Basement

We are traveling and won't be home until tomorrow afternoon. They are busy building the forms for the foundation walls. My Dad doesn't have a camera because Mom took it to Montrose with her and I forgot to leave mine for him, but we'll get pictures on Thursday. They will pour the concrete on Monday, January 5.

Hole!

They finished digging the hole for the basement today. They were out getting ready to pour the footings. The concrete truck will be there at 2:30 tomorrow.

I feel bad that they are working on Christmas eve, so I am making a bunch of goodies and will take out some hot coffee and cookies for them.

Big Diggers

They actually started digging today. It wasn't as warm as Wayne had hoped, but they had 2 machines out there digging the hole. One front end loader and a trackhoe. This process dictated that they have 2 machines and 2 people, rather than the first attempt which would have been just one person and one machine. I feel good that Wayne wants to get it right, even though this is a more expensive option.

Tomorrow they will finish digging and then pour the footings. Wednesday they plan to start the foundation. Wow, this is fun.


Here's the progress:

The Current Schedule

Wayne really wanted to get started again today, but the weather for the weekend is looking really cold again. They didn't want the hole to sit for over the weekend, so have decided on the following schedule:

Monday, December 22: Digging for basement
Wednesday, December 24: Pour footings
Give the long Christmas weekend for the footings to dry
Monday, December 29: Start putting in forms for the foundation walls

We won't be here when they start doing the forms, we are leaving December 26 for North Dakota, so Bumpa and Grammie will have specific instructions on where to take the pictures during the week we are gone.

We are not closing on the construction loan tomorrow (Friday) because there are a few last things the bank needs. We have been approved, I guess they're just finishing their files. I don't know when we will close, perhaps Monday, but I'll need to call them. It's ok, because we have another form of funds we are using until we can use the construction account.

Tomorrow we are going to the Builders Appliance Center to check out appliances. I am pretty sure I want to go with the GE Monogram stuff. We get a good discount direct from GE at work. Wayne wants to go with Viking stove, but I do want everything to match, so I'm still leaning to the GE stuff. The only concern I have is that the refrigerator with the configuration that I want (french door refrigerator and 2 drawer bottom freezer) I think is too small. Only 20.7 cu. ft. I have no concept of how big that is, so I just have to go see it. I love the GE Monogram 6 burner stove with the griddle. It has 2 ovens side by side, a large one and a small one. I think we'll do this instead of the two 4.4 cubic feet stackable ovens.

I've also spent quite a bit of time thinking about the kitchen. I think I know how I want it designed. We are meeting with 2 cabinets places on Monday since we have the day off. We received a preliminary layout from one of the places today and it is horrible - not even close to what we want. Since I now have a better idea we will show them our concept when we meet with them on Monday and then we'll have a better idea about what it will look like. We will also need to go back to the original place we went to in order to give them an opportunity to provide pricing on the same design.

So far I am having fun, but the kitchen is a big deal!! I want to make sure we get it right. Update on appliances probably tomorrow since there will be no construction progress.

Or Today Either

Weather has put us in a situation where we really can't get started. The temps were better today and supposed to be better tomorrow, but by the weekend, we're supposed to get another cold snap. Wayne really wants to get moving, but wants to ensure that everything goes right and he thinks it is just too cold to get the concrete in. The ground is better off if it is still covered and not exposed by a big hole. He even mentioned that some of the concrete quarries were closed because of the cold.

So, we are just watching the long range weather forecast to see if we can get started soon. Then Christmas is only a week away. I hate to say this, but it may be the week we're gone in ND to see Miles' family. That would be a bummer, but I'll leave my camera with Grammie and Bumpa and they can take the daily pictures. Sort of anti-climactic at this point.

We DID get our building permit, though, so everything is official and ready to go from the city's perspective. We also met with our bank and have locked on a 5% permanent mortgage for the house when it is complete - wow! We will also close on our construction loan probably on Friday.

We also met with Jamie K., our interior decorator/designer, and she had some really good suggestions on the house. Some minor changes to doors and materials, etc. and some suggestions on what to focus on first; 1) exterior, 2) kitchen design, cabinets, appliances and 3) windows, roof, stone and stucco colors.

Not Today

I talked with Wayne this morning and it is still too cold to start digging again. It is supposed to get up to around 20 today, but it was still below zero last night. Tomorrow is supposed to be slightly warmer, so they are planning to begin again tomorrow.

He will be picking up the building permit today from the city and will let me know tomorrow if/when they get the track hoe out there to start.

We're meeting with the bank this afternoon to talk about permanent loan options - looks like rates may fall here in the near future. And also finalize the construction loan.

Baby It's Cold Outside

I had an early meeting this morning, got up at 5AM and it was -17 outside! I doubt they'll be digging today. I think it's supposed to get warmer by Wednesday, so not sure if they will delay that long, but we'll see. I'll be out to take pictures as soon as there's progress.

They did cover the garage dig in blankets on Friday to keep the ground warm for the concrete. I really don't know how warm that can keep the ground when it's this cold, but I'm sure it helps.

We're Getting a Hole Today

The front-end loader came out to start digging the hole for the basement. They got the garage done and then realized the machine was too heavy. They need to bring in a track hoe (sp??) and it is not available until Monday. They may bring it out this afternoon, but they won't finish the hole until Monday.

It was also a good thing Wayne had the engineers re-calculate the depth. He found they were off 21 inches. Took him 3 hours to resolve it yesterday and even had the architect out to help him figure it out.

I think Wayne will be picking up the building permit today.

On Again, Off Again

Wayne was concerned about the calculations that the engineer did for the foundation, so they've decided to wrap those up today and actually start digging tomorrow.

Scraping

Here's the picture chronology view after scraping. (As you can see, the snow is already melting. A beautiful day in Colorado).

Day 1

We are supposed to be getting our building permit tomorrow, but they went ahead and scraped off the top layer of good soil to save for landscaping and staked the house today. It is amazing that this is actually happening!!

Getting Set Up

We don't have our building permit yet, but Wayne said it would be in the next few days. He's scheduled to have the house staked by a professional surveyor on Monday. Right now he plans to start excavating on Wednesday.

We got about 5 inches of snow just in time to start the house. It shouldn't slow things down, though. It's supposed to be pretty nice through next week.

Lastest Picture

Still nothing to see, but that should change as early as next week!

