Demolition Continues

Garage and wall are down. Demolition of the family room/dining room wing starts.

Hopefully for the neighbors they will get this part of the project done quickly. I guess the vibrations from loading the dumpsters is pretty bad. I'm checking to make sure we're not starting any earlier in the morning than we are supposed to.

The Garage is down!

Demolition started and the garage is gone

Coral Stone

We are considering using Coral Stone on the exterior of the house as accent pieces around garage doors, arches, etc. Jimmy has found a good supplier in Miami with a wide range of thicknesses etc. Coral Stone is indigenous to south Florida and typically found in limestone quarries It most often shows tiny fossils (plant and marine life) imprinted in the stone.

All Clear

All utilities and the City have been out and have marked locations of lines or verified the lack of them.

NEFIBERLIGHT LLC.- Clear No FacilitiesPROGRESS ENERGY - ST PETERSBURG- Clear No FacilitiesPROGRESS ENERGY FLORIDA TRANSMISSION UNDERGROUND- No Conflict - utility is outside of the requested work siteVERIZON FLORIDA INC- MarkedTECO PEOPLES GAS- ST PETERSBURG- MarkedBRIGHT HOUSE NETWORKS, LLC- No Conflict - utility is outside of the requested work siteCITY OF ST PETERSBURG- Marked

Today Emil's crew was to move the plants in harms way,take down the garage doors, take out the hot water heater, A/C, and remove salvageable item i.e. the stain glass, bath sink and intercom. The demo company will start on Monday and by Tuesday should start tearing the designated buildings down.

The permit box is up with all necessary permits pinned on it! Gosh..its a reality!

Progress

Have approval of permits with one actually in hand ready to on the post. Emil says he'll get the post hole digger out tomorrow and slap that baby up on a post. Demolition will hopefully start on Friday. Finally!

Had a productive meeting of the "brain trust": John, Susan, Jimmy, Emil and me. We discussed the possibility of a rainwater collection system that could be in an underground or above ground cistern like device that could provide all or most of the water needed for flushing toilets in the house. It can be connected to City water so if they run low they fill with city water when needed.

We also discussed again the use of solar for water heating of house water and perhaps the pool and spa. Also, LED lights in the home that can significantly reduce electricity needed to power lights. Photovoltaics may still be too expensive on the front end to make it worth the effort...but we are going to investigate it one more time before deciding. We're trying to get as green as possible without spending money that we won't see back for two decades.

Tomorrow we go to the bank to notarize some paperwork and open an account for the project at Wachovia. That way i can pay them by simply transfering money from my account to theirs online. Also, will meet with the LED light guy and gosh...someone else...I'm forgetting who. It's been a long day...but productive.

December 2008....where is that permit?

In St. Pete for meetings with John our architect, Emil and Jimmy our contractors, and Geri our stained glass guru. Also hoping to get those demolition and building permits...still hoping...have been hoping for two months. Any day now..really...any day. Sigh.

Getting ready for Demo

The workers bees are busy getting the house ready to demolish the 1950's addition. Removing shutters, electric equipment, crap form the garage left over from previous owners, light fixtures...anything reusable or sellable. Dozers should be on the job soon.

Now Come the Decisions

Coral Stone or marble, 8 foot wide garage door or 9 foot, curved sidewalk or straight, where to put the arbor. This is the fun stuff.

Hallelujah!

After over 6 months of wrangling, disappointments, frustration, and unexpected twists and turns, we received approval this morning by the St. Pete City Council for our remodel request for our home in Granada Estates. They overturned the denial we received from the CPC (which was actual a vote of 3 to 2 in our favor..but they needed 4 votes to approve...sigh.) The vote in our favor was 8 - 0. We were doing a happy dance outside City Hall afterwards. I cried...happy tears. Thanks to Wayne and Jimmy for showing up and speaking our behalf (as they have in our other two prior hearings). Thanks to our attorney Don Mastry who did a great job. And thanks to our architect John and his wife Susan for their REALLY devoted work on our behalf and being such supportive friends. AFter our big win, the three of us went to the Sports Authority and I bought a Tampa Bay Rays hat and t-shirt (celebrating THEIR victory in winning the American League East Championship). And then we went to La Cabana de mi Tio...for my favorite carnitas tacos and gorditos anywhere!!! A great day.

