stairs, oh my!

I'll admit I don't have a lot of positivity in me right now, but I wanted to share the recent photos. There is progress being made. Albeit in super slow motion.

In the event you didn't notice, it's mid-October. I'm told we're at least 2-3 weeks out for dry wall. The bedroom shrunk by 10 inches this week. I don't trust measurements to get a bid on closet work. Our kitchen guy can't start building off-site because he can't trust the measurements we gave him, so he wants to wait until the drywall is up. Literally every inch in this house matters, which is something the construction crew doesn't seem to get or at least care about.

Tile has been ordered. Should be all ready in a few weeks, which doesn't matter because we're no where close to being able to install it. I'm frustrated and overwhelmed, which I'm sure you gathered already. I have no idea how entire houses can be built in a matter of weeks and our tiny little house has taken 8 weeks to get this far. 

I emailed our end loan provider today to find out what their timeline looks like to close. If it's 60 days like a normal closing, we're already too late since I'm sure we don't have lien releases, and we certainly can't set an appraisal date. We already turned in our notice to say we would be out by the end of the calendar year since we have to give 60 days notice, and we turned it in with our October rent check. 

That's all I have for you today. Allegedly we're supposed to have a meeting next week to talk about timeline for all the finishing related items we're apparently responsible for, but our contractor is on vacation for the 2nd time since this build started so I can't even get confirmation of the meeting date and time. 

Brent tells me to take deep breaths, and it'll be fine. We'll see.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

We’re getting closer to electricity.

We have windows.

The view from the rooftop, doesn’t suck.

However, Brent met someone to get a quote on a fence today, and we learned that (once again) we didn’t get all the information. Can’t put a privacy fence in front of our house. The front yard fence can only be 3 feet tall. (What good is a 3 foot fall fence?!) Unfortunately, the majority of our yard is the “front” yard because of how we had to have the house set-back to “match” so I’m not really sure where that leaves us.

 We’ll be able to put up something to contain the dog – even if it is short and does nothing for privacy on this corner lot near two busy streets. The options for the hot tub aren’t looking too good though.

For now, we wait to see what the fence guy comes back with and dread what the next surprise will be. Lesson learned, universe, lesson learned.

An Upstairs with a View!

Well, we officially have an upstairs! That was a fun to actually get to walk up the stairs and look out where the windows will be during our meeting with our contractor yesterday.

Let me tell you. I thought this was going to be the fun part. I knew there would be a lot of decisions. Decisions I didn’t even realize I would need to think about it, but this is so much more than that.

I feel like so many of the ideas we had for this house were lost when working with Dunwoody fell through, and that’s disappointing.

Living in a tiny house, as we keep saying, is all about having multi-functional, smartly-built spaces. Yet yesterday, we were so excited to see the upstairs that, until I was laying in bed trying not to stress, I didn’t even realize that there was no space under the stairs for the drawers we had reminded them about so recently.

I take part of the blame. We let our architect draw up fake interior plans (sort of) because we wanted the students to be able to have so much freedom to create ideas that we couldn’t find on google. We didn’t want their brains to automatically go in a certain direction. Yet when things fell apart, it didn’t occur to us that we needed to lock everything down on paper. That was our mistake. 

So now I am focusing on letting go on what might have been, and instead focusing on getting the house done so we can move in by the end of the year. It won’t be perfect. There might very well be a remodel in our future, but at this moment, I have to be okay with that, because we’re out of time (due to how long everything took) and money (because of how much we’ve already paid out of pocket) and patience (I just can’t repeat myself any more).

It’ll be a good house. It’ll be unique. One of a kind. The first of the tiny houses in Minneapolis’ tiniest neighborhood. But it won’t really be our dream house, but it’s as close as we're going to get right now.

 

Walls!

It's crazy to see things change every day.

Garage walls are up!

We have a meeting with our contractor next week to talk about where outlets should be place. So much to think about!

Fast and Furious

Well in a dramatic contrast to how this project has gone up until this point, work is full steam ahead. The lot looks different every time we see it! It actually looks like a house now!

This weekend we picked out ceiling fans and special ordered a sink (Brent says a little piece of his childhood died when we did that). Adulthood at its finest.

Tonight we meet with someone else about cabinets, and in the next couple weeks we'll meet with the contractor to place outlets and things.

It is seeming more real now - that's for sure!

And we're back!

We were on vacation September 1-11. Talk about slightly stressful timing. It ended up being 100% fine.

Thursday the 1st they laid they poured concrete.

However, then the weather quit cooperating. It was a very rainy week we were gone in Minneapolis when we were gone, and since the build team hadn't brought in all their equipment I think they opted out of playing in our mud lawn.

However, the lumber was delivered yesterday morning so if they didn't start framing yesterday, I'm sure they will today.

We're still talking to people trying to figure out all the interior stuff. I thought we had made a connection with someone to do some cabinet work with repurposed wood, but that didn't work out. However, we have a meeting next week, and I'm hopeful that will get us on the right track!

 In other news, Beltrami Neighborhood Council had the ribbon cutting ceremony on Monday for their new park pavilion. We were able to thank Vanessa from the Neighborhood Council and Jacob Frey, our City Council Member, for all their help in getting to this point. Napa also had her first trip to Beltrami Park. Pretty sure she's ready to move right in, though she'll miss all her squirrel friends in Loring Park.

It Just Got Real

In case there was any doubt that any of this was real, I think we can officially say we are building a house!

The construction crew has clearly hit the ground running. 

Electric and sewer was first, then foundation.

Framing will be up next

To think that we were sitting there on Sunday looking at an empty lot.

