From the moment Tad and I saw Bettie's house we knew that we wanted it. With that said, we also knew that we were going to have to do a full complete remodel from top to bottom inside and out. We we very blessed to have everything/ everyone lined up ready to go as soon as we closed escrow.
Here is what we did prior to the close of escrow..
1) We finalized our architect and the structural engineer plans.
2) We finalized who would be our contractor. We choose Jason Gonterman with Gonterman Construction. We liked his work, liked his personality, liked his time line (he said that it would only take 6 months to build), and most important to us... he was a good price.
3) We went to the city and pulled all permits for our full remodel. I am so glad we started well ahead of time. It took a long time (6 weeks) and a lot of negotiation to get all the plans approved by the city.
As soon as we received the keys there was no wait time we were in full construction zone. We knew for sure that the whole backyard aka coyote den needed to go.
The bulldozer was amazing and cleared out the beast of the backyard in two days. It was really fun to watch.
Then we assessed the house and to see what needed
to be demoed and what could stay. We designed the house with the hopes
that we could use the existing bones (frame) of the house and do a
little adding on.
As soon as we saw this beam (the beam that was holding the house up) completely rotten and falling apart in our hands we knew that the whole house needed to come down.
In fact, when our contractor saw the wood he immediately called the framers to come right over and get a structure up that would support the house. He thought for sure the house was falling down
The house was a breeze to tear down since it was already falling down. They were able to have almost the whole structure and backyard gone in one week. It was shocking.
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| Our house, a week after we closed escrow. |