Status Report

I haven’t blogged here for a while because I’ve had very little good to say as we have slogged through a very frustrating permitting process at the City. We still don’t have permits and have filed an appeal with the City Council (after hiring an attorney). We go to City Council on October 2nd. Hopefully, I will have a positive and celebratory entry on the 3rd.

However frustrating we have continued to make plans for the house. Last week, we had a wonderful afternoon with Geri Willingham, a stained glass artist, who is designing a series of windows and transoms for the our “soon-to-be-permitted-we-hope” house in St. Pete. I can’t tell you how excited I am about the designs…when I get the photos of the sketches I’ll post a few. They are filled with images native or common to Florida…bird of paradise, sea grapes, gardenias, orange blossoms, egrets, herons, osprey, and turtles (you know we have to turtles for Jerry) even a roseate spoonbill. Those of you who know my love of birding can just imagine how “happy as a clam at high tide” I am. Just think how much happier I’ll be if we actually get permits and build the addition where we plan to install the stained glass!

Small Victories

Heard from John yesterday and the banana tree, umbrella (schefflera) tree, and "purple" bush that we transplanted are all doing well. All have significant new growth....yeah! AND the crape myrtle are astonishingly sprouting a lot of new growth...astonishing since a big wind toppled them over for 2 days about a month after transplant...I'm still not sure what shape they'll end up since we had to "lop their top"...but I figure if they make it I'll invest in a good arborist to work a little magic.

Make that 80,000 gallons

that would be 10 pools worth of water...where is it supposedly going (see previous post), coming from, why aren't we seeing anything? have sent pool guy to shut off auto fill and have sent my contractor to search under and in the house and cabana for evidence of leakage. I hate long distance micromanagement!

16,000 gallons!!!

Got a note from the St. Pete utility department saying that we used 16,000 gallons of water last month and thought we should figure out why. Well...its a mystery that must be explained either by 1) a defective meter 2)a misread by the meter reader or 3) someone is stealing our water. to put this in perspective our pool only holds about 10,000 gallons of water. And in a normal month of no one living at the house we use about 3200 gallons of water (primarily from water evaporation from the pool and the odd toilet flush here and there when we visit the house to check it out) . So here is the mystery...1) no one is living in the house 2) all but one toilet is shut off and we checked the other one it is NOT running 3) our irrigation is from an onsite well (and we only are allowed to water once a week anyway) 4) we had the pool and equipment checked today...no major leaks...only one tiny one we've had for months that can't use more than a couple of gallons a day 5) there are no marshy areas around the house 6) there is no water under the house 7) there is no "surprise" water in our neighbors yards. so you tell me...misread, defective meter, or someone drove a water truck up to our house in the middle of the night and stole 2 trucks worth of water. hmmmm.

The Beginning

The Beginning was over a year old ago when we found a lovely old home in the historic NorthEast section of St. Pete that matched what Annette wanted in a neighborhood with what Jerry wanted in a geographic location (sunny Florida)...only thing it was too small and needed to be added onto so that we can live to our old ages there. So we decided to do something we had always said we'd never do, remodel an old home. The only sensible thing we've done is deciding NOT to be living in it as the remodel/addition is going on. Of course, that means it is 14 months later and we're STILL not living in Florida.

I probably should have started this blog at the beginning of this journey...but I was not a blogophile at that time...so better late than never. I'm sure I'll remember all the important or humorous points of the last 14 months at some time or other.

So where are we today? Waiting for approvals from the City, anticipated to be July 18th. Have moved plants and trees that were close to the parts of the house that will be demolished. Have plants we love. Have hired a contractor. Have hired our architect to be head "bulldog" during construction. Have met with a Geri Willingham who is going to design and install some stained glass windows for us. have narrowed down roof tile colors and shapes we like. have narrowed down the stucco and trim colors we like. Have decided on flooring (generally). ETc. etc. etc.

As of today, the estimate for completion is March 2009. Keep fingers crossed.