Monthly Archives: January 2015

Be Our Neighbor!

Posted in Finding the Perfect Property by

I’ve mentioned before that our neighborhood still has a few vacant lots in it, just waiting to be developed.  Our neighboring property to the north is one of those, and it just came on the market.  You could be our neighbor!

Our Neighbor's Property is for sale (shown in yellow).

Our Neighbor’s Property is for sale (shown in yellow).

The property is 5 acres in size located in the Lake Washington School District and the asking price is $299,900.

There’s not much included in the listing information online, but from all my research on our property I ended up finding quite a bit of information on this property as well.  This property, ours and two others used to be all one 20 acre parcel.  The owner subdivided the property into four 5 acre lots.  A few years ago all of the lots were going to be developed, but then the recession happened and 3 out of the 4 properties were never built on.  Here’s an idea of where the house could sit on the property (based on the site layout proposed in 2007).

Here's an idea of the house placement on property.

Here’s an idea of the house placement on property.

Building Permit – BMP’s Covenant Recorded

Posted in Permits by

The final step for the Civil Review to be complete is to get our drainage BMP’s approved.  BMP’s stand for “Best Management Practices”.  Basically, our drainage design on our property requires us to maintain the drainage treatment types that we install.  We have two different ways that we’re dealing with drainage on our property – drywells and sheet flow.  The driveway drains to a drywell, the roof drains to a drywell and the back patio sheet flows to the back yard.  The County requires us as the homeowners to know how to install and maintain these drainage features.  For example – the gravel material in the drywell becomes filled with fines and clogged, we’ll need to have them replaced.  The County wants this recorded and on file so that if we ever sell the property the new owners will also know how to take care of the property.

The County asked me to prepare “Exhibit A” with certain criteria – a 1” border on legal sized paper and only pertinent information shown.  I did this, the reviewer approved and signed off on it and then he sent me the rest of the information that need to be recorded in a covenant.

BMP Covenant Sheet 3

BMP Covenant Sheet 3 “Exhibit A”

To have the covenant accepted by the county it needed to be notarized.  Luckily my uncle is a notary and lives just a couple miles from us. We brought over yummy dessert from Whole Foods on Monday and signed the papers with him.

BMP Covenant Sheet 1

BMP Covenant Sheet 1

BMP Covenant Sheet 2

BMP Covenant Sheet 2

BMP Covenant Sheet 4

BMP Covenant Sheet 4

BMP Covenant Sheet 5

BMP Covenant Sheet 5

BMP Covenant Sheet 6

BMP Covenant Sheet 6

BMP Covenant Sheet 7

BMP Covenant Sheet 7

Joel submitted them to Seattle to the King County’s admin office and we had our recording number.  We gave the recording number to the County’s Civil reviewer and he signed off on our review as being approved.  Easy peasy!

Permit Approval - Civil

Revising Our Estimate to Build – Meeting #2

Posted in Budget & Estimate by

Over the past few weeks Joel and I really looked at what we were proposing in our house and made a list of things we could cut out and add in later if we choose.  I then revised the house estimate using the best guestimates I could make.  To make those ‘educated’ guesses, I had Matt send us all of the bids he got from the subcontractors.  In reviewing them I was able to see what assumptions they made for our house.  For example – they had really high end kitchen appliances included.  Although I’m not saying I wouldn’t have loved having a chef’s kitchen, I can do without the top of the line range to cook on.  I revised this and other line items to be more in-line with what we (and our pocketbook) could live with.

Making those changes still left our build estimate more than what we wanted to spend.  The next way to get the price down?  Either get some more competitive bids or ask those subs to work within our budget.

We talked with Matt about all of the changes we were proposing to the house as well as the idea of getting cheaper bids from subs this at our 2nd review meeting.  Matt was surprised to hear some of the choices we made (especially changing the exterior to all white which will significantly reduce the exterior cost of the home).  And he had already been working on contacting subs whose bids he felt were too high!

So for the next 2 weeks, Matt is going to update the estimate to what the new choices actually would cost (since my estimate was just a guess), as well as contact more subs and get their prices within our budget.

Here’s hoping we still can afford the house we want to build!

Building Permit – Civil Resubmittal (#2) and Approval!

Posted in Permits by

After our resubmittal meeting, I had a few things to change – the site drainage features and the limits of grading on the property.  The grading limits were simple to take care of – just remove some proposed contour lines on the property.

The County reviewers wanted us to move the drainage dispersion trench out of the wetland buffer.  This really doesn’t make sense to me since all of the water naturally drains to the area I located it in, but apparently it had to go in order to get our permit approval.  If I was going to relocate the drainage feature, I was going to change the type too.  I really didn’t want to have a soggy backyard, so I changed it to being a drywell.  In order to use a drywell system, you have to calculate the amount of roof runoff would be directed towards the drywell, and using the soil type you can appropriately size the drywell.  Here’s my calcs:

Drywell Sizing Calculations

Drywell Sizing Calculations

With the drywell sizes for both the driveway and for the roof runoff I was able to place them on the property in an area that’s outside of the wetland buffer and that was it!

Final Site Plan - Sheet 1

Final Site Plan – Sheet 1

Final Site Plan - Sheet 2

Final Site Plan – Sheet 2

Final Site Plan - Sheet 3

Final Site Plan – Sheet 3

With the new site plan, I got a call from the reviewer and we passed – he was ready to approve our plans!  The last step to getting his final approval is to get our drainage BMP’s recorded with the county.  With that recording number he’ll sign off and we’ll be done with the Civil Review.