Contract Signed

Today we signed the contract with our builder - Wayne, so we're official, I guess. I haven't heard from the bank, but we've got some equity out of our old/current house that we are using to pay draws so that we don't have to wait for the bank to finish their process in order to get started.

Still looking at the week of December 1, probably December 4 we will dig our hole. Boys can't wait for that backhoe, although I think I might be even more excited.

Is No News Good News?

Wayne was finally accepted by the city to apply for our building permit. He officially submitted on Tuesday, November 18. It took two hours and some computer finagling to do, but they got it done. He said we'd hear in the next few days if there were any problems. I haven't heard anything yet.

We meet with Wayne this afternoon to review the contract and go over a few things like where we are going to put the temporary electric fence for the horses while construction is going on. Also on our to do list is to meet with a few kitchen designers/cabinets to nail down the final design.

I hope this gets more fun.

Trying Again

Wayne got turned away from the city again to apply for the building permit. Seems that the person that handles those applications told him we had to submit the money for the escrow account prior to plan check, rather than at the time the building permit is issued.

It really doesn't matter to me since we'll have to do it either way, so I had to double check the amount with the city.

Wayne will try to submit today.

2230 Kechter Road!!!!

It is official - just got notification that the plat has been recorded -- welcome to phase II of our project, CONSTRUCTION! :-)

Still Not Sure if It's Official

Our builder can't apply for a building permit until the plat is recorded. I'm still not sure it's done yet. It was supposed to happen at 9AM this morning, but at 8:45, I got a message from Land Title that the county recorder needed to record the development agreement (DA) before the plat. Engineering has the DA, so it is at the city. I'm assuming they are scrambling to get it done, but that it will happen today.

On a bright note, we got the refi done and our attorney signed the plat. Now I guess the order needs to be DA, Plat, Deed.

I left a message for Wayne that it would be done today. I'm still wondering.

It's Not Over 'Til It's Over

Message from Land Title:

Just got off the phone with Karla- the plan is.......
Close at 1:00 tomorrow
Mason Mitchell at 2:30
Steve in Planning at 3:00
Steve will take plat to Karla's office (she's off tomorrow) I will meet Karla at clerk and recorder's office Monday morning at 9:00-she will bring plat and development agreement- I will bring deed of trust.
Jennifer- FYI- we still need an improvement location certificate- I've talked to Chad at JR he is going to do it and get it to me by closing
tomorrow- charge is $200 - I will collect it on the settlement statement at closing.
Let me know if either of you see any problem with this.

Plat Drawing

I have it. In my hands. Signed by everyone but our attorney, which will happen on Friday at 2:30PM. Then we go to the courthouse to record the document at 3:15 and everything will be official.

Is this really happening?

December 1

If everything goes as planned (which we know by now that hardly ever happens), but if we can keep on a roll with the building permit, the excavator will start digging a hole on December 1. They are first going to scrape off the top layer of really good pasture soil and set it aside for the base to our landscaping. Then they will stake the house and start digging.

I don't want to get ahead of myself though. Right now we are trying to ensure closing and recording of the plat drawing on Friday, November 14. Wayne also plans to submit for the building permit that same day.

Builder's Progress

Our builder had to add some additional items, like a drainage report, so he has not submitted the application to the city for our building permit. I know the engineer has completed the report, so not sure why Wayne hasn't submitted yet. Yesterday he mentioned that he would be going back in the next day or so.

Hopefully the city will be pretty quick in approving the application. Then it's just a matter of writing a big fat check and we'll be ready to roll. Oh yea, and getting the plat drawing recorded first.

Making Visible Progress

Today I got a note from the city that the utility plans have been signed by engineering. Finally!! I need to drop off our development agreement, pick up the plans and take them to our engineer. The engineer needs to sign and stamp them and then make 7 paper copies and 1 mylar copy for the city. They also are required by law to keep the original in their office. They have committed to turn them around in a few hours.

So today in between work meetings, I will drop off the DA and pick up the plans from the city and drop them off at the engineer. They will make copies and have them ready for me to pick up by later this afternoon. I will pick them up after the vet appointment I have for Taffy and Cookie and then if I have time, drop them off at the city again.

I'm not sure if they will also have the plat for me signed and ready to go, so I will wait to see what I get before I contact our lender to get the final refinance done and recording of the plat. That will then be the end. I see it in sight, though. Could be as early as Friday, but at latest early next week. Whew!

One Micro Step Forward

We received the Development Agreement for the city yesterday! Miles and I reviewed it and it's just a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo. We're not going to have our attorney review it because it would cost us a lot of extra money and time and probably would only be able to make a few minor changes. It looks pretty boiler plate anyway.

The only surprise to us was that now the city has decided that we will NOT be able to put the money for design and construction of the Kechter Rd. improvements into a letter of credit from our bank. We'll actually have to write them a check for the improvements and put into escrow. This is really frustrating because the improvements may not happen for a long time. Not sure if they need to get everyone aligned or if the city is going to have to come up with the rest of the funds, but we don't see these improvements happening for awhile. Now that we've paid, I'd like to see them done sooner, rather than later, but I can't get wrapped around the axle on this one. Just glad that we're moving forward.

Miles and I will sign and I will return to the city tomorrow, since today is veterans day, the city offices are closed. Not sure how long the rest will take, but I think we're close. Could be as early as Friday, or maybe early next week.

Hurray!

Frustrating v.2

I cannot find the words that express how frustrated I am with the lack of follow up and sense of urgency from the city. We are in the last stages of our project, but I can't get ANYONE to speed it up a bit. I need several signatures. That's it. It's not like they haven't seen these drawings before or know what's going on. We've been at this with them for 17 months!!!!!

I am still waiting for several signatures on our drawings. Then, the drawings have to go back to our Engineer for their signature and copies. Once the copies get back to the city, they can sign the plat and then I can coordinate with our attorney and the title company. After that, I also need to coordinate the city planner and the county clerk to meet us at the courthouse so we can get this recorded. It really isn't that hard!!

I don't fee like I have ANY recourse. At least at work I can escalate to a manager or someone if something isn't getting done, but in this case I'm even afraid to rock the boat too much for fear that they will just ignore me and not get it done at all!!!

I really can't believe that another week has gone by.

Can We Just Get This Over With?

Here's a copy of an e-mail I sent to the city today. This just sums up where we are, ugh!!

Hi Susan,

Thanks for speaking with me yesterday. I'm just following up on our conversation so that I can give an update to our attorney and the title company.

