I had a weird little week, almost all of it unrelated to the house until today.
Tuesday: Blew a tire on 101 while driving to work. End up being towed back to Salinas. No, I don't have a spare tire. It's a Mini-there's no place to put a spare.
Wednesday: Mostly normal until 5 p.m., when I got an invite from Gov. Schwarzenegger's office to attend the launch of the Green Products Institute the next morning at the Googleplex.
Thursday: Drive to Google. Trying to find parking when the driver of the Jeep in front of me stops, throws it into reverse and slams in to my car while trying to snag a parking spot of his own. It really was a slam, because his bumper rode up on my hood. (That sounds sort of dirty, doesn't it?)
Thursday, 15 minutes later: Go into initiative launch. YouTube founder Chad Hurley is adorably nervous introducing the Governator. What's Rosario Dawson doing on stage, besides looking chic? Google is like heaven, with dogs everywhere, bicycles everywhere, sand volleyball courts and free food. Green products, yay, green certification, yay, and then Arnold drops the bombshell that Toyota is going into business with Tesla to make Electric Vehicles in California. For the next 10 hours, I do nothing but that story.
Friday: Take the Mini to the shop to get the estimate from the guy's insurance company. As an aside, GEICO? I've never met a more on top of it company. They set me up with a rental. I head out, stop at Safeway to grab lunch and go back to the office. Somewhere between the grocery store and the office, my purse disappears, with my new driver's license, two credit cards and my new camera in it. Geico calls, $3 k in damage and they mostly have to replace the front end.
Saturday: Make a critical error in judgement in agreeing to see Magruber. Not only the worst movie I've ever seen, but possibly the worst movie ever made.
Sunday: Husband goes to the house and finds out that one of the contractor's guys has forgotten to lock the door, someone has broken in and thrown around a bunch of construction materials. I go to the Salinas PD to file a report and am told my the cadet at the desk that I can't file a report because I don't have ID. I tell him I don't have ID because my purse was stolen. He suggests that maybe I should call my husband. I suggest instead that I call the watch commander. Which I do. Extra patrols at night until we move in and the promise that the cadet will never do something that stupid again are forthcoming.
Aside:
The watch commander sent over a patrol car. We were over there weeding and planting some berry bushes. The officer asked when we bought the house and whether we were going to have offices there. It's the second time this week that someone asked if we were planning on having offices there (because the previous owner was going to turn it into an office building) and it was the second time someone seemed perplexed that we were planning on living there.
I think there's a supposition that if you're a white professional living in Salinas, you're going to choose to live somewhere not Old Town. (Not true.) There's a supposition that if you're white, you probably think Old Town is dangerous (not true). If you think Old Town is dangerous, I believe you've never lived anywhere dangerous.
Salinas is a funny place. It's deeply screwed up, but it knows it's deeply screwed up. That's a mindset I can get behind.
Berkeley? Deeply screwed up and never really wanted to admit it.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Meet Al
This is Al.
Al is our contractor. And the fact that he is standing in my front yard means one thing: work has begun.
When we last left off, it was May 4 and we had just found out that our permit was approved. It meant that Todd the Barista could stop threatening the permit department with sudden denial of caffeine. It meant that I could stop crocheting a voodoo doll that looked strangely like the head of the planning department. It meant that work could start.
But Al had a job to finish in San Something or Other. San Rafael, maybe. I'm not sure. He came down last week to pay for the permit, purchase his Salinas business license and start figuring out the job site. (One thing he figured out almost immediately: his foreman would be sleeping at the house during the week so all of their tools wouldn't get ripped off. Some little rat bastards broke in a few weeks ago before we put new locks on the doors and broke a window and damaged most of the screens.)
Mike the Sprinkler Guy started installing sprinklers in the basement this morning, and plans to finish installation for the whole house by Monday. Al and his guys started working on installing the new water main today, and called for the rough plumbing and electrical inspection for tomorrow. He doesn't expect to pass; he is, gasp, an out-of-town contractor, and a city usually likes to flex their muscles a little bit with the new guys. (Do not make me start crocheting again, Rob the Planner.) Once the rough inspection is complete, I get to have walls--hopefully sometime next week--and shortly thereafter, I get to live with my family again. In the basement.
In the basement, because this permit is for the basement work only. Before we get the permit for the rest of the house, we have to finish the site plan inspection. We had to hire a civil engineer (I'm referring to him by his last name in the same tone of voice Seinfeld used to say "Newman!) for the parking area and curb work, and his plans just came in today.
