And So It Begins...

Plans are drawn. Permits are approved. The house remodel has become a reality.

I decided I'd create a blog (a girl can handle three blogs, right?) for family and friends to follow our remodel adventure. 

And no one is more excited than this little guy!
 

Except for...this guy.

For those of you who unfamilar with house remodels, you often spend time waiting for the next step. Waiting and waiting. Our designs have been ready for over a year.  Just when I thought we were ready to begin, we hit a major snag.  To make a long story short, the law says a driveway longer than 150' needs to have an entire house sprinkler systemed.   Our driveway happens to be 153' long.  For over a year, we have been waiting for a fire marshall to respond to the request regarding an alternative to sprinkler systeming the ENTIRE house  That would be 2500 sq ft of our current home and 1500 sq ft of the new additon.  That's a lot of sprinkers, people. 

We asked the architect to design a plan for a hammerhead and driveway large enough for fire trucks to turn around in an emergency.  Our architect drew up a design and we decided to begin work.  Once the work is complete, the fire marshall will come out, inspect it, and sign off the work.
All of this because of three feet.  Jeez...

The shaded lines are where we are adding/widing the driveway (the driveway is 153' long), including the hammerhead. The driveway ends at the house where the garage and addition to the house will be completed. To the right of where the driveway ends is our current home. Make sense?

Sooooo, yesterday the tree man showed up and began cutting down the necessary trees.

BEFORE (view from front porch)

these are three trees at the top of the driveway where the hammerhead will be put in

AFTER (same view)

The open space makes our house look HUGE! Oh wait. It is.

Three additional trees were cut for the widening of the driveway. 
They took most of the wood away but left us a small pile for summer burning.

Eric walked around with the excavator guy today, too.

That's Eric in the middle of the picture with the excavator guy in front of him.

The bulldozer arrives tomorrow to start tearing out/widening the driveway and putting in a retaining wall.

Once this project is completed, we'll ask the fire marshall to come out and sign off that we can begin to building the house addition.

If he doesn't? 

Well, that will make for one heck of a blog post, won't it?!

Love, Us 3