As I understand it:

• The utility and plat mylars were dropped off at the city on Thursday, October 23 (see attached).
• As of yesterday, November 3, none of the utility signatures have been completed. Seems to me like 7 business days should be enough time? What is the hold up?
• The DA was on Sheri's desk for final approval and then going to the city attorney yesterday afternoon.
• Sheri mentioned at the development workshop Steve hosted about the Kechter / Trilby area, that the DA should take about 3 weeks. I sent the DA information on Thursday, September 11. Seven weeks is 4 weeks longer than the average length. Do you know what the hold up was with this agreement? I assume we will get the final for our signature this afternoon, tomorrow at the latest?
• I will wait to hear from you that the utility drawings have gone to JR Engineering for final signature and copies before I get our attorney and title company scheduled again to complete the process and record the plat.
• Miles and I will ensure that the DA is signed and sent back to you within 1 business day of receiving it from you. I assume this only needs to be notarized and no other signature is required?

I think that's it. Please let me know either by phone (303) 588-6086, or by e-mail when the utility drawing signatures are completed. Again, I would be happy to pick them up and take them over to JR Engineering if you need me to.

Thanks,

Jennifer

Building Permit

Miles and I met with Wayne today. The new house cost is soaring due to the utility and extra work our builder is doing. It freaked me out, so I know it has Miles over the edge. We're hoping that our few investments that are supposed to start paying dividends will come in next year to help defray some of the building and development costs.

I am keeping a detailed budget of the costs that we will track through the process. The good news is that the property will be worth a lot once we are done with the project. We just hope our condo and our current house sells.

The other positive thing is that this house is going to be beautiful. I haven't had a chance to think about it too much because I've been so focused on the city process. Even though we're continuing to have slow issues with the city, we can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel.

House Construction

I heard from our builder today. Miles has been coordinating much of this, since I've been involved with the city subdivision process. I guess we have a few more things to wrap up with the design and then our builder will submit for a building permit next week, hopefully.

I'll set up a meeting with the builder and the designer on Monday.

Outstanding items:

• Kitchen design
• Builder city license
• Finish getting our house ready to sell - getting granite countertops in the kitchen installed on Monday 10/27 and new carpet upstairs on 11/3.

It's starting to feel like we will actually be building a house this winter.

Amazing

I just heard from the city - they have agreed to our proposed timing of the plat signatures. I think we're actually going to get this done!

Frustrating

We now have our mylars printed and are going through the signature process. We have run into a little glitch because our current lienholder's local office has closed. They won't be available to sign the drawing prior to the attorney. The attorney won't sign until after we re-finance and release the lien. The city wants to sign last and the mortgage company needs the plat recorded the day we close on the new loan.

I've asked the city if they will sign before the attorney so that we can complete this process without having to go through a 3-month lien release process and put our whole project on hold until we get that done.

I sent the request last Thursday and have heard nothing from the city. I haven't been able to sleep at night I'm so stressed about how we will get this done. The city is not known for being very flexible.

Also, the water district signed the drawings and then when I was at the rural electric association to get them to sign, realized that the water district missed 3 pages. Now I haven't heard from them yet either.

The logistics are too complicated. I wonder why the city doesn't go digital. Pretty amazing that we're still passing mylars around...

Just Six to Eight Weeks

If anyone in the last few weeks has asked me when they think we will break ground on the new house, my answer is, 6 to 8 weeks. I think that's been my standard answer for the last 6 weeks. Hopefully we'll make some real progress in the next week so that I can revise my answer to something a little more concrete.

Right now we're waiting on several things:

1. The city to finish making final comments (again) so that the engineer can make final edits and print mylars.
2. Once the mylars are printed, we will get signatures and record the new plat drawing and utility plans.
3. We need to complete the development agreement. This needs to be complete before they can issue a building permit.
4. We need to make the final decisions on a few things, like plumbing, before our GC can apply for a building permit. Luckily we can apply for the building permit anytime and can do that congruent to the finalization of the plat drawings.

Six to eight weeks...

Molasses

It is so frustrating waiting for others to get things done and having no power over getting it done. The engineer has had the feedback from the city on some very minor changes to our drawings since September 12. As of this week, I still haven't heard from them, so I started pushing on them. They finally submitted the final plans to the city for review on Tuesday, September 30. And I found a few errors still! I asked them to make the changes and they will wait until they hear from the city so they can make all the changes at once.

Now we are waiting for the city engineer to respond. I've sent her an e-mail and left her a voice mail. I am getting anxious now because we have to coordinate all this with the refinancing of the investment property. I am still a little fuzzy on the timing and how everything will work. The city departments need to sign the drawings, the water district needs to sign and then our attorney needs to sign the plat. He won't sign the plat unless he gets notification from the title company that the lien has been released, which will happen when we refinance. So, everything has to happen at the same time!

I hope the city engineer gets back to me soon. I'm hoping we can coordinate this meeting with the attorney, the title company and mortgage company and then get the plat recorded all at the same time next week. Only hiccup is that all the people in the city and the water district, oh, and the rural electric company need to be around for signatures prior...

It's a miracle that we've gotten this far. But, we need to keep persevering. We're hoping to submit our application for a building permit next week as well, which can go in parallel to the finalization of the plat and utility plans.

Oh, and one more thing. We have to finalize the development agreement and get a letter of credit signed for the city for the future design and construction of the road improvements.

Plumbing

Today we met with a plumber to talk about how we want to heat and cool the new house. Miles' Dad will be happy to know that we are looking at options other than just forced air. We met with someone today that was very knowledgeable about heating and air conditioning using radiant heat and cooling. It was a very informative discussion.

He's going to give us a price of a standard forced air system, which by the way would require us to have 3 furnaces and 2 water heaters... And also a price for the radiant system with one boiler, an air flow system and a small venting system for circulating outside air. We would probably also install a whole house fan.

The radiant system will be more expensive, but will save us more than 30% per month on our energy bill between gas and electric.

Process Update

Amazing how much time flies in between work, kids and house project. I meant to update on September 10 after our city final staff review, but here it is over a week later...

We had our final staff review on September 10 and it lasted maybe 10 minutes. Engineering had a few minor comments, typos and moving things around a little bit on the plans, but that was it.

We also found out that instead of laying up cash to put in escrow for 125% of the value of the road improvement on Kechter Road, we can, in fact, provide a letter of credit to the city for the improvements. This was a huge development for us.