Friday, we will hit IKEA to buy cabinets for the basement, and order the tile. The strawberry plants are doing well, as is Sam's corn, and the lemon and lime trees are full of buds. One of the pomegranate bushes also is thriving, but I'm not yet sure about the other two.
(As to why we chose a, gasp, out-of-town contractor: I needed one qualified and certified to do an FHA 203k project, and when we started this process, I couldn't find one in Salinas. There is one now, but his website just launched this year.) So for every Salinas resident who is a winner of the lucky sperm lottery (meaning your grandparent's grandparents came here 150 years ago and bought all the land, leaving their offspring with a grandiose sense of entitlement and very little ambition) and has shot me a look or questioned why we're using a, gasp, out of town contractor?
Now you know.
Al is our contractor. And the fact that he is standing in my front yard means one thing: work has begun.
When we last left off, it was May 4 and we had just found out that our permit was approved. It meant that Todd the Barista could stop threatening the permit department with sudden denial of caffeine. It meant that I could stop crocheting a voodoo doll that looked strangely like the head of the planning department. It meant that work could start.
But Al had a job to finish in San Something or Other. San Rafael, maybe. I'm not sure. He came down last week to pay for the permit, purchase his Salinas business license and start figuring out the job site. (One thing he figured out almost immediately: his foreman would be sleeping at the house during the week so all of their tools wouldn't get ripped off. Some little rat bastards broke in a few weeks ago before we put new locks on the doors and broke a window and damaged most of the screens.)
Mike the Sprinkler Guy started installing sprinklers in the basement this morning, and plans to finish installation for the whole house by Monday. Al and his guys started working on installing the new water main today, and called for the rough plumbing and electrical inspection for tomorrow. He doesn't expect to pass; he is, gasp, an out-of-town contractor, and a city usually likes to flex their muscles a little bit with the new guys. (Do not make me start crocheting again, Rob the Planner.) Once the rough inspection is complete, I get to have walls--hopefully sometime next week--and shortly thereafter, I get to live with my family again. In the basement.
In the basement, because this permit is for the basement work only. Before we get the permit for the rest of the house, we have to finish the site plan inspection. We had to hire a civil engineer (I'm referring to him by his last name in the same tone of voice Seinfeld used to say "Newman!) for the parking area and curb work, and his plans just came in today.
Friday, we will hit IKEA to buy cabinets for the basement, and order the tile. The strawberry plants are doing well, as is Sam's corn, and the lemon and lime trees are full of buds. One of the pomegranate bushes also is thriving, but I'm not yet sure about the other two.
(As to why we chose a, gasp, out-of-town contractor: I needed one qualified and certified to do an FHA 203k project, and when we started this process, I couldn't find one in Salinas. There is one now, but his website just launched this year.) So for every Salinas resident who is a winner of the lucky sperm lottery (meaning your grandparent's grandparents came here 150 years ago and bought all the land, leaving their offspring with a grandiose sense of entitlement and very little ambition) and has shot me a look or questioned why we're using a, gasp, out of town contractor?
Now you know.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Liftoff
After six weeks of begging and raging and begging and raging, as of this morning, we have a building permit.
Thanks to my housemate Todd, who as owner of the Cherry Bean Coffeehouse in Salinas has reminded the permit people every morning for the past week that if they want to continue enjoying their caffeine, they should move faster.
Expanded post to come later.
Thanks to my housemate Todd, who as owner of the Cherry Bean Coffeehouse in Salinas has reminded the permit people every morning for the past week that if they want to continue enjoying their caffeine, they should move faster.
Expanded post to come later.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Stop Calling, Stop Calling I Don't Wanna Hear Anymore ...
First, watch this. It's incredibly charming and will put you in a mood better than the one you're in now:
Last Tuesday marked the one month anniversary of submitting our plans. One month, we were told by Plan Checker Joey, was about how long it was taking to turn the plans around between the three departments--planning, fire and engineering--doing the checking.
Joey finished in three weeks, with a list several pages long of changes the city required of the architect. Fire similarly was done in about three week, and we all know what they wanted. Architect Josh turned Joey's list in about a week, while also getting the proper cuts and drawings we would need to find a fire sprinkler company that would actually answer the phone when we called and not treat us like complete chumps because the think we have more money than we really do. (As an aside, those rumors about the economy making businesses more responsive because they need the work, and local government entities being more responsive because they've come to realize the value of a taxpayer base? Complete bullshit. But I digress.)
