I feel like keeping a thread on our home addition. It might be fun to look at it when we're all done. We have a duplex in Del Ray, a nice little community near National Airport near DC. The addition work started Thursday. Basically, 12 foot addition out the back, same line as the original house, wood side instead of brick (existing). Basement, 1st, 2nd Floor + a rooftop deck.


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Budget Goal: 150K

Money Spent: 15K (all cash)

Money Remaining: 165K (25K cash + 140K Home Equity Loan)

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Thursday : Workers come out, dig a very big ditch. Julie packs up stuff.

Friday : Workers finish digging, cept there's a gas pipe that they can't dig around (where the emergency stairs will be) They start on our footer. Julie and I pack, and tax 1 Rav4 load over to my rented house, where we have a stand-alone garage that will be storage central for the next few months. Stored stuff.

Saturday : Woken up by gas service workers who turn the gas off and take out the gas pipe. That's done. Julie and I finish the take-down of the metal fence and neighbor's adjoining wood fence. My friend Bart comes over and helps cut the metal roads so the city will pick them up (free!), plus nail down the nails in all the wood. Take another heavy load over to the garage. House is beginning to look empty. The couch, loveseat,chairs, are all gone. Nothing in the living room cept the tv , and furniture her parents are taking.

Sunday : Put together a trailer to haul stuff, but we're missing a bolt and a nut. Bummer. Julie continues to pack up in the house, and another huge load goes over to the garage. I almost fix the trailer, it will be done Tuesday, I think. Our representative/general contractor, and handyman (and julie's bro-in-law), comes over to talk time-tables with her, and budget with me. Schedule could be tight, tentatively set for full completion Aug 19th. We get married Sept. 8th. Budget looks better once we account for everything we paid so far. We can cover 15% overall cost-overrun, expecting 5% overall, so that's good. I relax at my home that night. Taking Monday off to crunch numbers for the wedding. Honeymoon is now paid for (cash). I realize that the 6 month emergency fund Ive worked hard on will disappear to 2 months with the addition work...oh well. Id rather pay as much now than wait till later.

Monday : Loan paperwork from the bank comes in. I get to look over it before signing on Tuesday. One of Julie's neighbors tells her she can housesit for him, 3 doors down from the construction site. Saves her an hour every day, plus no boarding costs for the doggie. That helps out a ton.

Hey, are you planning on selling this house once you're finished?

My parents just put $70K into their home in Great Falls, VA and put it on the market last week. It was a lot of work, but really made the home nice.

The neighborhood is ideal for a family. Perfect location for government bureaucrats, good schools, easy access to biking/walking trails. We can walk to movie theaters, local diners, large shopping centers, old town, etc. We're doing this addition for the long-haul, this is our home for the next 20 or so years.

Monday: The loan paperwork comes back for the wrong product and timeframe. I am hoping this is just an innocent mistake. Its for a 10 year HELOC at prime minus 1.5, but variable. The loan we're supposed to get is a 15 year Home Equity loan, fixed at 6.74%.

Thankfully, a good friend of mine is a higher-up in their bank. He sent an email on my behalf to their head of loans, advising them of this mistake and hoping it comes to a quick resolution since we were supposed to close tomorrow

It's good to have good friends in good places. I hope this gets taken care of tomorrow.

Yes, hopefully they get it all set for you.

We recently purchased our home. My sister-in-law is a lawyer and she looked at everything for free. Saved us a ton of time and we KNEW everyone was going to do their jobs right. Having influential people always makes things easier.

Tuesday: Julie is confirmed to be housesitting for our neighbor. That's a huge help. My office phone has a message from our bank, and it was a mistake in the paperwork, and I should be expecting the new loan paperwork with the correct terms and product this morning. That's a big relief. On reason why it is a big relief is because of my insistence on a fixed rate in a rising interest rate environment. If either of us loses our job or has an accident, the other makes enough money to cover the mortgage payment and essentialls (food, clothing, insurance). I'm highly risk averse when it comes to debt, so this is really good.

Having done a couple home projects now, I'll be watching this thread with morbid curiosity. One thing you have going for you, Stephen, is that you seem to be assertive, and that's an absolute must when dealing with banks and contractors. Passivity is a good way to get trampled upon...