Originally the city planner told us that we could do this, but somewhere during the process, engineering got confused and told us we could not do it. But she must have since learned that we could and now we will do that. We will have to have our bank approve us for 150% of the estimate that we got from the engineer, which was about $24k. Yea!

Other news:

1. We finalized the house plans with the designer and have now gone to engineering to get the house engineered. We got 2 bids for that. One was over double what the other was, so that was a no brainer.
2. Financing is under way and we'll re-finance the front property as an investment property and the second property as a construction to permanent mortgage.
3. We can submit for a building permit at any time and our builder is working on getting his license in the city of Fort Collins (Windsor, where he is currently building, doesn't require a license).
4. I filed our easement agreement with the county today. That was fun, we actually filed a legal document.
5. Once the civil engineer completes the minor updates from the city, they will print mylars that we'll need to run around and get signatures. And then the city routes them to all appropriate departments.
6. After mylars are signed, the engineer has to stamp 11 copies and then we're ready to file.
7. Once the filing is complete, we will be able to get our building permit issued and get the financing completed.

The process sounds simple, but I'm sure there will be surprises in the next few weeks. We're hoping that we'll actually be digging a hole in the next 4-5 weeks. That means building through the winter. Hopefully we'll have a mild winter -- no 3 foot snow storms!!

I will try to get more regular updates done because things will start to change quickly.

Parade of Homes

We went to the Parade of Homes over the weekend to look at several houses that the interior decorator we plan to use designed. We wanted to make sure that we liked her style.

Yes, we do.

We absolutely loved the 2 houses that we saw. We got some good ideas for our new house and will ask her to help us with the color as well as design elements in the house. She is also helping us get our current house ready to put on the market.

We are upgrading our kitchen to granite counter tops and picked the granite slab. We now need to go to Lowe's to pick out tile for the back splash. We'll put our house on the market in February.

Picture #1

I will be taking pictures from this exact location over time as changes occur on the house so that we have a picture chronology of the house project. This is the 1st one.

Moving Forward at a Snails Pace

A few things have happened since my last post. I haven't had a chance to update in a while because my new job is keeping me busy. Anyway, here are updates and next steps.

On the city process front:

1. We talked to our attorney and he did some additional research on the city code regarding the signing of the plat drawing. He concluded that he could certify without our neighbor's signatures. Yea! But why didn't he do that to begin with? (The easiest thing, and cheapest, was to get our neighbors to sign since they all indicated last year that they would support this project.)
2. We validated a few things with the city and scheduled our public hearing. The public hearing took place on July 30, 2008.
3. The neighbor who refused to sign the plat drawing sent a detailed letter to the city protesting our project. They cited that we were in direct violation of existing Deed Restrictions and Covenants applying to the property. He also said that he would take whatever action is appropriate to make all parties involved in this unlawful breach to fully comply with the restrictions. OK, I could completely go off on this, but I think it would take up way too much time and energy. Suffice it to say that we have fully complied with the city and county requirements and went through the proper legal process to remove the restriction on our lot. The city said he could still sue us in civil court, but unless we've missed something (I doubt it), then I can't imagine what grounds he could do this.
4. During the city meeting, the City Planning Director brought the letter up to our attention and was very glad to see that we had the legal document from the county removing the restriction from our property.
5. The city gave us an unconditional approval to move forward with the sub-division of the lot.
6. Next steps with the city are the final staff review (scheduled September 10) and the development agreement.

On the house front:

1. In March this year we had a soils engineer come out and give us a soils report regarding the soils on the site where we plan to build the house. They found ground water at approximately 8 feet and found that we had low perk rate soils. This meant that we would have to have an 'engineered' septic system to accommodate for our clay soils.
2. When they did their soil sample, they also put a pvc pipe with holes in it so that we could see what the groundwater did while we irrigated in the spring.
3. Irrigation started in May and less than a week into it, we had water in our pipe up to one foot. We had many engineers tell us that it just wasn't possible to put a basement into ground with water at 1 foot.
4. We talked to many people about houses in Michigan and the East Coast where groundwater is high, but they still have basements. They put in pumps and treat the foundation so that water is mitigated.
5. We also observed that the water went back down to 8 feet less than a week after the irrigation stopped.
6. Miles finally found an engineer that was smart enough to point out that there is no way, if groundwater was at 8 feet, with low perk rate soil, that the groundwater level could rise and then fall that quickly. He suggested we dig a trench and take samples down to 8 feet to see if we could tell what was happening. His guess was that water was coming in over the top of the pipe and filling our hole.
7. Last week, Friday, August 22, we had our soils engineer come out with a back hoe and test the soils. He confirmed what the other engineer guessed and our groundwater situation is at 8 feet, not 1 foot. This is huge. Now we can build our basement down 5 feet (you need 3 feet before you get to groundwater), we can install sump pumps and a french drain and have our basement. This also means that our septic, instead of $30k will likely cost more like $7-10k.
8. So now we have our house designer completing the basement plans and getting the drawings ready for our structural engineer. We will also need to get a drainage plan together as well. We're hoping in the next few weeks we'll be able to submit our plans to the city to start the building permit process. I've heard people say that could take 3 weeks and some people say 3 months. But, at least we're moving on a few things.

Hopefully I'll be able to update with a little more frequency now. I've also started our picture chronology that will capture the building of the house from grass pasture to finished and landscaped house. Fun.

Another Bump in the Road

Hard to keep up with the posts, but we got some news today.

After talking to our attorney, we found out that the president of the BWA in fact cannot sign our plat as a representative of the water association. We would have to get each one of our neighbors (6 of them) to sign our plat drawing. In addition to this, we will need each one of them to sign a letter of intent saying that they will sign in order for the City Planner to schedule our public hearing.

A bummer, but not the end of the world. All of our neighbors agreed to sign a letter stating that they would allow us to remove the note from our original plat drawing in the county. This signature signifies much less. We are not proposing any changes to the ditch, meaning the water won't change, the flow won't change, etc. So, much less material than the plat note that was on the original drawing. The only difficult one would be the family that live in GA, but we've spoken to them before and they've been agreeable.

I sent a letter to them (because I don't know their phone number), giving them the details and asking them to sign our letter of intent. We got a note back from them yesterday simply stating that they do NOT intend to sign. No explanation, just 'no'.

