White on White

With Abby and the kids in North Carolina for the week, I've been left to my own devices. And that means, in the last four days, I've made three trips to Home Depot, spent fourteen hours painting, and have somehow reinvigorated our contractors. Don't ask me how on that last one, because if I knew, I'd kick myself for not having done whatever it was a whole lot earlier.

Just like Adam Duritz of Counting Crows,
I have stepped into a fog where no one
notices the contrast of white on white.

First off, what I'm doing myself. Painting. And more painting. We have about three miles worth of trim in our house, and all of it is plain white-primed wood, just ready to be finished. No idea why it was put in prior to being painted, but I'm not about to pull it off piece by piece in order to make the painting process quicker, as my cousin Tim the contractor suggests. (Tim the out-of-state contractor, I might add; otherwise, he'd be Tim my contractor.)  I know pulling it off would speed up the painting process, but I have nowhere to do the actual painting once that happens-- no basement, no yard that isn't entirely mud (and would therefore likely force me to clean the trim after painting it), no workhorse things (isn't that what they're called?) to set up on the street outside. So for this project, it's the slog of alternating between a paintbrush and a mini-roller, laying on the ground and climbing ladders and choosing a shirt to ruin with paint-- my old, huge Albany tee, in this case.

The painting is satisfying up close, because I can see the paint going on wet, but frustrating from afar. That's because, after eight hours of painting on Saturday, I stepped back and saw pretty much no change at all. White paint replaced white primer. (At least all the furniture was moved away from the wall and my Albany shirt was sufficiently messed up, so I could prove to neighbors passing by that I had actually been doing something the whole day!) However, on day two, things changed. Only three hours of painting on Sunday left me with completed trim-- two coats-- throughout the entire upstairs. And since it's high-gloss, while you can't necessarily see the difference, you can feel it. Just run your hands across the door frame on the way to the kitchen, and instead of a blunt, matte surface, your hands are greeted with a smooth, cool surface that says "people might actually live here!"  Monday night I started downstairs, and after three hours I stopped, having completed a first coat in the bathroom and mud room-- that's it. Holy cow: whose idea was it to get trim?

This afternoon I'll have a choice: go back home and keep brush-painting the as-yet unpainted surfaces, or stop by Home Depot for a fourth time in five days to get a new roller so I can do the second coat. I tried the trick Abby told me about-- wrapping the roller in cellophane and sticking it in the fridge-- but rather than keeping it wet and usable, like the paintbrush, it just hardened the roller into a latexy rock.

"Now real people can use me!"

Well, while that excitement was forming in the refrigerator, something was actually happening just a 90-degree turn to the left. Yes, contractors were in our house, and they fixed the problem with the range hood-- namely, that it was positioned about nine inches above the range itself, so as to aid denizens of Munchkinland in their cooking travails, should they ever need to make use of our kitchen. In their defense-- the contractors', not the Munchkins'-- the range hood had been placed level to the bottom of the cabinets, so there was a pretty line from one side to the other. But then there was that whole pesky not-being-able-to-reach-the-back-burners issue to deal with. Rory called me at work, asked me a bunch of questions pertaining to the things on our list, and surprised me when he said he saw what I was talking about-- meaning he was actually at the house. His being sent out is probably a sign that I have pissed Mark off enough that he wants to shut me up, but I think that's a good sign. Especially since when Rory's on the scene, things get done.

It all probably emanated from my frustrated email last week.

Mark + Rory: What is going ON? No one has been here for at least ten days. Meanwhile, we're living in a construction zone, and people are downright laughing at us. We would be too-- this is beyond ridiculous. There is NO acceptable reason your guys were not here this week. NOT amused. We need action immediately on the items we emailed you with already three times. There are NO excuses. Gregory + Abby

I'm not usually an emphatic capitalizer, but come ON.  Actually, I bet it came from the fact that I copied Rory on the email, rather than just sending it to Mark; that's worked in the past, and I don't know why I had stopped doing it. Whatever reason, something was done yesterday, and a large piece of drywall was left on our front porch, so who knows what else they're planning for this week?

