Day 13

I tried to take photos over the weekend of the progress, but photos cannot describe what is going on.

I've decided that remodeling is kind of like giving birth, though I haven't given birth so what do I know. You know giving birth is going to be painful, but you really have no idea what pain is until you've experienced it. That's what remodeling, or should I say gutting, a home is like. I knew it was going to be tough, but I had no idea how tough. It looks and sounds exciting, but we're still in the stressful/terrified stage.

Our contractor seems to have worked out how to deal with the permit issue of not being able to work on the side addition, but we won't know how behind we are until the ZBA decision is published. I'm still blown away that it was never done and when the building department realized their mistake, it should have been written and published immediately. It may get issued by the end of next week. Seriously, where is the accountability?! I guess that's government for you.

Day 9

All large projects run into one problem or another along the way. Turns out, we just ran into a big one. The lovely town of Andover never wrote or published the zoning board of appeal (ZBA) decision we applied for back in February, that means the building permit issued at the end of March never should have been issued. The town "took" back the building permit, and as a compromise, issued a permit for the back addition but we'll have to wait 5 weeks for the permit for the side addition. No work on the side can continue. This is a construction logistical nightmare.

First of Many Milestones

Looks like we're moving forward. We went ahead and submitted our application to be put on the agenda for the Feb meeting to receive a variance from the town. The next big hurdle is financing. Assuming all goes well, construction will begin the first of May and the project should be completed by mid-Sept. That's much better than the one year time frame I was expecting.