I'm going through all sorts of emotions on this. Part of me wonders if they just don't understand and we should just call them. Part of me thinks that since they are trying to sell their property, that they just don't want to upset the apple cart, part of me thinks that they are pompous jerks and don't want someone else's plan mingling or possibly diminishing their opportunity to sell. I don't think it will, but they must perceive it that way, otherwise I don't see any reason why they wouldn't sign.

I am so bummed right now. This isn't going to stop us, but it will certainly slow us down and it will certainly end up costing us more money. I am so bummed that one person could do that to us! Our dream house! But, I don't think they can stop us. There must be some other recourse or path we can pursue.

So, since I'm still traveling, Miles will have to call our attorney on Monday and see what our plan B is going to be. What a drag.

Finally, Some Progress

We finally have some progress to report. This was a busy day on the project front. Wow.

After receiving the paperwork from our lien holder regarding how to release a lien, I was bummed. Not only would the process take 4-6 weeks, not including our time to get everything arranged, but also cost us $500 for the processing and who knows how much in appraisals, etc. So, I called the mortgage broker who will be doing our new loan and she advised me that the current lien holder only needed to sign to acknowledge that they owned a lien on the property. In addition to that, she advised that we talk to someone in the local office. I called our lien holder's local office and the VP there will be able to sign - yea!!!

Miles also FINALLY got ahold of the President of the BWA. He signed our letter of intent with no problems or questions whatsoever.

Monday I will call our attorney and just verify that the President can sign and that the lien holder simply needs to state that they hold a current lien on the property. After that, I'll take the LOI over to the city and we should be good to go to hearing.

We have a meeting with the city on Tuesday where they are reviewing with all the property owners all the development opportunities and challenges along Kechter, Timberline and Trilby Roads who all face similar challenges. I really need to set up a consulting business for this! It is an all day workshop with the city. I'll be interested to see who shows up.

Miles also met with our builder today to discuss exactly where we want to put the house and find out what options we have with the ground water being so high. We may be OK, but we have some research to do. The builder is waiting for the plans, so I called our designer to see what was up. Turns out, he was waiting for us to give him the go ahead. Everything looked great, so we're good to go. He'll finalize plans and get them to the builder.

We met with the kitchen designer this week too. He showed us 3D models of his design. We made some minor tweaks and I think we like what we're seeing. He's going to make our suggested changes. We also made some changes to bathroom cabinets as well.

We think we want to go to another cabinet maker to see what kind of design they'll come up with. We might do that a little later, but we needed to get something in the works so that our builder had an idea of cost.

On Bluestem news, we had the inspector, staging consultant and appraiser all come today. Pretty extensive comments from the staging consultant, but nothing different than what I was thinking anyway, so I think we're on the same page. We do have a lot of work to do, but we'll just take one room at a time. It will be at least 3-4 weeks before we can get the house on the market anyway, so we've got a little time. We will have lots of packing and throwing to go.

The inspector came up with very little to do, so that was good. We also think the appraiser may come in with a higher square footage than what was disclosed when we bought the house, so that should be good.

Progress is good! Now I won't be able to sleep tonight because I'm excited that we are making some progress. At least that's better than not being able to sleep because we've got a long drawn out process with our neighbors and with our lien holder. That was the best news of the day!

City Process Update

Here's the last message we got from the city engineer:

Just to make sure you have the info you need, Paul Eckman (city attorney) stated in his last email that your attorney would have to be the one to decide who needs to sign the plat since he is the one that has to certify your plat. If he says that only you need to sign, then your project is good to go to hearing. If he determines that others need to sign, then we will need letters of intent from those affected property owners prior to scheduling the hearing.

I talked to our attorney and he did determine that the easements on our property are owned by the Blehm Water Association (BWA). So, all property owners will need to sign. We're trying to get ahold of the President of the BWA to determine if he alone can sign, or if we've got to get everyone to sign. That would be problematic since many of the property owners don't even live on their properties - one is located in GA. We've been trying for a week to get ahold of the BWA President, but he hasn't called back. Once we get his opinion, I can go back to our attorney to make sure he's ok with the President signing. If he is, then we're likely good to go on that front. The BWA President would need to sign a letter of intent for the city so that they know he'll review and sign the final plat drawing.

Our attorney also determined that our lienholder will need to sign the plat. OMG!!! So, I've got a call into them. It didn't sound like that big of a deal. They talked about a lien release, so that might be all there is to do on that. I remember our new loan provider (we will re-finance when everything goes through) and she mentioned that if we re-finance then we likely won't have to get a lien release from our current provider. But, the attorney said that if the lien is on the current property as-is, then he wanted the lien holder to sign. We'll see how that goes.

So for now, just waiting (again)... It will be exactly a year since our first conceptual review with the city on June 11.

More Updates

We decided that we need to make our dining room bigger. Miles saw an example of an octagonal dining room that he really liked, so we might do that instead of a square or rectangle. We need to let our designer know right away about the changes so that he can finish the drawings.

The designer sent us a 3D drawing that we can't seem to get to work on any of our PCs. I'm anxious to see what it looks like from the outside, so hopefully we can get that to work soon.

We were going to meet with Wayne (the builder) today to show him approximately where we wanted the house to sit, but because of the Windsor tornado last Thursday, he is swamped with work in Windsor.

We are trying to connect with our kitchen designer. I guess he's got some designs for us to review as well. We were hoping to meet with him today since we can't meet with Wayne until next week. He didn't call me back, so I guess we'll have to schedule another time.

After meeting with our realtor last week (Chris), we've decided to put our house on the market sooner rather than later. We know what the market is like this summer and not sure how long it will take to sell. This will likely mean that we'll move twice, but better than having 2 big mortgages at the same time.

We are having a garage sale with our neighbors this weekend. Our neighbors are moving to North Carolina and just put their house on the market. We were bummed, but they've priced their house really high. I guess that's a good thing because if they sell at that price, we can raise the price that we are planning to offer our house for.

Continuous City Confusion (CCC)

We had a public hearing date scheduled for June 11 and then lost it. The city engineer is still causing problems about what to do with the ditch easements. It seems as if they have never had to deal with these types of issues and it's causing everyone a bit of confusion.

As I've mentioned before, the ditch itself does not appear on our property. Our property is serviced by the New Mercer Ditch, but they are private ditch laterals owned by us. The city wants to be sure that no other property owners are affected by our plat. I guess I can understand why, but it is clear that the engineer has no idea about this stuff.

We thought the city attorney cleared it up, but then the engineer (Susan), brought in some more confusion and is requiring that our attorney write a letter to the city stating that no other properties are affected by our subdivision.

