It's a No-Go For Now

I just got off the phone with Amy at MHT, who delivered the frustrating news: We won't be able to start work on the Bungalow for at least another 45 days.  She said our application has been rated as “Incomplete” (a technical term) and has to be resubmitted for the next cycle before any work can be done.  She seemed pretty frustrated as well, and said our application was "really good," and “really close” to being accepted with conditions, as we had hoped would happen.  However, it’s a no-go for now.

Apparently, the main issue in our not getting a conditional acceptance may have been that so few of the board members had ever been in the house.  Therefore, they weren’t able to picture what we meant by a lot of the changes, even with drawings and pictures, and even with explanations from those who had been there.  We're going to fix that on Monday: Abby and Rory are going to meet the board at the house for a walk-through.  Afterwards, we can work on resubmitting the same exact application we put in last time, but with edits, additions, tweaks, and other such helpful ways to get this party started. *sigh*

The news is not all bad: I asked her about several of our main concerns, and she said that the board has absolutely no problem with us moving the kitchen upstairs (yay), and no problem with the excavation under the porch (double yay).  Their only two concerns, apparently, are the roof and that damn wall between the dining room and the kitchen.  For the roof, it is her understanding that as long as we are there to explain exactly how we will maintain the current slope with the 2-inch rise we propose due to the need for insulation, they’ll be happy.  As for the wall, they have apparently given us recommendations as to how we might approach it without changing the authenticity of the great room.  She will mail the packet of recommendations to us today, but will also email me an electronic version of it for us to look at, so we will have something to occupy our time over the next few evenings.

So our timeline now has been pushed back by 45 days.  The next board meeting is on October 4, and the deadline for submission of a new application is September 27.  However, she did mention we might want to put information into the packet about specifics such as paint and tile preferences, so we can start taking those steps and making those decisions now.  We’ve already started making some of those decisions-- we went last weekend on a Lowe's date, and will have no issue attempting to do the same this weekend, albeit with kids in tow.  Once we make decisions, I'll post them here on the blog for you to ooh and aah over (and, I'm sure, to try to convince us to go in other directions...).