Other than painting and the stove, the only other movement on the house has been self-initiated. After seeing the constant influx of cricket spiders and regular spiders and fruit flies and now wasps inside and out, I made an executive decision to get us some pest management. Terminix came out and sprayed the place, and now there are clumps of dead little bugs in the corners of the bathroom that I have to sweep up every day. I was told to wait two weeks, then call for another round, at which point everything should be dead. The exterminator was amusing-- he started the appointment by telling us how he's pretty sure he and his friends used to get high in our house back when it was abandoned (then apologized if that offended us, which hopefully you know it wouldn't, especially since he's not the first to tell us he'd done that!), then told us our house had an inordinate number of bugs in it, finishing up by asking if he could grab a ziploc bag to take a few back to the office, since there was a specific bug-- teeny tiny white ones-- he'd never seen before. Always ones to be unusual, we are.

I also finished the row of bushes planted over the last two weekends by filling in the holes with nine bags -- 360 pounds -- of topsoil. The holes were the result of taking huge clumps of rock out of the bed. I guess I could have left 'em in there, but we want those bushes to grow, and I don't want rocks I left in the ground to be the reason all those bushes may get stunted. And as far as stunted bushes go, there's one issue I've been avoiding: our front yard.

They're gonna have to dig it up. And someone's gonna have to pay. A few weeks ago now, Mark was telling me that he was fighting the inspection issue with the county, because the inspector had looked at the retaining wall, regardless of their records. Rory concedes that he probably should have called to follow up with the inspector, who had been there to look only at the footer, but that he definitely had done the inspection. I didn't believe Mark 100%, but I do trust Rory. Thing is, Mark mentioned the inspection while noting he had explained to the inspector how it "would be unfair to have to charge the homeowner $4000 to re-dig."  No response from me, other than quiet bewilderment. So Rory mentions this time that they had feelers out to get quotes on the dig. So that sounds like they're at least trying to get the cost down... But I feel we shouldn't have to pay at all. It's not our fault, and although I'm now unconvinced that it's entirely the contractors' fault, it's not our fault. Similar to how I expect not to have to pay for the patching of two spots in the porch roof where recent downpours have revealed leaks, this was not a repair job-- it was a job from scratch, and we shouldn't have to pay to fix their mistakes.

But something tells me what I think ain't what's gonna happen. Sigh.

So for now, I'm gonna focus on painting enough that it looks like something was actually done when the fam gets back, and hoping the contractors do enough that it can be a decent surprise to both me when I get home from work every day and Abby on her return. Hey, stranger things have happened. Like, for instance, work restarting this week.

An End to Fancy Camping?

When we first moved into our house in the District, Abby and I joked that we were "fancy camping," what with our one working electric outlet and our daily trek to the basement to use the shower, and our lack of central heating.  More than eight years later, we have found ourselves "fancy camping" once more.  Only this time, the hardships are the lack of television, Internet, and a kitchen sink.  Lo and behold: this week.

Up until Monday, I had been holding out hope that some cable company would come to our rescue.  You see, our neighbors all have cable.  That's because, well, they live in 2013.  Unfortunately, Dewitt Drive separates the historic from the pre-historic.  That's because while 9615 Dewitt Drive, across the street, has their choice of Comcast or Verizon, 9618 Dewitt Drive, us, is left in the dark ages.  No wires cross the street, aboveground or underground.  And although a conduit runs from approximately 250 feet up the street over to a location near our parking spots, it is empty.  Just like when we found out last year that our house was "eligible" to have public water supply access, but didn't actually have a connection, we found out this weekend that we are "close" to having cable companies accept our money in their exorbitant pricing schemes, but no proverbial cigar is anywhere to be found.  So on Monday night, after a fruitless meeting with Comcast, I officially gave up on cable.