We don't know when the public hearing will be, but we won't make June 11. I sent an e-mail to our attorney so that we can get this issue resolved.

What to do?

This? (With the ovens separate from the range and the range in the island)

Or this? (Our design currently has the range/ovens in the island with the vent hood over the island as well. This picture shows what the range/oven would look like. Picture this in the island.)

The question for me now is, "What would the range/oven look like in the island, or should we go with something more similar to the picture above." The downside of that scenario is we would lose cupboard space. Hmm, decisions.

Kitchen Place

We went to see a kitchen designer yesterday about our kitchen. Neither Miles nor I was happy with the way the kitchen came out on Jon's design, but he said that usually a kitchen designer does the detail work anyway.

The guy we met with yesterday was pretty good and gave us some other options which are much better than how we had it before. I'm still concerned about where the refrigerator and the vent hood are going to be, but I think mostly it's because I really have a hard time visualizing what the end product will look like. The designer has a 3-D program that he can share once the design is finished so at least we have a concept of what it will look like.

When we got home, Miles said he had some concerns about the quality of the work. Some of the displays in their showroom weren't built that well. I guess we can ask if the same team that did their showroom does the actual products they install in people's homes. Maybe we should go see the other kitchen place as well to get some comparisons on quality.

Realtor

We had a realtor from the Group come over yesterday to look at our house. He was recommended to us by a friend that Miles works with. He walked around the house and took a bunch of notes. He was really friendly and numbers oriented, which Miles likes. He has a young family also and seemed to understand what our goals and objectives are. I liked him too.

After walking through the house and the yard, he seemed very encouraging about the ability to sell our house, even in this crazy market. He appreciated that we came to him early so that we have time to get the house in order before actually putting it on the market. Not sure how much time we have, it could take us a year to sell it. Or it could take a couple weeks - that's the scary thing. His strategy is also to get an interior decorator to come look at it and give us tips on what we should fix and what's probably OK to let go.

Later in the day we got a flower delivery - beautiful purple orchids.

Straight to Hearing

John at JR Engineering just saved us 2 weeks, plus at least a few hundred dollars ($200-300 for copies and more meetings and time from JR Engineering). He convinced the city that we didn't need to go through another round of submittals and we'll go straight to public hearing. Wow! That was unexpected.

A good surprise for once. Not sure what the timing of the public hearing will be, but I'll call Steve Olt later today.

Fantastic!

Plan Review

Today we are reviewing the first draft of our house plans with the designer we selected. He finished the plans based on the house we found on the Internet. We have a few modifications and a few questions, but I think we're pretty close.

It's really hard to visualize what the house will look like by looking at these stick drawings. I hope we do OK, this is the house we are going to live in for a long, long time. I really can't picture us wanting to move unless something really drastic happens.

We are also thinking about selling our house and when will be the best time to put it on the market. We'll really want to time things just right so that we're not sitting on both houses for too long after the construction is complete. We also don't want to put it on too early in case it sells quicker than we thought and then we'll have to figure out where we'll live temporarily until our new house is done.

Our neighbor told us that houses in our price range have a 12-18 month inventory. Yikes. That means we should think about putting the house in the market now. I really can't think of anything more unpleasant than getting this house ready to sell. We need to paint, replace all the carpet, get the yard in ship-shape form. Ugh, lots of work and at the same time living with 2 toddlers and a baby. They are really hard on things. Oh well, I know we'll figure it out. We'll have to take things a day at a time.

Response Letter and Next Steps

We are rolling again now. I just sent an e-mail to JR Engineering to find out if 5/13 will still work for them. I'm assuming it will, not too much to do, just some typos and other small things to fix on the plat and utility plans. I have also completed our response letter for the staff project review.

I'm assuming that we'll be free sailing until the council hearing, final compliance and development agreement. We'll need to get our easement stuff completed from Mason (our land attorney) and JR Engineering. JR has completed the legal descriptions, which includes a metes and bounds description of the easements. We will also need to complete our estimate for design and construction of the Kechter improvements. This will be due before the final compliance and development agreement are completed.

We will also need to pay the ditch company attorney the $500 review fee for doing nothing. I know I keep mentioning this, but what a racket...

Good for now.

Outstanding To Do's

1. Waiting to hear back from JR Engineering whether or not the 5/13 submittal date is doable given Susan's last message. I think it will be, but just need to be sure.
2. Hoping that we can save $$ on design of Kechter because both the church and the Brinkman projects have provided design for Kechter Road.
3. Talked to Judy Behrendt and let her know that we will not need an easement on her property. She really wants to know what's going on and wants to sell her property.
4. Need to call Helen and let her know that the easement across her property will not be needed at this time for our project.
5. Called Terry Willis from Poudre Valley REA. He will call Justin Fields in the AM (although now that I think of it, he's out all week) to find out what he will need from REA to rename the easements to 'utility easements'.
6. Called Wes LeMarque again about the required stormwater drainage report - not sure that is needed, but need to make sure before our 5/13 re-submittal.
7. Need to get the JR Engineering letter regarding the ditch review signed by Chad so I can take to Gene Fisher - plus our $500 boondoggle for them to look at the plans that don't affect them in any way. (Grr)

City Update

We heard from Susan Joy today. Good news and bad news, but all in all, pretty good outcome.

After meeting with all of the affected departments and discussing the issues with Helen, our City Engineer, we have determined the following requirements:

No design and construction for Kechter at this time but instead will take cash as a contribution in aid for future design and improvements (including the sidewalk). We felt that the frontage was not great enough to warrant actual construction of Kechter and Transportation Planning was fine with escrowing money for the sidewalk. Light and Power is happy with this option as well.

An estimate for our review and approval will be due in Final Compliance and the money itself paid prior to the first building permit. Unfortunately, a letter of credit is not an option in this situation Jennifer but we did explore that idea. The estimate for the future design and construction will be due in Final Compliance and that $$ number will be put in the Development Agreement.

Dedicate a 20' Utility and a 20' private ditch easement that would be labeled separately but overlap each other. The ditch would not need to be relocated in the interim. We haven't actually tried this before but thought we'd give it a go. I'm sure that we can get the utilities and the ditch to work and if necessary, we'll realign the ditch at that time.

We had the design and construction of Kechter built into our overall plan, so although it's a bummer, it's not a surprise. We will be able to roll that into our construction loan as part of the house. Not sure about timing because the escrow has to be paid before a building permit can be pulled, but I guess we can work on that.

