Speedy Inspection

Yesterday when I got home from work, K had great news!  It had been pouring rain yesterday, so she had a rain day at work at around noon.  She called the inspector again about our concrete form, and said 'Hey, I know it's last-minute, but I'll be at home today if you can come by.'  And it turns out that the inspector could!

It was also a good thing that K was home when the inspector came by because she (the inspector), had questions about our lot.  Since it's such a weird shape, she wasn't expecting the markers to be where they are.  But K was there to point them all out to her and they got the inspection done quick and easy!

So now back to bids from concrete crews.  A few months back, when we were optimistic about the project going quickly, K had posted an ad on Craigslist and got a handful of good responses.  This was a few months back, however, and concrete companies are busier in the summer.  Now that it's late fall, her new ad got a flood of responses and the bids were much lower!  She'll probably save at least a couple hundred dollars having the slab poured now, versus in the summer.  That's comforting, considering how frustrated and apprehensive this project has made her feel. 

She's hoping to line someone up for Friday, so we very well could have a slab done by next week!

Researching the History of Our House

I was able to head down to the library downtown and do some research on our sweet little house.  I didn't get a whole lot more information than what I was already able to find using regular online searches and Ancestry.com.  But I was able to have the permit cards for our property right in my hand and see when and what was done on the property since 1901!

Part of our property's permit card - dating from 1901

Researching!

The city directories were also a lot of fun.  Lots of those are archived on Ancestry.com, but you have to be looking for the correct name.  When you're looking directly in the book, you can look up the address.  And that's helpful because the names are sometimes misspelled, or just spelled differently from year to year.

1950 City Directory

Charles Olek worked at the Pillsbury Mill downtown - 1939

As you might imagine, there aren't usually pictures and a lot of historic information on private residences, unless they were significant in some way.  Since our house is just a 1950s same-old-same-old, there weren't any pictures of our house, just the permit cards and directory listings.

What I was able to find a lot about was our neighborhood.  Ever since we bought the house, I wondered about the big building across the street.  It's apartments now, but it doesn't look like that's what it was from the beginning.  And we've met one of our neighbors who lives there and he says he thinks his apartment used to be a gymnasium.  So I looked for the building and the librarians brought me 3 huge envelopes that were bursting with newspaper clippings.  Turns out the building used to be the Margaret Barry Settlement House, up until the 1970s or so.  What's a settlement house?  Since the Northeast neighborhoods were largely settled by immigrants, settlement houses were a place to gather and find resources.  From what I read on the Margaret Barry House, there were English, typing, and parenting classes; job and living resources; preschool and childrens' education; and frequent dances and gatherings for the teenagers of the neighborhood.

Margaret Barry House - 1925

Article on the Margaret Barry House - 1932

I also found a really cool photo of the building where a couple of our good friends live, just a mile or two down the road from us.  It was built by the Cream of Wheat company for the offices and factory, I believe, and it has been converted into very cool lofts. 

Names of people who have previously owned our property:
        Lucy Doyle and Edward J Doyle  (1901-1910)
        Vincent and Sophia Fanzig, Charles and Sophia Olek  (1931-1943)
        Angelo and Conjate Cremisino  (1943-1945)
        Charles A Pettis  (1945-1946)
        Didrick J Orfield, John F Sandstrom  (1946)
        Kenneth A Chase  (1946-1949)
        Hope A Quinn (1949-1951)
        Frank J & Rose M Flanigan  (1951-1971) - they built our house
        Harold L Fletcher (1971-1979)
        Paul Wesley Irwin & Diane E McKay-Irwin  (1979-1999)

1865 City Directory

Concrete Form Day 2

Late start on the concrete form today, because it rained again.  Quite a bit, actually, in the early afternoon.  Eventually, we ran over to Home Depot to get some more wood for the remaining sides of the form.  As soon as we got back home we started working on the back side of the form.  One of the boards that looked pretty straight in the store was actually giving us quite a bit of trouble -- too much bowing and twisting.  We worked until it was dark, and then K brought a work light outside so we could keep going.

The lights behind the trees are a train going by  

It was actually kind of fun once I got a sweatshirt on to keep warm.  We had the radio on, lots of good tunes, and I was dancing around whenever I needed to warm up.  K was determined to get that side done tonight, and we did it!  Eventually got things all straight and square.  Should make the other two sides easier to complete.

So... one side of the form per week, so far.  Plus leveling some of the dirt and adding the gravel and rock after that...   Means we'll be ready to pour the concrete in, like, November?  

First Baby Step of the Garage

First chance we get to start on the garage, and it rains on us.

K took this week off work, mainly to figure out the garage situation/start on the project, and partly to just get a break from her extremely busy job.  I took today off work, because my bosses were out of town, my work was a little slow, and I figured I could help K for the day.

It was kind of a gloomy day, and then when we got started in the afternoon, it rained.  Off and on for a while, and then eventually it was just sprinkling.  We each put on one of K's work rain jackets and kept going.  We got started on making the form for the concrete slab, and got one side completed.  It's a lot more work than you might think -- each corner needs to be square, each board that you use probably has some bend to it so you have to make it level and straighten any bowing.  LOTS of tweaking.

Finished the one side in the dark.  Then looked at and thought, Wow, that's it?  There's so much left to do!