Therefore, enlightenment.  Yesterday we got a FedEx package in the mail with our new Clear Internet equipment in it.  Clear is a provider that gives you Internet from cell towers, and doesn't require any wiring at all.  We unpacked the box, plugged in the receiver, scratched our heads for a moment while our computer told us we weren't installing something correctly, then noticed the web was already working in the background.  Yep, not even one button to press: Internet.  As a gift to ourselves, after we put the kids to bed, we officially sat down on the couch for the first time in the new house and watched an episode of our favorite British TV Game show, Q.I., off of YouTube.  And there was much rejoicing.  (For those of you who are interested, Clear is $50/month, and you can even take it with you when you travel.  You basically make yourself into a wi-fi hotspot for up to ten devices, which is great because we have a lot of things that want to hook themselves to the Internet, like our thermostat and likely the security system we haven't gotten yet.  Another thing that wants to hook to the Internet is...)

Television!  Today: Dish Network.  Nope, sorry, DirecTV.  (I always get them mixed up; it's the "D.")  After I called Clear on Monday night, I called DirecTV and scheduled an install.  They assured me that, despite our weird angles and the fact that the main NPS building overshadows the house, we'd be able to get perfectly good coverage.  Last week in Buffalo, when I realized satellite service may be in my future, I talked with my cousin Jenny about it, and she assured me that she had never lost coverage before-- and she lives n Buffalo, where there's this thing called "weather."  So we asked DirecTV to come out today, and of course Abby has a migraine.  But she was a trooper, because she knew it meant television was en route.  We had wanted the installer to put the dish on the side roof, above the first-floor bathroom, because it would be out of the way, but it needs to face in a southwesterly direction, and the house would block it there.  So the main roof was the only option, but as with everything here, there are considerations.  So I called the property management company and asked them what their satellite dish policy was.  Kwame, the property manager, told me there's actually an FCC regulation prohibiting prohibitions on satellite dishes, but that we should put it in the least conspicuous place possible, and not on community property.  Bonnie, from Save Our Seminary, said she didn't know of anyone else who had a dish on the property, but she also didn't know of anyone whose request for one had been denied; she also quoted the FCC regulation.  So we are now the proud owner of a satellite dish, located at the far eastern corner of the roof, where it can't be seen at all from the front of the house, and where it's partially obscured by the 100-year-old yews in the yard.  And I've already set the DVR to record Parks & Recreation.  Again, about $50/month, so $100 for cable and Internet, which would have been $139 with Comcast... whenever they decided to lay the lines.

Our new faucet.  All that's missing is water.

The entertainment hole has been filled now, but there are a few other holes that have been missing.  Namely, when our counters were set a few weeks ago, some holes were left undrilled.  The countertop guys came out for the install and asked Abby for the faucet we'd be using in the kitchen, so she handed them the box.  Only more than a week later, when we took the faucet out of the box, did we realize that, um, the faucet had never been taken out of the box.  Only one hole had been drilled, and it was a three-hole faucet.  I called the countertop people and got a definite attitude from the manager.  So I made Abby call back, because no one dislikes Abby.  And what do you know: we now have the proper number of holes drilled for our faucet, and should have a completely functioning suite of water-using fixtures in our kitchen by early next week.  And not a moment too soon, either, because washing dishes in a bathroom sink is truly disgusting.  I don't know why that is, actually, because it's not even like we're using the upstairs bathroom much, since the door to it only went in this week, and the shower's still doorless.  It's just that when you're cleaning out a pot that has cheese and tomato sauce stuck inside of it, and it's all going down the drain in your brand-new ultra-modern sink, it doesn't sit right.  One thing I'm sure of: we'll make very, very good use of the dishwasher once it's hooked in.

The dishwasher, pre-spacers

The dishwasher, by the way, does not need to be replaced.  Phew!  We had thought there was an issue because of the large gaps separating the dishwasher from both the cabinets on either side of it and the counter on top.  But when the guys came back to finish cabinet installation, fillers magically appeared on the sides.  Granted, the cabinet installation is still not completed, not the least of which is because the gap between the dishwasher and the countertop remains, but at least we know we don't have to buy a new one.  As for the cabinets, they're now all in.  The problems are very minor now: one door is solid, but was ordered to be glass; the drawer pulls were not attached; and the space above the dishwasher needs to be filled.  The fridge needs to be leveled, which is less the fault of the cabinet installers and more the fault of us having put the kitchen on a slanted surface (that used to be a porch).  Also, having bought "supercabinets" for the corners, convinced the inserts would allow us to use more of the space in the corner cabinets to each side of the range, we realized very quickly that the supercabinet inserts actually preclude us from using the back third of each cabinet.  We're going to try to return the inserts, but at the very least we'll be removing them from the cabinets and just using basic shelving.  We'll totally deal with having to bend down and stretch to get the less frequently-used stuff hiding in the back if it means we're not wasting so much space in the first place.  Oh, and our contractors have to raise the range hood, because they apparently think we're about three feet tall.