Assertive? Ha! When bad stuff happens I just enter into the PO'ed and Determined Zone. =)

Tuesday Julie's neighbor doesn't seem to be able to get the room ready for her to stay in. I think he's still depressed about the death of his wife (they are very old). I may offer to help move stuff so he doesn't have to, but he's probably in mourning. Therefore, we're going with the backup plan. Julie's family has a small studio condo in DC, so she will stay there. Another friend of mine now gets the dog to use to pick up women with for the next few months. Always, always have a backup plan. *Hopefully* we can help the neighbor out, and Julie can stay there sometimes. I live close by, so she can also stay with me a decent bit of the time.

Tuesday Evening

The bank paperwork was all correct and sorted out. They answered my questions effectively, and now we have our manageable fixed rate loan product. Total value of the house as it is today is around 450K. I honestly believe its around 430K. The addition should cost about 150K, but since the vast majority of the loan goes toward the addition and actual improvements, rather than renovation and new appliances, I figure we should capture about 1001-20K in additional value. Outstanding loans now total 360K, for a monthly payment just a hair over 3K. For informational's sake, our monthly take-home pay is 9K. So yeah, completely affordable. We plan on having a renter for the basement apartment at about 1K, which covers a good bit of the equity loan

So that's out of the way. Alexandria's city inspectors are clueless and bureaucratic. Construction was held up until an inspector came to look at a soil test result we hadn't been told we needed. Nice people. Thankfully, it gets approved and the footer is laid. Wednesday the walls for the basement start to do up, and its going to be poured concrete walls.

At night, we emptied out the existing basement aside from the washer/dryer. We're taking thursday off to move the rest of the heavy items.

This is alot of work.

I’m finding myself sucked into reading this thread, it’s starting to unfold like one of those reality home improvement shows on the Learning Channel.

Have you considered posting photos of the progress along with your updates?

Thanks Dylan. Yes, Julie is taking pictures. I think we can put them up on her website, and i will talk to her about that. I mainly wanted to do this so I could record progress, discussions, and general thoughts. I probably talk about money too much to her, because while she's very good about paying her bills, she prefers reading sci-fi books to money books (I happen to love money books).

Oh yeah, we got a microwave off of craiglist. Stainless Steel, a real beauty. The guy who had it bought it without measuring it, and it didn't fit into his home addition. We got it because out of the 30 odd people who emailed him, we were the only gettin-married and renovating-home couple aside from them.

So that saved us 200 bucks about.

Thursday

I am tired. Today, everything except the bed and the dog was moved out of the house. We did it using a truck and and our RAV. So that's that, she's out of the house tomorrow. I head off for 3 days up in NYC for the NFL Draft.

So, the worst so far are the city inspectors. They aren't prompt, are arrogant, and generally don't even know the code they are enforcing. That stinks. Thankfully, over the last two days, we've gotten to talk to one inspector who knows code, is helpful, and is a nice person. He got a on old TV from our junk pile today. And we got the sign off to pour the new concrete walls for the basement.

Did you know that the fill they use is gravel? We didn't, so our first potential cost overage is the cost of the extra gravel, bout 500 to 1K.

Yay!

Monday

And I am back from NYC and the NFL Draft. Julie basically moved stuff to my basement over the weekend. Tonight she packs up what is left, and tomorrow the house is vacated for about 2 months.

The supports for the concrete walls are coming down, and the foundation will be poured today. I may have pictures on Wednesday of the process so far.

Wednesday

Took down the Microwave, the Blinds, the Stair-railings, and anything else we wanted to save for later. (and save money). The addition's pour concrete walls are set, the foundation goes in today, and on top of all that, we now have a 1st floor framed on the addition space.

Also, PICTURES~! to come soon. Mainly, after I get back from the Kentucky Derby.

Tuesday

Back from the Derby. Love the long-shot bets that win. Anywho.

What I saw done over this weekend was that the first floor has been made and the new stairs to the basement were poured. Gravel was used as fill around the poured concrete walls of the basement addition. It's pretty cool that its done.

On Monday, I took the day off and removed the cabinets from the existing condition, and all additional fixtures (blinds, railings, etc) so that we can save them and use them for the remodel, rather than buying new stuff, since the old stuff is still good. The existing kitchen will become the efficiency kitchen in the basement.

Anyways, its pretty cool to walk into the basement den/bedroom now. Its pretty big. Going to be good and soundproofed too.

As promised here are some pictures:

http://pics.livejournal.com/nanofemto/pic/0006yy0f

http://pics.livejournal.com/nanofemto/pic/00075dk1

http://pics.livejournal.com/nanofemto/pic/00076csk

We'll get some pictures of the poured concrete walls and first floor up soon.[/img]