$100,000 New Home Challenge

Concrete is On Its Way

Kathy — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:18:28 -0400

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
In the beginning of July I purchased a rebar cutter/bender on craigslist. During my conversation with the seller, I told him we were looking for a concrete guy to pour the foundation, slab, and back stairwell. He gave me his info and I didn't think much of it. How could someone commuting between Portland and Corvallis underbid a local person? But he did, by almost 50%. The Corvallis "tax" hits again. It seems that everything is more expensive in Corvallis, including contractors. After calling references, we had Paul on board to do the concrete work.

Paul had bid the job to use metal framed forms. These 2 foot by 8 foot forms weighed about 90 lbs each. Not so bad until you realize we had to put 140 of them in the hole and then take them out. Remember, to take them out there is now a 9 foot tall wall in the way. Oh logistics!

Let the Demolition Begin!

Kathy — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 11:05:01 -0400

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
On July 21st, 2 days before issuing the permit, E.D. Hughes began demolition. Steve, the demolition guy, was able to remove the house in just 6 hours.

Of course, the rats had the last word.

In another 6 hours he dug a huge hole and over 30 dump trucks of soil was removed.

It was now July 28th, only 5 days after the city issued the permit.

Almost there

Kathy — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 15:45:54 -0400

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
By June 22, almost 2 weeks later, we were able to get the permit undenied despite the fact that it only took 2 days to come to an agreement. This delay worried me in that you only get a few days to request a hearing after denial or you lose your money (over $500) and you have to start all over.

We take the plunge to build a new house

Kathy — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:20:43 -0400

Part 1, Part 2
Our hurried house plan submitted for review included engineering drawings to deal with bearing walls and the basement. We planned to take the requirements to give up 20% of our little 5000 sq ft lot to an appeals board.

By April we hired our second attorney. This attorney at first said he could definitely help. After reviewing our information he told us "ADA is king." I was mad. How could an attorney tell us the city had a reason? What I didn't understand at the time but later came to believe is that you can fight anything but ADA requirements for 5 foot wide sidewalks. You could definitely fight greenspace (trees and grass between the street and sidewalk) and boy did the city want a ton of that.

With our first plan review results (after 2 weeks), the city lowered their requirements from 20% of our lot to 14%. Obviously they could move on their requirements. We had some hope so we began to get bids on demolition and excavation. I was surprised that E.D. Hughes came in very low.

Thoughts about remodeling

Kathy — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:32:04 -0400

Part 1
By December of 2008, we switched gears and started thinking about simply demolishing our home and starting over. Although expensive, I estimated that it would cost about $80,000 more but we would end up with a much more energy efficient and usable home.

Our home had 7 ft tall ceilings. I liked that but Steve didn't. The height wasn't as bad as the fact that none of the ceilings were straight. In addition, we suspected that none of the windows had headers over them.

The problem in building from scratch was 2 fold: the city's prohibitive requirements and a very small lot. In December, I waltzed over to the permit department to ask them about any issues that we would have in rebuilding. Very quickly I found that our sidewalk was too narrow and that they would require land to be "dedicated" in order to widen the sidewalk. Although ADA standard sidewalks are necessary, I pointed out that the city already had a plan in place to move the sidewalks out into the middle of the street on our block. This was to become a long drawn out fight.

$100,000 New Home Challenge

Kathy — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:48:06 -0400

When I purchased my home in 2003, it may well have been the last home under $150,000 in Corvallis. I knew it had problems so I put some money aside to fix the roof and do something with the red water. Only blocks from my ex-husband and around the corner from the co-op, Sam's Station, and bus stop - I really began to like the location.

We liked the house enough to stay and build a little shop (to the right of the picture above). This was supposed to help us store the tools that would be used for renovation.

In December, I started looking at the house for renovation. It was doable but difficult. We found that the main part of the house was 18x20 feet and the rest all added on. We found the home to be very deficient both in building quality and safety. In the picture below you can see the 2x4 floor joist (naughty, naughty) with the crooked beams under it. We think those may have been the skids used to move it.