Where were we. Planning? Check. Fire? Check? Engineering ...
Where was engineering?
When I was freelancing full-time, I wrote one and sometimes two stories a week about Salinas. I got to know some of the city folks fairly well, including the head city engineer. So on Wednesday about 5 p.m., I called and asked to speak to said engineer and threw in my affiliation so he would remember me.
He was in a meeting, the very nice lady on the phone said. Would I care to leave a message?
I would, I said. I gave her my name, my number and asked her to write down the following exactly as I said it.
"Please tell him I said, 'You are sucking my will to live.'" I told her. She giggled and said she would pass on the message.
Two seconds later, my phone rings. It's another woman from the engineering department who in a very cautious tone asked what my message was regarding. I told her, 226 (street name redacted so crazy and not particularly bright stalkers have a harder time finding me). She said she would give him the message as soon as he was out of his meeting.
Ten minutes later, my phone rings again. Engineer: Hello, how are you, why am I sucking your will to live?
"226 (street name redacted, yada yada)," I told him. "Yes," he said, "I just got the draft last night, but the name on them is Chuck M(complete last name redacted, crazy stalkers, see above)."
"Yeah," I said. "I'm Mrs. M. And you're sucking my will to live."
Engineer said that completely unrelated to my call, he was taking the plans home that evening. They then would go back to the junior planner (not quite sure what she's been doing the past month) and if they were clean, they would be ready on Monday.
Which is good, because our living situation is becoming untenable. (Not mine, really, because Roommate Todd, a completely intense person when it comes to his professional life as a coffeehouse owner, is a most laid back roommate around. Feed him once in awhile and he's happy.) But Chuck and the boys, who are living with his mother owing to the cat allergy thing, are having a different experience.
I know it's not unusual for adult children to move back home with their parents due to the economy. I left for Northwestern when I was 17 and with the exception of a few weeks here and there, I never lived at home again. Chuck left for the Naval Academy about the same time, and with the exception of a day or two here and there, the U.S. government owned his ass for the next nine years, with me taking co-ownership halfway through.
That was almost 20 years ago. I know it's stressful going from living by yourself to suddenly having your adult son and two grandkids living under your roof. But the stress is getting to everyone.
Our friend Larry shakes his head at our situation. "Your life has become a sitcom. Professional woman moves in with gay roommate, her husband and kids move in with his mother, and your best friend teaches homies how to quilt." My life has become a sitcom--a really bad one.
Last Tuesday marked the one month anniversary of submitting our plans. One month, we were told by Plan Checker Joey, was about how long it was taking to turn the plans around between the three departments--planning, fire and engineering--doing the checking.
Joey finished in three weeks, with a list several pages long of changes the city required of the architect. Fire similarly was done in about three week, and we all know what they wanted. Architect Josh turned Joey's list in about a week, while also getting the proper cuts and drawings we would need to find a fire sprinkler company that would actually answer the phone when we called and not treat us like complete chumps because the think we have more money than we really do. (As an aside, those rumors about the economy making businesses more responsive because they need the work, and local government entities being more responsive because they've come to realize the value of a taxpayer base? Complete bullshit. But I digress.)
Where were we. Planning? Check. Fire? Check? Engineering ...
Where was engineering?
When I was freelancing full-time, I wrote one and sometimes two stories a week about Salinas. I got to know some of the city folks fairly well, including the head city engineer. So on Wednesday about 5 p.m., I called and asked to speak to said engineer and threw in my affiliation so he would remember me.
He was in a meeting, the very nice lady on the phone said. Would I care to leave a message?
I would, I said. I gave her my name, my number and asked her to write down the following exactly as I said it.
"Please tell him I said, 'You are sucking my will to live.'" I told her. She giggled and said she would pass on the message.
Two seconds later, my phone rings. It's another woman from the engineering department who in a very cautious tone asked what my message was regarding. I told her, 226 (street name redacted so crazy and not particularly bright stalkers have a harder time finding me). She said she would give him the message as soon as he was out of his meeting.
Ten minutes later, my phone rings again. Engineer: Hello, how are you, why am I sucking your will to live?
"226 (street name redacted, yada yada)," I told him. "Yes," he said, "I just got the draft last night, but the name on them is Chuck M(complete last name redacted, crazy stalkers, see above)."