Our kitchen as it stands today.
The cabinet to the right of the range hood should have a glass door,
and the range hood will be raised significantly.

As for space, we are bouncing back and forth between thinking we have way too much or not enough.  I think it's because as we put stuff away, we see the empty boxes and think, "wow, there's not much left to unpack!"  Then we go to another room and realize, "wait, there are kitchen boxes stored in the library.  Crap."  And more boxes shift to the rapidly filling cabinets.  I think in the end, we'll be just about right, with maybe a bit of extra room, but not too much.

My doorbell!
It goes "Brrrrrrring!

As for other new stuff, we've now got all the doors installed.  Except the one for the storage area, which we swear we ordered but is not here.  So we'll have to buy another one.  But there are no doors sitting around anymore, waiting to be installed.  About half the trim is in, but none of it is painted.  That is going to be a huge, immensely boring undertaking that I'm totally going to pawn off on Abby if I can help it!  The misplaced door hardware has been corrected, and I realized the deadbolt on the back door was not done incorrectly-- it just works that way.  It's a keypad doorlock, which is awesome because it means we don't have to give anyone a key if they want to come over when we're not here-- we just give them the code and they walk right in.  I love it, because it's fantastic when you have your arms filled with groceries.  And speaking of awesome: my doorbell has been installed!  No one has rung it yet, though, because even though our house numbers have also gone up out front, still nobody can find our house.  I constantly have delivery people wondering where we are.  "I'm on a traffic circle, and all I see is a big building and a green house."  Duh, look at the numbers on the wall, blind guy!

Our main goal now is unpacking.  Because once we unpack, I really feel we can do landscaping, which I desperately want to do.  Oh, and because it will then feel less like "fancy camping" and more like "living in a house you've owned for 23 months already."  Abby and I had a bitch session while washing dishes in the bathroom last night, and went over all the reasons we were unhappy with the house.  My unhappiness has already been expounded on in this forum, but is generally concerned with my not wanting to have had a "fancy camping" experience in this place.  Hers, though, can be compared to watching that show on HGTV where they show people what their house would look like if it were rehabbed with an unlimited budget, but then they just go out and buy stuff from flea markets instead; yeah, it's way better than your old place, but you had so much more in your head.  Once we're settled, I'm sure it'll keep getting closer to that picture in our heads.  But for now, I'm looking forward to using the Internet, watching the television, and washing dishes in the kitchen.  In other words, the end of "fancy camping" for good.

The new up-lighting in our Great Room.  Decidedly NOT fancy camping.

Porch Roof Work

Thought you might like to know that now, if you are ringing our doorbell at the bungalow, and it is raining out, you can safely put away your umbrella.

BEFORE: Looking up THROUGH the porch roof

AFTER (or at least DURING): Looking up AT the porch roof!

Roof Work

From stained and gray to shiny and silver to brown and orderly, the roof is more than half done now.  Here are a couple pics of how the roof looks as of our trip up to the house tonight-- my first since they began work up top.

The windows are boarded up to make sure the latticework isn't broken during construction.

A close-up of the dormer.  The shingles turned out to be a bit browner
than we had thought they would be, but no biggie.

Shingles gone, Insulation on

Front of the house

Who says you can't have progress on your house when you're 3,500 miles away?  I hope my neighbors-to-be are as happy seeing this progress around them as I was just happening to open an email from my contractor while sitting here in Northern Ireland.  Thank you, Rory!

