The Clock is Ticking

Our building permit was officially issued on September 8th.  It's technically good for 12months, but I expect we'll have to extend it since our anticipated time to build is also 12 months, and we're still 2 weeks away from getting started.  

So relieved that our interactions with the county should be over and Matt, our builder, will handle the rest of it (inspections, etc).  Now we can turn our attention back to what we want this house to look like!  We're planning to meet with an interior designer late next week to start discussing some things we're unsure about.  Between now and then we need to get our questions organized and choose some favorite photos to share with her.  Lots to do, but with school starting and all the birthdays happening, I'm drowning a bit.  Looking forward to settling into a routine with school/life and making some firm decisions about home finishes.  

Permit is Ready!

 April 2nd to September 1st - That was our permit timeline.  Yeesh.  But it's ready to issue!  We need to upload some documents and pay our permit fee (ouch), but it's ready to go.  

When I saw the email from the county letting us know it was approved, I texted Jeremy and wrote, "Want to build a house?"  His response was, "WHAAAT?!?!!!"

In some ways it doesn't seem real.  Our builder was excited to hear it was ready and I have a phone call with him tomorrow to discuss the next steps.  

Almost There!

Quality control was signed off today!  One final step left, which we've been told should go quickly.  But I don't think our definition of quickly aligns with theirs.  

All Reviews Finished, but Still Not Done Yet

 I asked for another update, since we can see the plans were approved on Monday.  Seems like there's more steps to go, which just sound like nonsense to me.  

The next step is it goes to Mr. D for quality control.  She has no idea how long quality control is taking, especially since Mr. D was just promoted to the position.  Then it goes to Ms. G for quality assurance.  Wait...it just went through quality control, then it needs to go through quality assurance?  You're kidding, right?  

So, we're back to having no clue how long it will be until we get our permit.  I'm getting impatient.  Yesterday was 19 weeks since our permit was officially received.  

A Little Bit Closer

 The King County system shows the plan reviewer signed off on "Construction Services Review" today.  But "Engineering Services Review still appears to be pending with no one assigned to review it yet.  And our overall permit still shows "Reviews in Progress".  I'm waiting to hear from our builder as far as what this means, but it does seem like we made some progress today.  

Finally A Permit Update

 Our builder gave us the green light to email the plan reviewer and ask for a status update.  We sent that last night and today he responded that he has two plans ahead of ours, but he expects to start our review tomorrow or Monday.  Yay!  

We've been told once plan review is over, it usually takes the permit tech about a week to collect all the documents and be ready to issue the permit.  But our builder said he would reach out to the tech to see if it could be ready any faster.  

With this update our builder can begin lining up subs for the initial steps of our build.  It feels like we're close to the fun part!  

Hopeful Notes

Today I logged into the county's system to see if there were any new notes for our project.  There were!  I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but there's a note from the really bad guy that seems to indicate he's signed off on our drainage plan and sent it to his manager for final review on 6/30/20.  EEEEE!  I've asked our builder to take a look and see what he thinks.  But this seems like it could be a big deal.  If he's signed off, I'm not overly worried about his manager.  And I'm not worried about the actual building plans passing because our architect is awesome.  We could be close to having a permit!

Drainage Resubmittal

We've officially resubmitted our drainage plan with all the extra engineering requested by the reviewer.  It's a few thousand dollars worth of engineering, and it includes our $10 planting plan.  Fingers crossed he's satisfied and signs off.  Or at least he doesn't come up with extra requirements to make things more difficult.

Planting Plan

Satan (AKA our drainage reviewer) is demanding a Planting Plan.  It's a technical document showing how we plan to re-plant the well road.  There is a specific list of native plants we're allowed to use.  There are three types (trees, shrubs, groundcovers).  We have to use at least two species within each plant type.  There is a spacing schedule.  For example, a 1 gallon Vine Maple covers 4' on center.  Every square foot of the well road has to be coveres by a plant radius. 

We learned this week that planting plans cost about 2K, and the guy that can do it is out next week, when we planned to re-submit.  So...I bought $10 landscape design software and told the civil engineer we want to tey to create it ourselves.  He agreed to try it!  So Jeremy spent a lot of time today designing our plan.   Fingers crossed it works!!!!

(Bad) Luck of the Draw

Our drainage review has been assigned to the worst of the worst at the county.  He's notorious for being difficult to work with and making up rules above and beyond what is required by the county.  He's unhappy with the well road, unhappy with the culvert, unhappy with the current engineering and wants more.  My stomach was in knots when I read the email from the civil engineer with this news.  We'll see how awful he's going to be during this process.

Permit Application Officially Accepted!

Once the engineer signed off on the Grant of Easement as sufficient proof, intake was able to invoice us for the permit.  We paid and it's now "under review"!

King County is running at limited capacity for now.  Before the shutdown, they were taking upwards of 20 weeks to process building permits, according to our builder.  So this could be a very long wait.  But we're happy to have this big step behind us.

Easement Hunt

King County Permitting requested a copy of the easement showing we have access to the road.  Our legal description states the property has an access easement.  The Statutory Warranty Deed from 1958 which is our Proof of Legal Lot shows the property has an easement.  But that wasn't enough.

I spent hours compiling proof the easement exists.  I dug through online records.  I was able to find a recorded survey of the neighbor's parcel showing the easement along the road, and a King County Assessor's Map showing the easement running past our property...not good enough.  I knew the recording number of the document I needed, but the document was too old to be found online.  I emailed King County Archives, but they are closed and not searching microfiche records until they re-open.  I was stuck. I submitted what I had and crossed my fingers, but they let me know it still wasn't sufficient proof.

Fortunately the person from the county was nice enough to call and verbally recommend I look through the Title Report from our closing documents from when we purchased the property.  He said if we're lucky, there should be a hyperlink to that old recorded document.  Sure enough, there it was!  I've never been so happy to see a Grant of Easement from 1958 in my entire life!

 

We Applied for our Building Permit!