"Yeah," I said. "I'm Mrs. M. And you're sucking my will to live."
Engineer said that completely unrelated to my call, he was taking the plans home that evening. They then would go back to the junior planner (not quite sure what she's been doing the past month) and if they were clean, they would be ready on Monday.
Which is good, because our living situation is becoming untenable. (Not mine, really, because Roommate Todd, a completely intense person when it comes to his professional life as a coffeehouse owner, is a most laid back roommate around. Feed him once in awhile and he's happy.) But Chuck and the boys, who are living with his mother owing to the cat allergy thing, are having a different experience.
I know it's not unusual for adult children to move back home with their parents due to the economy. I left for Northwestern when I was 17 and with the exception of a few weeks here and there, I never lived at home again. Chuck left for the Naval Academy about the same time, and with the exception of a day or two here and there, the U.S. government owned his ass for the next nine years, with me taking co-ownership halfway through.
That was almost 20 years ago. I know it's stressful going from living by yourself to suddenly having your adult son and two grandkids living under your roof. But the stress is getting to everyone.
Our friend Larry shakes his head at our situation. "Your life has become a sitcom. Professional woman moves in with gay roommate, her husband and kids move in with his mother, and your best friend teaches homies how to quilt." My life has become a sitcom--a really bad one.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Reality? Check.
By the time this is over, I'm really going to need sprinklers, because I'm going to need to build a meth lab in the basement to pay for all of it and I don't want a little chemistry accident to burn my house down. That's right, people-I'm breaking bad.
The city of Salinas, the California Water Services Co. and the state of California: I'd like 10 minutes alone in a room with you and a fire hose, because you people have quite the little racket going. Other people ticking me -- pretty much anyone exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen who has ever picked up a hammer, and anyone who lives indoors.
Since the Holy Week Sprinkler Debacle began, I have gotten conflicting messages from everyone. The fire marshal said the Redevelopment Agency told us we would need sprinklers; they most definitely did not. Someone telling you your project requires sprinklers is not something you just forget or blow off. Because had they said it, it would have been included in the scope of the work that defined the budget--the one the contractor drew up, the one the FHA consultant approved. The Fire Marshal told me to call the Water Company and request a flow test to determine whether or not we needed a new meter (kaching! that's another high four figure outlay!) and the Water Company guy laughed at me and said, you need a fire protection company for that! (And he said it with a "duh" in his tone. Nothing ticks me off more than someone giving me a "duh" tone. I've got teenage sons for that--I don't need it from a professional in the course of doing his work.)
So we started calling the fire protection folks last week. We plan on getting bids from three companies. What I've found so far is that they base their bids on the number of sprinkler heads required--one guy told me he averages $210 per sprinkler head, and another told me he averages $150 per head. The $210 guy gave a quote of $8,700, I need someone closer to $5,000. (He also said we needed 11 heads in the basement apartment--a space that is only about 700 square feet.) Nobody can give me an accurate quote until our architect (the only one involved in this I don't want to kill quite yet) sends the correct plans showing the side cuts and the lighting plan.
Why I want to take a fire hose to the state of California is mixed into the middle of all of this. A half dozen people so far have told me that installing a sprinkler system is something a drunk monkey can do. A friend whose husband is an undercover narc told me he spent his teenage years installing systems for his dad, a residential developer, and that her husband offered to show us how to do it in an afternoon.
The problem is that under state code, you can't hire a sprinkler expert to design a system and then do the installation on your own. Whoever designs it installs it. It's possible to find an engineer to design a system, I think, but if they're going to charge $3 or $4k for it, there seems to be no sense in having someone design it and not install it.
This house has been a complete and total blight on Old Town Salinas for more than a half decade. It's been worked on, foreclosed upon, bought, worked on, foreclosed upon, and on and on. It's boarded up and waiting for us to start work. If sprinklers are part of the work, so be it.
I want to get everyone--the planning folks, the fire folks, the FHA folks, the water folks--in one room and give them a message: We are going to do everything right on this to the greatest extent possible. But I am going to move into this house no matter what. The whole "better to ask for forgiveness than permission" doesn't apply here. I'm asking permission until they prove their unwillingness to give it; I am not going to ask for forgiveness. It's really almost time to get out of my way.
The city of Salinas, the California Water Services Co. and the state of California: I'd like 10 minutes alone in a room with you and a fire hose, because you people have quite the little racket going. Other people ticking me -- pretty much anyone exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen who has ever picked up a hammer, and anyone who lives indoors.