FYI, this is the first insulation the bungalow has ever seen in its 117 years.  And with its new owner having grown up in Buffalo, I can tell you it'll be seeing a LOT more before this process is over.  Hooray for a (temporarily) shiny silver roof!

Close-up on the front of the house

Back of the house

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...

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...

Day 204: MoCo Approves!

Big night tonight in Silver Spring: The Montgomery County Planning Commission approved our application for an Historical Area Work Permit!  (Hooray!  And hooray for lots of capitalized words!)  Although this was not a contentious thing-- we knew we were recommended to be approved by the staff, and we were placed on the consent calendar, which means there was pretty much nothing wrong with our application-- it was still one of our last obstacles to get this darn thing moving.  And it took a grand total of about three minutes.  At 7:30 they called the meeting to order; by the time I silenced my cell phone they had introduced the agenda; by 7:33 I was walking out the door, my and four other applications approved by unanimous consent.  Not bad.

So here's where we stand right now:

• We've got permission from both the State of Maryland and Montgomery County to go through with our plans, as modified of course;
• We have to bring whatever architectural drawings we have to the County in the next few days to have them approved, which I'm told takes hours, not days or weeks or SIX AND A HALF MONTHS, which is how long we've owned this house without legally being able to do anything to it; and
• Once the drawings are approved, we have to apply for building permits, just like anyone else does working on any other house.  Again, days, not weeks or HALF A YEAR.
• Also, we just got "approved" for a six-month extension of "work" by our loan servicer.  Kind of ridiculous, if you ask me, because there was no way we were doing the whole thing in six months, but we had to put that down initially and extend after that was over.  Then they loan people were apparently going to give us shit about not having stuff done, as if we had been sitting on our butts the last six months, just paying this enormous mortgage and enjoying our shell of a home.  Weirdos.

The State did reject not only our choice of shingles, but the very thought of anything other than extreme top-of-the-line shingles or regular old cheapo Home Depot shingles, which does suck.  Apparently in the 115-year history of the house, there have only been two documented types of roofing: the original cedar shakes, which would cost upwards of $40k to install; and the current army-issued cheapos, which just look cheap.  We tried to argue that having higher quality shingles that look like cedar shakes should be good enough, but the State argued that their goal is to avoid the Disneyfication of historic areas-- only historically documented materials are allowed, and reproductions are a non-starter.  So it looks like we'll be searching for the best cheapo shingles we can buy, and dealing with it.  I'm disappointed, not only because I wanted to be able to upgrade, but because the Dutch Windmill's owners replaced their dilapidated roof with beautiful cedar shakes.  But, alas, we can't break the bank on roofing.  Maybe when I win the lottery... which I don't play...

The shingles we can't afford.

The shingles we wanted.

The shingles we'll have to get.

 Anyhow, it looks like we're now reaching the light at the end of the tunnel.  And that means, hopefully, more things to update on the blog.  We were hoping to decorate the place for the holidays, but we had to run out of town unexpectedly and only got back two days ago, so Bungalow Christmas Part One is going to have to wait until next year.  But I'm looking forward, albeit very warily, given all the crap we've had to deal with just in the red tape, to getting moving.

And I promise, if we all take sledgehammers over to the house this weekend as a Christmas present to ourselves, I'll definitely take pictures. :)

Just Push Pause

So our shingle choice is not good enough for Maryland.  Or rather, it's too good; it "promotes a false sense of history" by making it seem that there had been slate on the roof before, when it had just been wood shingles.  I completely understand that.  (Really, I do!)  But the problem is they want us to replace the current shingles "in kind," which means exactly.  The current shingles are pretty much Army surplus shingles from 1989, and look like the cheapest thing on the market.  The ones we bought, slate-color notwithstanding, are really nice, quality shingles.  (Who'd have thought this would be an issue?  Gregory actually wants to spend money on this, and the State wants him to tone it down!) 

