Recently, the government declared a state of emergency due to drought conditions here in California. I've been joking that I know exactly when it'll start raining and that that'll be when i get a start date for my project. Sure enough, after being dry all winter, this past week in early February there was a shift off the coast in weather conditions and it's been raining since. Coincidence that my start date is 2/17? I don't think so.. This past weekend we got 21" of rain over the weekend in some areas and looking ahead at the forecast there is more rain coming.. Ah well!
Preparing to start..
A month or so I received word that the town's building department had accepted our response to the comments and officially accepted the plans. I was told to go to the town to draw permits. The builder and I met there and to my shock I was asked to pay $13,044.18, which is the remaining amount owed of $15,700. Up until now i'd been loosely assuming that permits would at best run me around $9,000 so what the hell!?
Ultimately, the permit related fees appear to only be a bit over $7,000. The rest that I wasn't accounting for mostly centered around plan check fees and impact fees:
1. $1,832.28 because they got the sqft wrong the first time around and there was some additional sqft on the plans that i had to pay an impact fee for.
2. $1,408.95 in plan check fees.. this is what they charge you to check your plans.
3. $1,520.00 a residential road impact fee
4. $660.40 for a California Title 24 fee (part 2?)
For those interested, here is the kind of information that the town gives you.. Note that I had no real way to anticipate what i'd be hit with. This was by a long shot the most difficult area to estimate and budget. The town will give you a list of all their fees but not break down which ones will be applicable to you in part because they really won't know until they review your plans and see what you're doing at which point it'll be time to bill you for them. The way that I originally estimated my permit fees was to look up other similar project's online to see what they got charged figuring it'd be roughly similar.
Building Schedule & Contract
My builder did finally get me a contract. Reviewing it I realize I have no real idea what is reasonable to go into such a contract since i've never seen one before. It is basically made up of describing the work to be done along with a bunch of provisions basically designed to protect him or to set a price and process on changes. For the most part it seemed ok to me and in poking around online I didn't notice anything that alarmed me per say. But there is a nagging feeling when reading through it that you don't really know what to look for and that you're basically relying on those references who said they had a good experience. I focused on the online information that I could find as to what was reasonable contractually, signed it, and sent it in.
The basic schedule was Demo would take a week, foundation and framing a couple of months, then all the rest including plumbing, electrical eta for an estimated time frame of 4-6 months. Contractually there was even a daily clause punishing him $200/day if he's late.
His draw schedule mostly has him receiving money as work completes. There was the $5,000 up front to have him draft the schedule and contract and he asked for $35,000 to start, but the rest is due after various phases of work complete. The foundation, the framing, various finishings, and then one payment at project completion.
Moving out..
Packing is always fun (not). It's only then that you realize how much stuff you have and that you could probably live with buying less. Since my property has a detached garage and since I can't afford to redo the garage yet, I am moving everything I own into the garage for the duration of the project.
I nailed up the garage windows after buying wood from home depot, I installed a deadbolt on garage's door, and I installed a lock on the garage door itself to secure things better from theft. I also found and purchased a battery powered alarm which actually works superbly for so little money. With lithium AA batteries it should last more then 6 months easily..
The movers showed up and moved my things into the detached garage in about 2 hours. Funny how it took me the better part of a day or two to box all that up. Somehow that just seems unfair.. :)
Demolition
Once the contract was signed things moved fast. The site fence and toilet was set up and he told me that demo would start next week. Sure enough, after a day of delay so that he could talk to the inspector about what needed to be surgically preserved, off they went..
It only took a day for them to gut the interior. All the counters, toilets, bathtubs, ceiling fans, etc were removed. The drywall and plaster was yanked out. I poked my head into the back door and inside all that was left is framing. Pretty surreal..
It only took about 1.5 more days to remove the whole roof structure, part of the siding, some things they missed inside, and to clean up. They left me a small pile of things that i asked them not to toss out because I planned to reuse them after the renovation or to sell them. Here is where things stand after only 1 week..
