No such luck

They are digging in the lower garage after all. The pipes in the upper garage didn't satisfy the drainage criteria: we needed to connect to a 4" pipe (upper garage had 3") and we needed to connect after all other lines (kitchen and bath connect in lower garage). Oh well, digging and jackhammering almost complete. A one day setback - I guess that's not so bad.

Dreaded drainage

One of the biggest wildcards with our project has been drainage. You don't know until you dig up the concrete exactly where the drains are, or where they go...
We've been worried all along about whether we'd need to trench through the upper *and* lower garages for a surface drain that collects rainwater around the perimeter of the addition.
We've already trenched in the upper garage (pic shows the spot, in front of my laundry machines). We discovered that this drain doesn't go exactly where we thought. Which could mean digging down into the lower garage. Ugh. Lots of money, mess, and time.
We are hoping to get a city plumbing inspector out here tomorrow, and we want him to tell us we can connect to the drain in the pic. If you are a praying person, please send a couple prayers up for this!

Literally in the trenches

Progress report:  The trenches for the footings and drainage are nearly complete.  They'll probably finish them tomorrow.  Not bad for one week into the project!

Trench through old family room slab

Temporary wall at stairs

Footing trenches in backyard

Footing trenches in backyard

As you can imagine, it's been a noisy week - jackhammers, concrete cutters, the works.  Our next door neighbor is the nicest woman on earth and has been unbelievably patient with the noise, mess, and inconvenience. 

Yep, it's rocky

Feeling pretty good about the soil conditions.

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock."  Matthew 7:24  :)

Structural engineering site visit

We had Randy come out to take a look at the soil conditions for the new footings this evening.  He pointed out a provision we hadn't noticed on our drawings (read 12.3 carefully - if you click the image, it should enlarge):

Not a moment too soon

The following shows a timeline of the San Francisco permit process for adding 12' to the back of our house.  You need two things to build in San Francisco: 1) a site permit, reviewed by the Planning Department, who regulates zoning laws and considers neighbor input, and 2) a building permit, issued by the Department of Building Inspection, who makes sure that all construction follows city building codes.

In many Bay Area cities this process might take a few weeks (our good friends in Palo Alto have a similar project under construction, and theirs took a month).

Here in good ol' San Francisco, it took 7-1/2 months!

Luckily, our house is not historic and our neighbors gave little input - other friends in the city have had their process take over a year!

February 1, 2011:  Letter sent to all adjacent neighbors
February 15, 2011:  Preapplication meeting with neighbors (inviting them to review our plans and let us know any concerns they had)
February 18, 2011:  Submitted plans to SF Planning Department
[5-1/2 months go by...]
August 2, 2011:  SF Planning Department Approval
August 2-22, 2011:  SFDBI (Department of Building Inspection) Reviews Plans
August 19, 2011:  Site Permit Approved
August 22, 2011:  Site Permit Issued by SFDBI
August 24, 2011:  Addendum Submitted to SFDBI (addendum contains design details - structural, etc.)
August 24 - September 16, 2011 - Addendum Reviewed by both SFDBI and SF Planning Dept
September 15, 2011:  Contractor starts demo
September 15, 2011:  Building Permit Approved
September 16, 2011:  Building Permit Issued

Day two - these guys are not messing around.

We are two days into the project and the backyard demo and family room demo have had substantial progress!  The guys just left - note how neat and tidy they leave everything.

Family Room, looking toward what was my office

Family Room, where the wall unit used to be

Family Room, now open to the garage

Backyard, minus patio and deck

Project starts today!!

The deck is being demoed as I type. We met with the electrician and plumber this morning. Full speed ahead!

Hubble ball

Leave it to kids to find the fun in any and every thing.

T & J have invented a new game called hubble ball, which they play during any spare moment.  With all the noise of a racquetball court, they bounce super balls in their old empty, echo-y bedroom.  They call out "Hubble!" when they throw, and "Tribble!" when they catch.  This game is best played in slippery socks.

Bye bye pavers

So I posted my pavers on Craigslist, free to anyone willing to take them out of our patio. I immediately got several email responses. One came from a SF public school PE teacher (happened to say so in his email signature), so I decided I should choose him.

What do you know? It turns out it's my neighbor across the street and two houses up!

Works out great for him and great for me. Small world!

He's out there removing them right now. Glad I don't have to pay the contractor to do it.

Bye bye stuff

I can't get over the fact that we have 3 storage containers full of stuff we don't need for 6 months. If we don't need it for 6 months, maybe we should never get it back??

Snug as a bug

Some of the pics are dark, but here's a glimpse of our new set up. We have a white noise machine plus dark curtains on tension rods to separate the spaces for sleeping. The kids shelving unit became a great double-sided-storage room divider. Even our hamster Strudel has a spot. And we now have three empty rooms ready for construction (and three very full storage containers).

We love our new room!

Moving day - a huge success!

We moved into our "one-bedroom apartment" (the front two rooms of our house). It went great, and the kids are thrilled with their new digs. More pics to come.

Final planning approval!!

The tough parts of the permitting process are over!  We got final Planning Dept approval today.  To quote from R's text to me... "WoooHoooooo!!!!!!!!!!"

We've had our drawings stuck in planning for months in the first go around, and the fact that we were again at this lady's mercy (she had to do a recheck after some minor changes) threatened to hold us up needlessly for more and more weeks.  The fact that we are done with this woman is cause for huge celebration!

We still need sign off from Streets Dept, PUC, and Mechanical, all are already approved just need a re-stamp, and then we are good to go.  Very likely we will have our building permit in hand next week, just days before our start date!

The kids are excited about the "remotel"