It’s been about a month since our last post which we know is a VERY looong time!  You must be wondering what Team Dreamhouse has been up to.

In all honesty…nothing.  Well, okay we put up a construction fence.  But, otherwise – a whole lot of nothing.  We sourced some window quotes & lined up a whole slew of trades, but for the most part, we’ve just been playing the waiting game with the city for our building permit.

The permit process, as important as it is in any renovation, is something that is often glazed over or not even mentioned on many of the ‘reality tv home reno’ shows.  Lucky for us, we’re working with a seasoned professional who not only knows the process inside and out, but who prepared us for the lengthy and surprisingly costly process ahead of even purchasing our home.  Kevin of KW Design, even went a step further, to pre-check our plans with the various areas of the building department well in advance of submitting the final drawings for approval.

So given all the prep-work we did, you would expect that getting the final stamp of approval would go smoothly, right??  Not so, apparently.  Sometimes to get what you want, you’ve got to jump through a few hoops.  And jump we did.  They asked us change our plans to move a wall by 2 feet.  So we did.  They then asked us amend it to push the entire house 8 inches back from where it currently stands.  So we did that too.  And just when we thought we’d done it all and would finally have our permit issued, they THEN asked us to provide a grading plan – or in other words a set of drawings that shows how water will drain from the property.  So after having the property surveyed, enduring a 4 week delay and spending a couple thousand extra dollars, we now have wonderful drawings that show that the property will continue to drain the EXACT same way it has been draining for the last 50 some odd years. Because we are NOT in fact changing the grade – something that our original drawings very clearly showed. Sigh…

In any case, it’s a few weeks late, but we can now say that The Dreamhouse Project is “officially” a go.  The city has given us the green light, so with our permit in hand we can now bring in the heavy equipment and let the ‘real’ fun begin.