Garage - Change of Plans

Well, our initial plan for a large 3-stall garage has been changed.  Last week, K brought her amazing plan and documents to the Minneapolis permit office to get them approved and to purchase the permit.

Since our lot is quite large, we figured that we could also go big with the garage.  And actually, we can.... But since it's larger than standard size, it require some special considerations.

1)  The permit would cost $200-300 more than a standard permit.
2)  A variance would be requested, meaning that an inspector would come out to our property within 2 weeks to make sure our plans were done properly.  Construction could only start after we got approval.
3)  The roof pitch would need to be the same as our house.  So our garage would be as tall as our house, and have a very high ceiling.  Yes, it would be cool to make a 2nd floor and have a studio or maybe even a guest room above the garage, but in reality, we'd just be heating a bunch of unused space for a very long time, until we could someday get to that project.
4)  The roof needs to face the same way as the roof of the house.  So, the shingles would be facing the street, same as the house.  We couldn't put the gabled side on the front, which would be better if we wanted to put up a basketball hoop someday.
5)  The siding has to match the house.  Right away.  We'd either need to side our garage in pale-yellow aluminum siding (not going to happen), or re-side our house at the same time as our garage.  Yes, that would be amazing!  But I can't imagine that we'll be able to afford all of that at once.

Plan B for building the garages, according to the permit office, is to build a standard 2-stall garage and then build another 1-stall garage next to it.  ....Really??  I mean, we get that a large 3-stall garage is a more complicated structure, as far as building goes.  It was certainly going to cost a lot of money and require more specialized supplies.  But, we can build our 2-stall, and then build a 1-stall a couple feet away from it, if we want to. 

And for a standard 2-stall, there were no special restrictions.  Once the plans are approved, a permit is handed to you and you can begin building immediately.  Your roof can be whatever pitch and face whatever way you prefer.  Your siding can be whatever you like.  If we wanted our garage to be bright pink, we could do it. 

So, 2-stall it is.  K had to come home, completely re-draw all of her plans to show the 2-stall garage, and go back to the permit office the next day.  Permit in hand, we could start building.

Pulling Numbers and Stringing Lines

Been a while since my last post, because we have been BUSY!  Lots going on these past couple weekends, including a wedding, and PRIDE in Minneapolis!  Busy, fun, tiring.  Lots of good people and good memories.  Since July 4th fell on a Thursday this year, we both took a long weekend and are hoping to get some things done around the house.

#1 is the garage.  The dang garage!  We need to get going on this!

Today, K and I "pulled numbers."  It was... an all-day process.  First, K needed to finish taking out the chain link fence that ran around where our big elm used to be.

The problem with this section of fence was all the bushes and little trees that had grown through the links throughout the years.
Check this one out!  --------->
Ouch, looks like that hurts!
































So K had to clip the ends of a bunch of the links by hand-- links that were too buried in the ground or too entwined with branches.  Then she used her towline and her truck to pull the sections of links free.  Some of the fence will be reusable, but some parts are too bent or already damaged.  We plan to run another chain-link fence along the back property line, once the garage is built.

Since she had found the property markers and run string lines to connect them, a couple months ago, we just needed to set up the strings again to get started.

And then it got more complicated-- measuring angles and lengths and trying to get everything to match the plans K had drawn up on Google Sketch-Up.  But, she is good!  Just a couple adjustments to the plans and lots of measuring, and we had our garage drawn out in our yard in neon yellow string.

My job was to hold the ends of the measuring tapes, while K walked along the string and measured. 

My job had me standing at the corner of our lot quite a bit, which was nice.  Not often that I need to stand at the very end of our alley, ducking under trees.  But the view from there is our whole yard!  Pretty nice view, and it will be even better someday.

 

And here is our garage plan, in yellow string.  The string's really thin, so hopefully you can see it.  It's going to be a really nice-sized garage! 

It's at an angle that follows our property line, in the back, and that will allow K to pull her work trucks into the garage really easily from the alley.  No sharp turns.  And since it's off to the side and close to the alley, it means we get the whole rest of the yard to use for everything else.

 

Our Spacious Corner Lot

Our spacious corner lot...  is even more spacious than we had envisioned!

An important part of the preparation before K can build our garage, is to figure out our actual, physical lot space.  Sure, we could have it surveyed professionally, but K knew she could do it on her own.  (As she would say, "I'm a Hollander!" and they like free stuff, so she says.)

Armed with the map of our lot from the county's website, and strong skills on Google Sketch-Up, K did hours of computing and measuring, trying to determine where our lot markers would be.  Once she knew where our neighbor had a lot marker, she was able to finish her calculations and had a pretty good idea of where all 4 of our lot markers would be.

And she was right.

Yesterday, I helped her measure from the neighbor's lot marker to where ours should be.  And it was there!  Hiding just under the dirt, next to the retaining wall.  The previous owner had bought an adjacent lot from the railroad in 2000, and maybe he also put up the tall fence, so the lot was surveyed in 2000.  Meaning our markers are new, legible, and actually not too difficult to find (once you know where to look, that is.)

Within the next 24 hours, K found the other 3 markers in our yard, and had strung neon-colored string between each of them.  We could really see the dimensions of what we own, and it goes back quite a ways behind our house.

Our yard is big.

That means...  Big garage.  And space for a garden, a patio on the back of the house...  Totally possible.