What are we building here? This:
For 24 years, we've lived in a house where neither the front door nor the back door has ANY shelter whatsoever from the rain or snow. And there is no porch or deck.
This new house will have deep cover at both doors. BUT the most coveted feature might be the street/west-facing screened porch. I look forward to quiet, bug-free evenings of reading and conversation there, hosting neighbors, and watching the cat engage with her own community of critters.
A requirement for excavation on tighter lots in Minneapolis is shoring. This is a reinforcing line to prevent unwanted settling that could negatively affect immediate neighbors. In this case, it's required on both sides. Steel tubes are pounded down @ 24" o.c., with plywood set behind them as full excavation progresses. Today was the set-and-pound down phase, with full excavation to follow.
After initial backfill, the excess pile height will be cut off a few feet below final grade.
On Tuesday, the 92-year-old house that formed part of the 52xx Drew Avenue South neighborhood was erased. The power tools used were a CAT backhoe and several dump trucks. According to our Bollig handler, very little of the debris will end up in a landfill. Most of it will be picked apart into various waste streams for any afterlife purposes the materials may serve.
From the point where the first damage was done, it took only 45 minutes for the framed portion of the house to be crumpled and shoved into the basement. By the time I returned to the site 4 hours later, there was nothing left but a smooth excavation pit.
92 years, including who knows how many remodeling and improvements over the decades, erased in less than half a day...
We are a few days away from demolition. While we can mourn the loss of a 92-year-old small house, we can feel good that we've salvaged just about all that we could out of it. Most material has been sold (via craigslist) or given away - and the list of salvaged material is long! - some has been retained for incorporation into the new house. What's left is a very empty shell with high radon levels and poor insulation. What will replace it will not compare in quality, but we hope it will become integral to the new fabric of the neighborhood as the current home helped define it originally.
One of the two bedrooms.
Decaying wood, overgrown shrubs. Dozens of other plants have been either moved to a temporary nursery on the site for reuse or given away to other locations.
Finally.
At some point, it's possible that there will be a blog post celebrating a building permit and a committed construction start date. But that seems to still be somewhere in the future. It's becoming unbelievable to us that the City of Minneapolis can take so long to review a project that surpasses building code requirements and conforms to all zoning code limits, but we seem to have no power to change this. Yesterday, however, I mailed a letter to City Council ward member Linea Palmisano registering our frustration with the process. We'll see if it does any good.
We have been slowly dismantling the existing house over the last few months as we anticipate the building permit. The windows and exterior doors will be the last things to be removed for reuse. This video tour was taken on June 16, 2016.
Music (used without permission): "Erinnerung (Remembrance)", by Klaus Doldinger.
The current issue of Fine Homebuilding (June/July) features an article on their new venture, "ProHOME", a teaching effort to demonstrate best practices that the magazine promotes. Reading the article, I was struck by the parallels with our own venture. Specifically:
- The house is "modestly sized, energy smart, healthy, flexible, and durable".
- Timeless appeal, inspired by farmhouses, with an energy-capturing shape.
- "Aging-in-place flexibility of the floor plan, which allows for converting the first-floor flex room into a master bedroom".
- "Air-sealing, insulation, and resilience" are baked into the design and detailing.
A major differentiator, however, is that while the Fine Homebuilding team isn't "looking to spend any money certifying the house under any particular green-building program", we will be seeking both GreenStar and LEED certifications.
As of today, we've had 3 open houses and 28 showings at our current home. No offers yet, which at least tells us that we didn't undervalue it for the initial listing. On the soon-to-be-under-construction property, we are waiting for the city to complete its permit reviews, and are using the time to complete deconstruction to the degree that we can. So far we've removed and found new homes for all of the interior doors, all toilet fixtures, window shades, kitchen countertops, interior trim, lights, fans, and a number of other components. Kitchen cabinets have been removed and will be reused in the new house, as well as some of the windows, the kitchen sink and faucet, and many of the transplantable plants around the house.
We're anxious for construction to start!
As we prepare to submit the new house drawings to the city for a building permit, our current house just listed for sale!
New details + more information = new bottom line. And - no surprise - the new bottom line is more than we can afford. So we're now part of the magical reality of:
" V A L U E E N G I N E E R I N G " ! ! !
There are many euphemisms for this, but the real bottom line comes down to "making it cheaper without sacrificing the essence." There are several forks in this particular road. Which one slopes downward quickest to the best possible destination? Once more: STAY TUNED!
The updated pricing set is now in the hands of the contractors, and so it's anxious waiting time. Will the hygrothermal analyses and revised envelope detailing, the structural framing definitions, lighting schedule, kitchen bump-out, and any number of other bits of new information push the bottom line beyond reach? Is some redesign in our future? Stay tuned!
It's a three-ring circus!
With the property in hand, we are finalizing construction materials and details, making selections, and gathering salvaged materials for incorporation into the new home. At the same time, we've hired an independent rater to guide us through our dual-path LEED and GreenStar processes, are running building science evaluations on the exterior envelope assemblies, and are firming up the home's bones with a structural engineer. Finally, we are slowly but surely prepping our current home for when we'll list it through our realtor.
Oh: And there's real, billable work to be done, too!
The initial house estimate of $480,000 quickly went up to $674,000 and so we are faced with difficult choices, what with the Sworn Construction Statement due Monday in order to meet the sequence of events preceding the closing in 3 weeks. The quandary is that this project CANNOT become a million dollar effort. That defies the challenge of realizing an "affordable" new, high performance house. I don't wish the epilogue to this entire project to be "Sorry. It Can't Be Done". Stay tuned.
We are simultaneously working through costs and design refinements. This is an image testing a possible new kitchen configuration.
Late today, everything changed. We purchased a property on which to build. Look for this website and its coverage to shift focus. it's going to be hard, but it's going to be fun!
