Wednesday, May 28, 2008

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.

Monday, May 19, 2008

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.




Thursday, May 15, 2008

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.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

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.

Friday, May 9, 2008

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!

Thursday, May 8, 2008

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.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

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.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

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.

Monday, May 5, 2008

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...>

Friday, May 2, 2008

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.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

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.