Unfortunately, I have a big mouth, and when I got the news about the shingles I was also dealing with the fact that our renters' rent check bounced, and therefore our mortgage was (I thought, incorrectly) not paid.  And the kids were at the dinner table and the microwave was beeping and Abby was out for the night.  So I may have left an annoying voicemail message at poor Amy with MHT's office.  Later on, I emailed her apologetically, asking what we could do to get the shingles replaced without doing it in kind.  Haven't heard anything back from her in three days, which is unlike her.  Hopefully I haven't pissed her off...



A shot of the Bungalow from way back when, complete with
what we believe to be the original cedar-shake roofing.

 So today, what we are going to do is email her all the different shingle types we like, and ask her to tell us which would be acceptable.  Cedar shakes, fancy-pants shingles like the ones we picked out, and one other kind (I forget the third, a la Rick Perry), and none of them will resemble slate.  In fact, all of them will resemble what we believe were the original shingles on the house, dark brown cedar shakes, as seen in the attached photo.  We'll be in South Carolina for the next week, but hopefully during that time we'll get the approval and can start working, because the only things standing in our way now are the approval, actually buying the shingles (which we can do from SC), and getting the building permit from Montgomery County.  That last part is something Rory was going to do on Wednesday.  No word from him on how that went yet, or on how long it might take for them to respond, but hopefully we're very close.  So for now, it's not a "stop" or a "play" for progress-- it's a "pause."  And I just hope it won't be on pause long enough for the video to stop altogether and revert to whatever's on channel 3.

Little Win, Big Loss

Yesterday, we got two pieces of news about the house.  The first was great, and set off a nice little wave of emails.  The second was not, and set of a torrent of emails and phone calls and hopefully-not-so-mean-spirited-in-retrospect voicemails.  Needless to say, I had a lot to write about last night when I got home.  But instead, my iTunes decided to crap out on me, and I spent the end of my evening kvetching at the computer screen at the loss of 30 months worth of music (again).  Now, the next day, I can bring you, with a much clearer head, the events of the last 24 hours as pertains to our house.  And hopefully I can do so without sounding like a sailor.  (Or Abby playing Taboo.)

Our Little Win



Notice the two different slopes, and different shingles.



Our roofing plan was approved by Maryland!  It took two weeks, but we finally received word the Maryland Historical Trust approved our plans to remove the shingles, put in insulation, and put up new shingles.  That was the last obstacle of the main plan for the house to have to go through the State.  Now all we have to do is forward the exact product info for the two types of shingles we need to Amy at MHT, and she can make sure they're kosher-- but most importantly, there will be no "process" involved.  Any tweakage can be just that-- tweakage-- with no need for formal applications, 45-day processes, and the like.  We've already got the first of the two shingle choices made (slate-gray shingles from Lowe's), and Rory's checking with our roofer to find out the specs of the others.  The reason we need two different kinds of shingles is that the roof has two different slopes.  The main slope can have regular shingles, but the porch roof's slope is too flat for regular shingles; standing snow would seep under them and deteriorate everything pretty rapidly.

Our proposed shingles
for the main part of the roof

Anyhow, with that victory, I called Montgomery County to ask whether they needed anything more than a copy of the email from the State saying our roof was okay, in order to complete our application Abby had dropped off back on November 15.  (Remember that date.)  I had to leave a message, so I wrote an email as well, just to cover my tracks.  On my way back from the gym, I noticed I had a voicemail on my cell from the County, so I called them back.  Josh, the guy working with the Montgomery County's Historical Preservation Office said we didn't need to send anything else, but, um, there was an issue.

Our Big Loss

You see, I had spoken with Josh a few weeks ago.  He was the one who alerted me to the fact we needed to have our County Historical Area Work Permit application in by November 15.  He was very nice on the phone a few weeks ago, and humored me as I went step by step down all of the things we needed to do, because I wanted to make sure we got this all done correctly.  He was very nice on the phone yesterday, too, except that he said, very apologetically, that someone in the permitting office screwed up.  Apparently, even though Abby hand delivered the application on November 15, right after she dropped Isaac off at school in the morning, someone at the permitting office decided to sit on it for a whole WEEK before even stamping it as having been accepted.  Our application, stamped "November 22," was not on the docket for the December 7 meeting.  (No matter that we were in North Carolina starting Novmeber 19.)  We would have to wait for the December 21 meeting.  That means, instead of being approved by the County and getting all the permits by about December 10, and starting work before Christmas, we now would be lucky to get permits before the New Year.