I'm going to say this blog is about to get a lot more interesting! Thanks for sticking with us through the not-so-fun part.

Hang on Tight!

Here we go. It's happening. For real. And it's going to be fast and furious (or so it seems).

The final tree was cut down yesterday, stumps ground out and brush picked up.

Sewer lines and electric will start being laid on Monday. Then comes the concrete.

Can you even believe it?!

I can't. I think our contractor might have been just as excited as us to finally get the green light! 

Am I Dreaming?

I received an email last night from the city council member covering Beltrami neighborhood. The subject line was, "You have been approved!" I clicked on the email and this is what it said.

We hadn't heard from our contractor so this came as quite a surprise. Turns out it was true. We have a building permit to build our house!

This blog is about to get a lot more interesting!

Heavy Lifting

I know, I know, I'm sure you're wondering where on earth my updates are if we're going to be moving into a house in 6 months. It's a fair question, but I can't deal with that today. The short version, we are in permit/zoning hell. The long version will have to wait until we are through it, when my emotional state is a little better.

However, in the meantime, we have been busy with yard work. Let's be honest, we really thought we would be off the hook when it came to mowing the lawn this summer. We thought it would be all torn up. Wrong.

Regardless, we knew there was a broken chain link fence that needed to be taken down. That fence only went around part of the lot (we have no idea what the former owners were thinking). Anyway you look at it, this lot has been in rough shape for quite some time. Admittedly, we didn't have any idea how big this project was when we started it. However, as we got into it, we quickly realized that there were actual trees growing through the fence (not tiny trees, 5 inch diameter trees).

However, thanks to great help from family and friends, we were able to knock it out. The results are like night and day. I will admit I was a little nervous we were going to have some angry neighbors due to how terrible it all looked. They couldn't have been nicer when they us there working. Plus we cut down a bush that was blocking the view when coming out of the alley - that definitely made people happy.

Before: 

  

During:

  

After: 

Next up is some more tree trimming and tree removal on the site of the actual house (you know, assuming we ever get approval to build it). If we don't, there could soon be a beautiful lot for sale. Baby steps, right? That's what I keep telling myself anyway.

The Next (of hopefully many more) Miracles

Well friends, this update has been a long time coming (strap in, it's a long one). I last posted that we had a clean title. Honestly, that was a great news. However, we were a little doubtful as to what would come next (you could probably round that up to a lot doubtful). We pretty much told no one what we were working on because having to follow-up with bad news was something we just couldn't go through again.

The biggest hurdle has been the money piece. Over the year, we have talked to 13 banks. Yes, you read that right, THIRTEEN. We had a new bank in place for the construction loan. When things fell apart at Bell Mortgage last spring, Dave Hill (who I still highly recommend to anyone buying a traditional home or just looking to access your situation for future buying) reached out to his contact at Star Bank in Eden Prairie. They said they would be willing to do our construction loan if we could find an end loan provider. If only we knew then what we know now, we might have realized that what we were asked to do was NOT an easy task. This is where the 13 banks come in.

Each of those 13 banks was unwilling to sign the end loan on our tiny house because it "wouldn't hold it's value on the secondary market." That's code for when you two (who have excellent credit) default on your loan and foreclose on your house, we won't be able to resell it. Don't even get me started on this - why do we even HAVE credit then?! I digress.

We were ready to quit. We emailed our fabulous contractor and architect team and broke the bad news. We had run out of options and were pushing pause on the project, maybe indefinitely. But John replied and asked if we had tried Stonebridge Bank. That was, miraculously, not one of the banks we had contacted so he provided a name, and I sent an email. I'll admit, we weren't optimistic. We maybe weren't even that nice to the person who emailed us back. We didn't want to fill out yet another credit application (and get yet another notice in the mail saying that we had too may credit inquiries over the last 18 months) unless we knew that the type of house we were building was an option for their underwriters. Eventually, we received a pre-approval letter from them stating they would take over our loan once construction was finished. To say we were filled with disbelief may be an understatement, but after a little bit more back and forth and some work to get last year's appraisal re-assigned, there we were - ready to set a closing date for the construction loan. Then the date was set for April 18th. April 18th arrived, no emails about pushing it back. Felt unreal. We were waiting for the bottom to fall out...again. It didn't. We signed the loan one week ago today, which if you follow either of us on Twitter, you may have known already.

So today we gathered our fearless team together again. Contractor and his Project Manager, Architect and us. Talking about our plan but for real this time. I feel as though the next few weeks will seem slow as we wait for the permit process to be completed (because let's be real, anytime this house has needed someone else's approval there has been a hang up), but then all of a sudden we'll be picking out windows and doors and all those other things.

Now I guess you could call us cautiously optimistic because we really are. It's been a long, long road but perhaps this story will actually have a happy ending after all. Thanks for sticking with us!

A Glimmer of Hope... Finally!

I'm sure you were wondering if I was ever going to post again. I was honestly beginning to wonder myself.

The good news is we finally have a clean title!

The short version of how we got here:

We had a court date scheduled for early December but it got postponed multiple times because they were unable to serve papers to the next of kin for the guy who died but still had a contact on our lot. Why were they unable to serve papers you ask? Well, that's a funny story. The next of kin is in fact a convicted murderer serving a very long sentence in prison. You would have thought it would make serving papers easier since you know exactly where he is, but it didn't. Regardless, on December 31st the judge finally gave the stamp of approval to cancel the contact and a couple weeks ago we got the document in the mail, which means we can resume the process of securing financing.

So not a huge leap forward, but certainly a very important step!

I guess this means we'll have to shovel the sidewalk now! A small price to pay for finally, legally owning our lot!