At least we won't have to move the ditch.

Traffic Engineering Continued

Today I got a message from Susan Joy, City Engineer. We were supposed to have a meeting with traffic planning, utilities and engineering this afternoon. Instead, we got this:

Light and Power is out all this week but I don't think we need them at the meeting. Same with Transportation Planning...they are not available this afternoon per a later email but have emailed me their requirements.

We have continued to meet internally to discuss the project's design and construction requirements since we last met and I have everything worked out with the two aforementioned departments, Light and Power and Transportation Planning. The last department to weigh in is Engineering and Sheri and I are meeting with Helen Migchelbrink, the city engineer, today at 4pm (confirmation pending) for her policy on this and other projects like yours.

At that point, Sheri and I will meet with you, Steve and JR Engineering to go over everything with you. I'll send you another email to coordinate that meeting as soon as possible. Just a heads up to Transportation Planning and Light and Power - I will let you know what the outcome of the meeting with Helen is but I don't think you need to be at the next meeting with the applicant. Unless of course, you want to be. You are most welcome to attend, just let me know.

Miles and I are very bummed about this. I was hoping to be present with Traffic Engineering so that we could plead our case. Instead the city took it into their own hands and are handing us our fate. I can't wait...>

Sewer

We have been given the OK to have a septic instead of hooking up to public sewer. There is no public sewer anywhere close and would be cost prohibitive for us to go all the way over to one of the neighborhoods to do that. The health department and South Fort Collins Sanitation District have both agreed to let us put septic on the new property.

The septic posed a challenge with the splitting of the land, we are required to allot 2.29 acres in order to accommodate sewer and leaching field. We ended up having to put more land than we wanted on the front property, but we're over that by now.

So, during our meeting earlier this week, the city mentioned that we would need a letter from the district stating that they have agreed to let us put septic on the new lot.

I just talked to Terry Farrill, the District Engineer, and he said that they do not typically grant to NOT connect to district sewer. They do grant to allow to connect to sewer. Typically, the way it is handled is that our engineer (during the building permit process) will have a letter that states that sewer services are greater than 400' away and that due to cost concerns, septic will be used. Some of these issues seem to be pretty small, but then get bigger, as we've seen with this street design issue.

House Plans

After looking at several builders in the area and at several different options, we finally picked a builder.

We had our pool narrowed down to two that we liked. One was a 'lot' builder in which he had a standard house and he builds on lots in neighborhoods. The other was a custom builder that had a few spec homes, but would build more from scratch.

I really liked the lot builder's house and it was 90% there. The only concern was that it was designed to fit on a small lot. Therefore, like most houses in the suburbs, its garage was integrated into the house design. When you looked at the front of the house, the garage was at least 50% of the frontage. They are playing with side load garages and such so that you can at least make it look like part of the house. We drove around the area and looked at a lot of his houses, but none really stood out as outstanding to us.

The other custom builder would go with anything we wanted. Our concern was cost. I didn't think we could afford fully custom. So, we looked at thousands of plans on-line and in several books. We found one that, again, was 90% there. The builder said he could do it and gave us a ball park estimate. It was in line with what we thought and he brought in an excellent designer that would take the plans that we purchased on-line and make the few changes we needed to make it our ideal home. The house has the garage off to the side, connected by a large utility room / breezeway type of room. I've wanted a big utility room / mud room and Miles dreams of having a breezeway like his parents house.

We purchased the plans and the designer gave us his first rev. We reviewed them last night and we're not quite sure it's there yet. The utility room is huge, yet it doesn't really use the space very well. Lots of middle space and not a lot of space for cabinets and cupboards for storage.

The same thing happened with the kitchen. We made it quite a bit bigger, but it didn't really gain us anything.

We're meeting with the designer (Jon) and the builder (Wayne) again next week to review some of our additional changes and concerns.

Utility Meeting

Interesting meeting today. The good, the bad and the ugly.

The good:
Xcel and Comcast have no problems with the proposal. They will use the easements we've drawn up. Comcast (and Qwest, who wasn't at today's meeting), will use a joint trench agreement with City Light & Power when they dig to our new property. L&P preference is to put a temporary system in with the road ROW since they won't know exactly when and how Kechter Road will be improved. When the road is improved, then they will put a permanent system in. We won't even need our neighbors to dedicate easements at this time.

We will need to get a letter from Terry Farril from the water district stating that since sewer is not available, we'll be allowed to install a septic system for the new house.

We will also need to get a letter from REA stating that we can change the current REA easements to say utility easements and then include wording to include REA in the utility agreements. They do not need to access our property except to service the pole that our neighbors service is metered off.

The bad:
The ditch easement and the utility easement cannot be on top of each other. Since the ditch easement is a private easement, a private and public easement cannot share the space. So, we'll need to put the 15' utility easement next to the proposed new ROW and then put the 20' ditch easement behind that.

That means we'll need to move our ditch. We can cross the utility easement at 90 degrees, so we're going to try to keep it on our property, but we may need to feather it up and then back on our neighbors properties. I'm hoping to disturb our neighbors as little as possible. Another option is to create the easements, but not move the ditch at this time since the utility easement won't be used until Kechter Road is improved. We could do all the changes at the same time and then also at the same time as our neighbors will be required to make changes.

Miles was concerned about moving the ditch and JR Engineering was concerned about flows and mentioned that we would likely not get our CO (certificate of occupancy) on the new house until it was done. I think this one won't be too huge of a deal, but we'll see. (Kaching...)

The ugly:
Engineering is still maintaining that traffic planning is going to require the road design, escrow and ultimate construction of the sidewalk. Interesting that traffic planning is causing all of the headache, but has never been to one of these meetings. We've got to set up yet another meeting with traffic planning to sort this out.

We will still plan to have our re-submittal on Tuesday, May 6, but may need to move that if we are going to have to provide design for the road and sidewalk. Susan Joy (Engineering) is going to set up another meeting with traffic planning on Friday to sort it out. I'm hoping we can convince them that it just makes no sense. In addition to my concerns to Susan (posted on 4/25), utilities has a problem with the sidewalk because it will be in their way and they will likely break it up when they do their work. (Kaching, kaching...)

More to come on the ugly.

Still No Word

I still haven't heard from Susan regarding all the utility agencies that I need to deliver the utility exhibit to. How frustrating. I had some time before work yesterday and today that I planned to use to deliver everything, but I don't even know who or where.

