Stage Two

We think we're about a week away from finishing the re-refinance of the house. Our appraisal came in much higher than expected, which was a good thing, because we can get a lower loan-to-value ratio loan and thus a better interest rate.

We have some big plans for this summer.

First, we're going to redo the foundation. This is the big project, the one thing that's keeping us from being able to do anything else. With the foundation, we have to redo almost all the plumbing in the house. You may wonder why we have to do plumbing for the foundation, but it has to do with touching systems. The sewer frain goes through the wall of the foundation, and is not up to code, so we need to replace it, and in order to replace it we're going to have to replace almost every piece of pipe in the house, because they're going to be damaged by the replacement of the sewer.

When the foundation is replaced, we're going to replace the roof, which will mean replacing a lot of the rafters, as well.

We also would like to build The Shed, so we're going to try to work the scheduling so that we have the shed foundation poured when our foundation is poured, then we have time to frantically build walls, then we have the shed roofed when our roof is done. To build the shed we need to have a survey done, so we know where we can put the back wall and the side wall.

And finally, we need to replace the gate on the side of the house. We decided that we wanted to move the gate forward, so that we have more back yard and less driveway. We discussed this with our neighbor, who was amenable, as long as it was clear that she still owned her bit of land and as long as she could still get to that side of her house. We're going to build her a gate on her side, so she can get to her wall without walking on our property (not that we want her to stay off our land, but we don't want to force her to ask permission to, for example, wash her windows). We also need to fill in a hole in her fence so the dog doesn't end up in her yard every other minute.

In our copious spare time, we'll also be taping and mudding in the parlours, and painting, and removing as much of the fake wood panelling as possible, and stripping woodwork of horrible pink paint.

posted by ayse on 06/18/04