Gregory not happy.

The course of events over the next half hour or so remains blurry to me.  I know I tried to stay as calm as possible on the phone with Josh.  I know I received a phone call from Abby, who was going to pick me up from work on the way to get something someone in Falls Church had put on Craigslist, and I think I swore at (with?) her.  I know I called the woman in charge of the permit office and, I hope very politely, told her voicemail her office had screwed up and now my house wouldn't have a roof before it started to snow.  I know I hung up on the voicemail and proceeded to send an email to her saying the same thing, copied to Rory and Abby and Josh.  I know I left the office in a daze, or in a huff, or maybe both, and had what probably looked like an argument with my wife in the street in front of my office, but was really a big bitch session between the two of us (with the doors closed so the kids couldn't listen in).

Then we went home and had pie.  That made things a bit better, until the aforementioned iTunes debacle.

Silver Lining?

So where that leaves us right now is with an approved roof plan, but shingles left to be approved by MHT staff; with an accepted addendum to our application, but an application that won't be considered until nearly Christmas; and with the distinct possibility that someone in the permit office will have cost us nearly a month of work-- two weeks in meeting postponement, and then having to work around the schedules of government offices and contractors during the holidays.  But there's a slight, possible silver lining: Josh said there's a possibility the roof work might not be viewed as historic by the County, which means we wouldn't have to wait for their okay to start work on the roof at all; we'd just have to get the State okay and the County permits, which theoretically could both take only days.  That said, I'm pretty sick of thinking in terms of theoretical days, so I'll believe it when I see it.

Clarifications and Chagrin

It's been some time since we received word from Maryland that our plans weren't good enough, but today I managed to talk to one of our main points of contact up in Crownsville, Renee.  I wanted to see if she could clarify some of the points the board put in one-huge-paragraph of a letter, and she did so quite nicely.  I relayed the information to my dear wife, with all her Southern sensibilites, on the phone from work, and she unloosed a cute little tirade of unpublishable words.  Not aimed at Renee, mind you, but at the situation.  (She actually really liked Renee when they met on Monday.  Really!)  Here's why she's not happy:

1. We will not be allowed to raise the ceiling in the kitchen, which at my last measurement was about, oh, 4 1/2 feet tall.  And we have to keep it beadboard, which is not exactly the look we were going for.  Apparently, one of the bungalowish things about any bungalow is its abundance of porches.  It's not our fault that the Army enclosed the porch, and they're fine with us taking the already enclosed porch and making it into a kitchen.  But since the porch ceiling is still there, we've gotta keep it as is.  I guess this was one of the main objections of the board to our application.  It's also one of Abby's main problems with the house.  Hmm...



You see the boards under the ripped drywall?  THAT's what they want us to keep as our kitchen ceiling, rather than having the gorgeous exposable beams that are directly above them and continue into the Great Room.


2. We will not be allowed to make the doorway into the kitchen into a wide opening.  We will be able to widen the doorway and get rid of the door itself, but wall has to remain on both sides.  Again, because of the original this-is-inside-and-that-is-outside nature of the rooms.  That we can both deal with, although I think it'll look silly.




This is the doorway they will only let us expand, and not remove.
And above it are the beautiful beams they don't want us to expose.


3. We can raise the ceiling in the upstairs bathroom.  Huzzah!  If the kitchen's clearance is 4 1/2 feet, the bathroom's is just over a yard.  They would rather we not have the bedroom closet jut into the Great Room.  Yeah, so would I, but I would also like a closet.  I guess this is not a make-or-break section of the plan, so if we leave it in the next application (which we will), and it's the only problem, then they'll either say okay begrudgingly or just make the approval conditional on us getting rid of or shrinking the closet.  Then I'll just hang all my clothes on a hook outside the house or something, I guess.  That'd be "very bungalow," no?
4. They do not care about our paint colors or tile colors, at least at this point.  Too bad, because Abby has them pretty much all picked out.  Cabinet facing too, after a lucky trip to a specialty cabinet place in Hyattsville yesterday that was fortuitously located across the street from a brand new Burger Delite-- the best place for Carolina Barbecue outside of NC.
5. The board wanted us to put together a "mock-up" of what our roof will look like.  Puzzlement ensued.  Did they want us to do a third-grade diorama?  No, actually, Renee clarified, just some architectural drawings of a cross section of how the new roof won't make the dormer look weird.  That we (and Mohamed) can deal with.