I think she's trying to work through the traffic planning issues first, which is fine, I'd love to hear their proposal for resolution, but I thought the utilities wanted these exhibits to review before the meeting tomorrow.

I left another message for her this AM.

Another Small Blip

Helen signed our proposed letter of intent for the utility easement without questions. We had approached her before so she knew it was coming.

I met with Judy on Friday night and she requested more information before signing our letter. Darn. She wants to know exactly what light and power plan to do to her property. So, even though I thought we were in the clear on this, I now have to do more homework. I think she just wants to know what's going on, especially given the development going on around her. I think she really just wants to sell her property.

I hope to see if light and power will go talk to her or maybe I can get enough information to satisfy her needs after our utility coordination meeting tomorrow. If she doesn't grant the easement, they'll just put the power in the ROW and tear up her driveway once. Then, when the Kechter Road improvements actually happen, they'll tear it up again to move it and probably charge us for it...

e-Mail to Susan Joy (Engineering) Regarding Sidewalk

Hi Susan,

I plan to pick up the plans for stormwater, engineering, light and power and transportation planning from JR either this afternoon or Monday when they are complete and take to the utilities outside of the city. Can you list for me who I will need to deliver them to?

Also, regarding the sidewalk:

I left you a message yesterday afternoon, wondering if you've had any more luck on this. A few thoughts I'd like to share:

• We'd be happy to complete the sidewalk when the city completes from the Kingdom Hall development east to connect up to the sidewalk at Sage Creek neighborhood. We just don't see the logic to put the sidewalk in for 224' and barricade it at both ends. If the plan is to complete the entire length along Kechter, then that is fine, let's do it at the same time.
  If the plans for the sidewalk are not in place now and we have to put a short length in and barricade at both ends, here are my concerns:
• It will not get used and will sit to weather and deteriorate. It will also likely require changes when the final sidewalk finally does get installed, requiring us to tear out and re-install.
• In addition, I have small children and see it as a potential hazard and danger to them possibly playing on the concrete pad and either running into a barrier or worse, running into traffic.
• The 2 barriers on both sides will be an eyesore and a potential traffic hazard as people drive by and wonder what is going on.

I hope this is enough to convince Transportation Planning to postpone the sidewalk until such time the sidewalk is completed the entire length of Kechter Road.

Utility Easements

I wish we would have had a good idea about what the city required as far as utility easements from our neighbors before our review meeting. I might have been able to thwart the conversation that took us down a path of needing more review time. Oh well.

Turns out we only need to have our neighbors sign a letter of intent addressed to Steve Olt indicating that they would grant the city the needed utility easement to provide utilities from the church development on the corner to our lot.

We know our neighbors are amenable to this so we'll just need to get a letter signed by them and call it a day. We'll have that for our utility meeting on 4/30.

Lesson learned.

Ditch Co Comments

We've been working with the ditch company and with the Blehm Water Association to ensure that we continue to get our water once we're not in the Blehm subdivision any longer. John Baum, the president of the Blehm Water Association, was ok with us staying in the organization to manage our water. That is good.

The ditch company (John Moen) has been telling us all along that he really doesn't care what we do with our private laterals.

I've wondered why JR Engineering put the ditch company signature on the plat drawings, but probably because there are ditch easements on our property. That's fine.

We got a comment on our submission to the city from Gene Fischer, the ditch company attorney that they would need a $500 review fee. Yikes. Just to look at the drawings and sign something that doesn't affect them in any way. In addition to the fee, we have to have a letter from our engineer stating that the ditch head gate is not on our property and that the property is serviced by private laterals. Ugh.

I wonder where the head gate is? We should probably find out. Which reminds me, our water is coming soon. We haven't heard from John Baum about when exactly and which days we have to put water on our pasture. Miles met with a friend, JD, who has ditch water so he could give us advice as to how to get our water on the back part of the pasture. We don't want to raise our ground water level on the portion that we plan to build the house on.

The Subdivision Meeting

My parents are on vacation, so we planned to take the boys to the drop-in daycare during our meeting. Turns out that the daycare didn't open until 8:30AM - the exact time our meeting with the city was supposed to start. We decided to bring the boys with us and hope they behave. We had plenty of paper and pens that they could play with during our meeting, so hopefully they will have enough attention span to hang with us.

Our meeting started out great - no real hurdles for comments yet. Susan Joy attended from Engineering (instead of Randy Maizland) and started off with very good news. They had been working internally and decided that they would not require us to do the design and escrow of the money for the Kechter Road improvements. Yea! Save us a lot of money (~$24k) and headache of designing something that may not happen for awhile. It would also save us time as they were going to push through to public meeting without another review with the city!

Miles had to leave to entertain the boys while I attended the rest of the meeting.

Justin Fields from Light & Power attended instead of Janet McTague. Justin had some concerns with the power coming from the church property. Janet explained to us that we could ask for easements from Helen and Judy, but that it wouldn't be required because they could just pull it from the current Kechter ROW. Turns out that Justin wasn't so keen on that. We discussed possibly using the REA easement down the middle. But, I knew that both our neighbors were amenable to putting easements across their property. Then discussion went to the ditch easement and the private laterals that run through all of our properties. They don't know if the ditch and the utility easements can be in the same piece of ground, so something that Steve Olt said he'd research for us. In addition, we know that Helen is concerned about the big tree that will likely fall right in the easement. We didn't come to a resolution on this, so Susan started getting concerned.

As the comments started coming forth, Susan had second thoughts about not going through another round of review - darn! So, we'll have to resubmit in a few weeks after we resolve all the issues. She also mentioned that after thinking about it a little more, traffic operations may require us to install the sidewalk along Kechter as part of this project. Ugh.

Drainage was also a concern at the meeting, but we indicated that no changes to the historical flows will be made as part of the subdivision. We are going to pull all the drainage lines back onto our property and deal with the detailed lot grading plan for lot 2 with the building permit.

None of the other comments were really that big. A few typos and wording changes, but other than that looks pretty straight forward.

Next steps are to attend a utility coordination meeting (because of the ditch, power and easement discussion) and plan to resubmit for another round of staff review.

Sub-Division Submittal

On April 1, 2008, we finally submitted the paperwork for our subdivision. We're hoping that there won't be many comments and that we can get through this process fairly quickly. Now that we've decided on a builder and an architect/designer, I am more anxious than ever to get this project moving a little faster.