Since the Holy Week Sprinkler Debacle began, I have gotten conflicting messages from everyone. The fire marshal said the Redevelopment Agency told us we would need sprinklers; they most definitely did not. Someone telling you your project requires sprinklers is not something you just forget or blow off. Because had they said it, it would have been included in the scope of the work that defined the budget--the one the contractor drew up, the one the FHA consultant approved. The Fire Marshal told me to call the Water Company and request a flow test to determine whether or not we needed a new meter (kaching! that's another high four figure outlay!) and the Water Company guy laughed at me and said, you need a fire protection company for that! (And he said it with a "duh" in his tone. Nothing ticks me off more than someone giving me a "duh" tone. I've got teenage sons for that--I don't need it from a professional in the course of doing his work.)
So we started calling the fire protection folks last week. We plan on getting bids from three companies. What I've found so far is that they base their bids on the number of sprinkler heads required--one guy told me he averages $210 per sprinkler head, and another told me he averages $150 per head. The $210 guy gave a quote of $8,700, I need someone closer to $5,000. (He also said we needed 11 heads in the basement apartment--a space that is only about 700 square feet.) Nobody can give me an accurate quote until our architect (the only one involved in this I don't want to kill quite yet) sends the correct plans showing the side cuts and the lighting plan.
Why I want to take a fire hose to the state of California is mixed into the middle of all of this. A half dozen people so far have told me that installing a sprinkler system is something a drunk monkey can do. A friend whose husband is an undercover narc told me he spent his teenage years installing systems for his dad, a residential developer, and that her husband offered to show us how to do it in an afternoon.
The problem is that under state code, you can't hire a sprinkler expert to design a system and then do the installation on your own. Whoever designs it installs it. It's possible to find an engineer to design a system, I think, but if they're going to charge $3 or $4k for it, there seems to be no sense in having someone design it and not install it.
This house has been a complete and total blight on Old Town Salinas for more than a half decade. It's been worked on, foreclosed upon, bought, worked on, foreclosed upon, and on and on. It's boarded up and waiting for us to start work. If sprinklers are part of the work, so be it.
I want to get everyone--the planning folks, the fire folks, the FHA folks, the water folks--in one room and give them a message: We are going to do everything right on this to the greatest extent possible. But I am going to move into this house no matter what. The whole "better to ask for forgiveness than permission" doesn't apply here. I'm asking permission until they prove their unwillingness to give it; I am not going to ask for forgiveness. It's really almost time to get out of my way.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Water Water Everywhere ...
The highlight of my day: I flooded the entire front of my housemate's home with toilet water, tried running to the rescue (of what, I'm still not sure) and hit the slippery tile in my Born boots with such force that I plowed into my 6'3", 280-lb. husband, took him to the ground and knocked my head off the floor.
It was the highlight, though, because when the city of Salinas reviews your building plans and tells you that you're going to need to install a sprinkler system on a renovation project that has only a $140,000 total budget, you really can only go up from there.
I'm on vacation this week. I've been told vacation is supposed to be relaxing. For the most part, it has been. It started last Wednesday when my husband drove me to Mineta-San Jose International Airport, kissed me goodbye and sent me to the adult version of craft camp. I spent three-and-a-half days at Ft. Worden, in Port Townsend, WA, at "Artfest," run by the husband-and-wife team of Tracy Vaughn Moore and Teesha Moore. I made stuff. I hung out with women (and a few men) who also made stuff. I ate good Thai food. I nurtured my inner child-or some bullshit like that. Mostly it was fun; I learned a few things, met some great people and created some cool stuff. But I have trouble relaxing. I think I came pretty close though.
Sunday was No. 1 son's birthday. The little hosehead turned 16. I remember when he was cute and little and didn't talk back. Now the mothers of his female classmates refer to him as "delicious" and he wants the keys to my car.
But yesterday, the day of the Great Flood, we also got comments back on our plan submittal for House226. Chuck was reading along and then he came to the Fire Marshal's section, the one that said "you want to build three units, you get to install fire sprinklers." He asked the planning department about sprinklers before we even set down this road, and they said, not needed. (Apparently they were talking about some other plans, plans that exist in another dimension or something like that.) The fire marshal said the Redevelopment Agency told us we would need sprinklers--they most assuredly did not. But here we are and we need sprinklers before we can pull the building permit and get to work.
