Tuesday, January 24, 2012

PERMITTED!

At long last, today we got our building permit!  It's only been 237 days since we closed, but who's counting?

Now, nothing bureaucratic stands in the way of us beginning work on the Bungalow.  (At least nothing we've thought of...)  Rory reports the subcontractors will all go through the place in the next few days, everything will be scheduled, and within two weeks the whole place will be humming like a finely tuned... Okay, I don't care about what kind of machine or instrument-- I just want construction!

I promise posts will be more regular now, and pictures will be forthcoming.  But now, I'm stuffed full of pizza, and I just want to take off my clothes and veg with Abby in front of the DVR.

Permit!

Monday, January 16, 2012

Shingles Approved

We've been gone for a week, and although while we had absolutely no progress on anything during that week (including having to slightly reconfigure our building permit request... I have no idea what that means...), we came home to the following message from the Maryland Historical Trust:

"The Maryland Historical Trust has determined that these project amendments meet the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation."


In this case, "these project amendments" are the type and color of shingles we requested-- GAF Royal Sovereign 3-Tab in Weathered Gray.  Pretty sure this is the final go-ahead from MHT on the first part of our plan-- going to check with Amy & Renee tomorrow once the office opens.  Now, if the building permit could just get passed...

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

New Year, New Movement?

Happy New Year, all!  And with a new year, hopefully this thing will get going in a new way.  First good sign: on the first business day of the year, yesterday, our drawings and plans were stamped and we have officially said goodbye to the County historical permitting process.  Small glitch today, when Mark took the plans to County permitting and was told he needed an original signature by the owner, as opposed to the copied one he had.  So tomorrow, he'll meet Abby and get her Jane Hancock, and can submit the permit application.  (This is the final application at this stage, and when we get it, hammers and saws and all that good stuff will start doing their thang.)

The shingles we settled on: kinda gray, kinda brown,
kinda boring... but the type is approved by the State,
and we're hoping the color soon will be too!
Abby and I finally settled on a shingle, after having to settle on the shingle type.  The problem, we found at the last minute, was that the tin shingles above the porch were completely white.  (They didn't look white, since they are not in the best condition, but when I poked a few down through the big hole in the roof to see what kind of gray they were, well, I was surprised.)  I contacted Amy and Renee at MHT and they said, barring hot pink, any color we wanted on the roof was fine.  So we picked out "weathered gray" shingles, and when we refurbish the tin, that'll be dyed to match.  I had to submit an amendment to the State for the shingles, but that should be a simple day-or-so response and we can actually order the shingles from Home Depot.

So where we are now is:

  1. Waiting for the okay from the State on the color of the shingles;
  2. Waiting to sign the form for the County to submit for the building permit; and
  3. Waiting for Rory to get the roofing guys out to measure the roof so we can know exactly how many shingles to buy.
And that's it!  It's very cool to think we actually may be spending money very soon...