project addition: this is huge

This is huge. (Just please don’t say that in a Trump-voice.)

Just wanted to celebrate what might seem like a really minor, unglamorous milestone to most, but is huge for our project. We have all signed, sealed, sworn, notarized documents / maintenance agreements / general buy-in on the project. As I’ve mentioned before, this can make or break a project when building on just a tiny, narrow lot. Sure, there are ways to get around stubborn, non-committal neighbors, but those methods are long, drawn out, expensive, and not always effective. So this is big. It took a bit longer than we thought, but we put together a reasonable package, took the time to answer questions, tried to make the notarization process less onerous – and in the end, both neighbors took the time to get their own documents in order for us and delivered them to us. That’s a really, really good feeling.

The structural engineer is hard at work, we’ve had a tree guy out to look at the neighbors’ trees near the property lines, our house is slowly filling up with samples (like fifty shades of black brick), and we’ve got more kitchen appliance appointments set up for the weekend. I’m cranking on sections and interior elevations, we’ve got zoning signoffs in the near future, and we should have some early $$ numbers coming in soon. Then we’ll tighten up the bid set and start making final decisions on the big items, and then the little ones.

Progress, progress… huge progress!