The fear factor came in yesterday when someone told us a system would run about $50,000. That is a show stopper, a mail-the-keys-to-the-bank show stopper. That would take one-third of a budget that's already up against the wall. We mostly sat around stunned last night, but Chuck reasoned that there are too many people with too much to lose on this deal--our FHA consultant, for one, and our contractor, for another.
The contractor bid, and the consultant approved said bid, without any consideration for sprinklers. The FHA consultant today? Less than helpful. Default is certainly an option, he said. And so is making sure his license is suspended, I thought.
We tried to figure out a way around it. What if we went down to two units? What if we made it a single-family? The city wants multi-unit housing, yeah, but it wants this house painted and fixed up and generally deblighted more, doesn't it? Chuck ate a valium the dentist gave him for an upcoming procedure, and followed that up with a beer. I made meatloaf and tried to be chipper, but then I flushed the toilet and walked away from it, only to find myself covered in toilet water an hour later. I woke up about 6 a.m. today and spent the next few hours panicking.
My husband could build a nuclear reactor out of spare parts in the garage, but this confounded even him. There was a lot of sitting around and holding his head in his hands today, as one unhelpful email after another came in. That's when I decided to visit my new hero, Salinas Fire Marshal Tom Wiley.
After going through the situation with Wiley, and being told the RDA had told us about the sprinklers (uh, no they didn't) I asked him how much we could expect to pay for the sprinkler system. He said $1.25 a square foot installed. Cheaper if we do it ourselves. "It's just orange plastic pipe and couplings."
"You mean, it's not $50,000?" I asked. And that's when he and his cohort, the plan checker on the fire side of things, giggled like teenage girls. "Who told you that? We're in the wrong line of work."
$1.25 per foot comes out to about $5,300. We can work that into the budget. I have to get plans to the various local fire protection companies and see what's what. I also have to get in touch with Cal Water Services Co. to request a bucket test and see if they can go off of our existing meter. I tried doing that today--they're supposedly open until 5 p.m., but the woman who answered the phone today said they closed down at noon today. And she giggled nervously when I asked to know why.
If they can't use our existing meter, it could be pricey, Fire Marshal Wiley said. But it's still doable.
"I wish you would have come and talked to me yesterday," he said. "We're not here to throw up roadblocks."
There is not enough sedation in the world to completely eradicate the suck that was yesterday. Chuck is still pretty grumpy, because we've gotten the royal runaround from everyone but the Fire Marshal. And we failed at the most simple thing, a thing you think we would have learned after our business debacle: always, always get it in writing.
But I'm not giving up on this one without a serious fight.
It was the highlight, though, because when the city of Salinas reviews your building plans and tells you that you're going to need to install a sprinkler system on a renovation project that has only a $140,000 total budget, you really can only go up from there.
I'm on vacation this week. I've been told vacation is supposed to be relaxing. For the most part, it has been. It started last Wednesday when my husband drove me to Mineta-San Jose International Airport, kissed me goodbye and sent me to the adult version of craft camp. I spent three-and-a-half days at Ft. Worden, in Port Townsend, WA, at "Artfest," run by the husband-and-wife team of Tracy Vaughn Moore and Teesha Moore. I made stuff. I hung out with women (and a few men) who also made stuff. I ate good Thai food. I nurtured my inner child-or some bullshit like that. Mostly it was fun; I learned a few things, met some great people and created some cool stuff. But I have trouble relaxing. I think I came pretty close though.
Sunday was No. 1 son's birthday. The little hosehead turned 16. I remember when he was cute and little and didn't talk back. Now the mothers of his female classmates refer to him as "delicious" and he wants the keys to my car.
But yesterday, the day of the Great Flood, we also got comments back on our plan submittal for House226. Chuck was reading along and then he came to the Fire Marshal's section, the one that said "you want to build three units, you get to install fire sprinklers." He asked the planning department about sprinklers before we even set down this road, and they said, not needed. (Apparently they were talking about some other plans, plans that exist in another dimension or something like that.) The fire marshal said the Redevelopment Agency told us we would need sprinklers--they most assuredly did not. But here we are and we need sprinklers before we can pull the building permit and get to work.
The fear factor came in yesterday when someone told us a system would run about $50,000. That is a show stopper, a mail-the-keys-to-the-bank show stopper. That would take one-third of a budget that's already up against the wall. We mostly sat around stunned last night, but Chuck reasoned that there are too many people with too much to lose on this deal--our FHA consultant, for one, and our contractor, for another.