So it shouldn't be that bad.  We have 11 more days until the second round of applications is due.  No doubt we'll be working on it a lot this weekend, and hopefully will have it done by Monday so we can pass it to Rory.  Renee repeatedly mentioned to me that she and Amy were reminding the board that our financers are not too happy about the work not having started.  That said, I made sure to email Patty (our financer) and Sheyy (our guy from FHA) to let them know we had another 45-day wait ahead of us.  I'm sure they're both thrilled...

From everything Renee said, it sounds like the people on the board (who are all specialists of one kind or another-- architects, historians, bungalowists...) are just trying to get things to be perfect.  That said, a comment I received on my last post from Paul, a neighbor I haven't met yet (Hi Paul!) echoes a sentiment I'm sure is shared not only by us and our neighbors but by Renee and Amy as well: that the heretofore moniker "Save our Seminary" should be altered to be "Finish our Seminary!"

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...). 

Irene in the House

This morning we awoke to a mess of leaves all over the street, a freakishly clean car, and a nearly empty freezer, but other than that there was little sign of Hurricane Irene's overnight "wrath" in our neighborhood.  But we were not-so-secretly worried about how the storm treated the Bungalow, so we took a detour up to Forest Glen on the way to my sister's place in Virginia.  Little more than a half-mile from the house, we saw a tree that had formerly lined Illinois Avenue laying nicely on top of a surprisingly unsquooshed Cadillac.  Small limbs were abundant on the ground, but it wasn't until we got to Sixteenth Street Heights that the traffic signals were blinking.  Once we crossed the border into Maryland at Eastern Avenue the power to the signals went out altogether; not a good sign, we thought!  To make it worse, on the last split before the Seminary, at Brookville and Linden, a DOT traffic sign blinked "detour to Forest Glen."  Uh oh.  But from there on, no sign of Irene at all.  Driving through the tunnel on DeWitt, I crossed my fingers, but emerging from it we saw the fountain working, the trees standing, and the Bungalow, er, Bungalowing.  Roof looked wetter than normal.  Abby says the extreme left (as seen from the front) corner of the porch roof looked like something happened to it, as did the middle of the right side, but I think both of those things were already like that.  (You decide: there are before and after pics to compare below.) Not to mention, both are set to be replaced completely, so who cares?  Sigh of relief...

Bungalow pre-Irene

Bungalow, post-Irene.  Supposed new lean at far left,
and supposed deeper rut at center right of porch roof.

I went inside while Abby walked around the neighborhood with the kids.  Downstairs, where everything is rightfully musty normally, there was no sign of new wetness.  Upstairs, where there are BROKEN WINDOWS, no sign of wetness on the floors.  That's right: hurricane... broken windows... dry floor.  It had only stopped raining about an hour before, so it's not like things had time to dry.  Weird.  The only interior "issue" seemed to be the far corner of the upstairs bathroom, where there was wetness on the floor.  But that was due to a bad seal on the vent leading up through the roof, so all in all, the house made it through Irene like a champ.  Hooray!

Wetness next to the toilet.
Who can't aim?  Irene!

We met another new neighbor on the way out: Peter, a pediatrician who commutes to work via Ride On (the Montgomery County bus system), and his 18-month-old daughter Anna.  He recommended I get on one or more of the area's many resident Yahoo listservs.  We'll see... it might be a great way to find out the skinny on what people really think about the place... or it might just be a good way to be annoyed by people who themselves are annoyed.  Other than that, we're still waiting for the MHT decision.  Believe me, you'll all hear about it as soon as we do!