Casa Edmonds!

Three years. That's how long it took us to get building permits to build the new casa in Edmonds. It was a long and trying experience not to mention expensive. At one point, when we lost our variance and had to go through the whole variance process over again, we actually came close to giving up and selling the property. But, we stuck it out and finally received our permits to begin construction in mid July. Woohooo!

The Humble Abode as-designed:

And the property it is to be constructed on:

Since we already had construction funding in place and the contractor lined up, we began construction almost immediately. And, almost immediately, we recognized just how challenging this project was going to be. The home site butts up against a steep slope (yes, we have designed in protection for slide risks) and there is very little room for staging the work. The result of this is that excavation, footings, and foundation work all had to be done in stages and we are now almost a month behind on our schedule. The budget, of course, has taken a big hit also.

The start of excavation:

The house is going to sit on the nice little shelf that the hoe is parked on. Those power lines that you see above the hoe will be dropped and routed underground…. Not cheap, by the way.

Here, they have begun work on the footings and you can see that they have excavated away a large portion of the bench:

I really thought that there would be less cutting into that steep slope. I sure hope the architect and engineers did their calculations right. It is exciting to begin to actually see a structure taking shape after all this time looking at nothing but lines on paper.

In this photo the forms for the foundation walls are going up.

Using the 'Honey Bucket' for reference you can see just how massive the foundation walls are. The walls were designed by a structural engineer to be able to withstand the forces of a slide…. Hopefully that will never be tested.

The foundation walls are all up and the front pillars are being formed:

The workers really look small in this photo and you can see just a part of the view that we will have. This photo was taken from about the finished elevation of the living room.

This is another photo with lots of reference points to give some idea of the massive size of the concrete walls. You see this stuff on paper but until it starts going up you really aren't able to get a feel for the size of things.

The guys on the blue boom are taking out the larger trees on the slope that might pose a falling hazard. All of this work is being done in a manner to minimally impact all of the undergrowth on the slope, hence the boom.

Our views from the living room will be magnificent:

This one is looking straight west just past 'Point No Point' and 'Foul Weather Bluff'.

And another:

Looking southerly down the 'Puget Sound' past the Edmonds ferry dock.

To say we are excited would be an understatement but I am also massively stressed over this whole thing. Between trying to keep the budgets under control, constant 'out of scope' items to take care of, and the time constraints, I feel like I am constantly in a battle with the 'team'. I don't think they believe that we are working with real money. I do!

Until next time, cheers!

Ron