The contractor bid, and the consultant approved said bid, without any consideration for sprinklers. The FHA consultant today? Less than helpful. Default is certainly an option, he said. And so is making sure his license is suspended, I thought.
We tried to figure out a way around it. What if we went down to two units? What if we made it a single-family? The city wants multi-unit housing, yeah, but it wants this house painted and fixed up and generally deblighted more, doesn't it? Chuck ate a valium the dentist gave him for an upcoming procedure, and followed that up with a beer. I made meatloaf and tried to be chipper, but then I flushed the toilet and walked away from it, only to find myself covered in toilet water an hour later. I woke up about 6 a.m. today and spent the next few hours panicking.
My husband could build a nuclear reactor out of spare parts in the garage, but this confounded even him. There was a lot of sitting around and holding his head in his hands today, as one unhelpful email after another came in. That's when I decided to visit my new hero, Salinas Fire Marshal Tom Wiley.
After going through the situation with Wiley, and being told the RDA had told us about the sprinklers (uh, no they didn't) I asked him how much we could expect to pay for the sprinkler system. He said $1.25 a square foot installed. Cheaper if we do it ourselves. "It's just orange plastic pipe and couplings."
"You mean, it's not $50,000?" I asked. And that's when he and his cohort, the plan checker on the fire side of things, giggled like teenage girls. "Who told you that? We're in the wrong line of work."
$1.25 per foot comes out to about $5,300. We can work that into the budget. I have to get plans to the various local fire protection companies and see what's what. I also have to get in touch with Cal Water Services Co. to request a bucket test and see if they can go off of our existing meter. I tried doing that today--they're supposedly open until 5 p.m., but the woman who answered the phone today said they closed down at noon today. And she giggled nervously when I asked to know why.
If they can't use our existing meter, it could be pricey, Fire Marshal Wiley said. But it's still doable.
"I wish you would have come and talked to me yesterday," he said. "We're not here to throw up roadblocks."
There is not enough sedation in the world to completely eradicate the suck that was yesterday. Chuck is still pretty grumpy, because we've gotten the royal runaround from everyone but the Fire Marshal. And we failed at the most simple thing, a thing you think we would have learned after our business debacle: always, always get it in writing.
But I'm not giving up on this one without a serious fight.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Citrus Heights
When you're dealing with a project of this scope, and waiting on plan approval from the city so your contractor can pull permits and start working, you take progress anywhere you can get it. Right now, that means working on the overgrown, oversized yard.
And it means meeting Berta:
We were unloading this morning's Home Depot run, the beginning of the guacamole garden: a lemon tree, a lime tree, a Haas avocado tree and (completely unrelated to guacamole) a pomegranate bush. The plan was to plant the lemon and lime trees on one side of the front walkway; when they're large enough, they'll be trained on a trellis over the walkway--it makes harvesting easier, and walking underneath it when the trees are in bloom smells fantastic. The pom bush (and another we'll buy) will go in front of the wheelchair ramp, an enormous concrete structure the previous owner put in so the office building he planned would be accessible. We're leaving it so the side entry and rear apartment also will be handicapped accessible.
But before we could plant anything, we had to deal with the weeds.
It's been raining in Monterey County for what seems to be a month straight and the weeds were out of control. I didn't want to spray them with weed killer and wait for them to die before we could start cleaning up, because the house already looks like crap and I didn't want to add to the blight. So the plan was to chop and wack and deal with murdering them on another day.
I dragged Grumpy the Teenager and his baby brother over to the house around noon. We were getting out of the car when this tiny, oldish Mexican woman wearing a hot pink "Flirt" t-shirt approached.
"Honey," Chuck said, "This is Berta."
(And her cicle! )
Berta lives a few blocks over and was out for her morning walk. She wanted to know if she could help.
I tried to explain to her that I had a couple of guys coming over shortly to do the heavy duty stuff, but she was fairly insistent. And given my Spanish sucks, I ended up asking, "Ok, how much?"
"Not too much," she said. I shrugged and said "ok," and for the next two hours, Berta hand-cicled the weeds from the side yard.
The boys and I were working on the side bed along the wall, where weeds with thick stalks and deep roots had taken hold. Bobby took the shovel away from me to work on the bigger roots and Sam wandered around in a sweaty little haze. Berta came over to help. At one point I turned around and she was gnawing on one of the weed stalks.
She must have caught my look, because she said, "No, it's ok, It's not bad." I asked her if it was sweet and she said, "No, but it has water in it." (D'oh!) I offered her a bottle of water and she took it with a grin. With a little Spanish from me and a little English from her, I learned her son works for the city motor pool, she goes to an Evangelical church, she does some housecleaning on the side and she's interested in renting one of the apartments when they're ready.
The comedy team of George and Tony (Jorge and Antonio to each other, George and Tony to their customers) came over to knock down the big stuff. They were working on a house near my mother-in-law's so I pulled over and asked them to come and take a look at the yard and give me an estimate. They just started doing yards because as George put it, it's hard to find a job right now and he's got kids to feed. They did half the yard today (equivalent to my remaining checking account balance after kids' tuition and tuition deposits for next year) and will come back at the end of the month to do the back half. They asked if they could take a picture of the before and after. ("My girlfriend won't believe we got a job this big," George told me.) Snap away, George, snap away.
Next week we'll do the layout for the actual vegetable gardens and lay out the weed barrier. We're doing raised beds in the front with tomatoes (cherry, paste and some heirloom), eggplants, peppers (sweet and jalapeno), cucumbers, zucchinis and strawberries. I'll take better and more frequent pictures as soon as I figure out where I put the camera charger.
And it means meeting Berta:
We were unloading this morning's Home Depot run, the beginning of the guacamole garden: a lemon tree, a lime tree, a Haas avocado tree and (completely unrelated to guacamole) a pomegranate bush. The plan was to plant the lemon and lime trees on one side of the front walkway; when they're large enough, they'll be trained on a trellis over the walkway--it makes harvesting easier, and walking underneath it when the trees are in bloom smells fantastic. The pom bush (and another we'll buy) will go in front of the wheelchair ramp, an enormous concrete structure the previous owner put in so the office building he planned would be accessible. We're leaving it so the side entry and rear apartment also will be handicapped accessible.
But before we could plant anything, we had to deal with the weeds.
It's been raining in Monterey County for what seems to be a month straight and the weeds were out of control. I didn't want to spray them with weed killer and wait for them to die before we could start cleaning up, because the house already looks like crap and I didn't want to add to the blight. So the plan was to chop and wack and deal with murdering them on another day.
I dragged Grumpy the Teenager and his baby brother over to the house around noon. We were getting out of the car when this tiny, oldish Mexican woman wearing a hot pink "Flirt" t-shirt approached.
"Honey," Chuck said, "This is Berta."
(And her cicle! )
Berta lives a few blocks over and was out for her morning walk. She wanted to know if she could help.
I tried to explain to her that I had a couple of guys coming over shortly to do the heavy duty stuff, but she was fairly insistent. And given my Spanish sucks, I ended up asking, "Ok, how much?"
"Not too much," she said. I shrugged and said "ok," and for the next two hours, Berta hand-cicled the weeds from the side yard.
The boys and I were working on the side bed along the wall, where weeds with thick stalks and deep roots had taken hold. Bobby took the shovel away from me to work on the bigger roots and Sam wandered around in a sweaty little haze. Berta came over to help. At one point I turned around and she was gnawing on one of the weed stalks.
She must have caught my look, because she said, "No, it's ok, It's not bad." I asked her if it was sweet and she said, "No, but it has water in it." (D'oh!) I offered her a bottle of water and she took it with a grin. With a little Spanish from me and a little English from her, I learned her son works for the city motor pool, she goes to an Evangelical church, she does some housecleaning on the side and she's interested in renting one of the apartments when they're ready.
The comedy team of George and Tony (Jorge and Antonio to each other, George and Tony to their customers) came over to knock down the big stuff. They were working on a house near my mother-in-law's so I pulled over and asked them to come and take a look at the yard and give me an estimate. They just started doing yards because as George put it, it's hard to find a job right now and he's got kids to feed. They did half the yard today (equivalent to my remaining checking account balance after kids' tuition and tuition deposits for next year) and will come back at the end of the month to do the back half. They asked if they could take a picture of the before and after. ("My girlfriend won't believe we got a job this big," George told me.) Snap away, George, snap away.
Next week we'll do the layout for the actual vegetable gardens and lay out the weed barrier. We're doing raised beds in the front with tomatoes (cherry, paste and some heirloom), eggplants, peppers (sweet and jalapeno), cucumbers, zucchinis and strawberries. I'll take better and more frequent pictures as soon as I figure out where I put the camera charger.
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