Development permit approved!!!

A friend is celebrating a milestone birthday this week, so I popped into the mall to pick up a gift for her. While there, I went to H&M to get a couple of things for myself. So there I am, in my underwear in the change room when my phone rings.

It's the planner from the city. He doesn't sound like he's calling with good news. He tells me that he's already phoned Ryan to tell him about a couple of things that still need to be added to the drawings. The bump out for the fireplace is not marked on the front elevation. And because our basement is lower than the city sewer lines, we need a pump station in the basement to lift any water that drains down there up to the sewer level. That apparently needs to be added to the drawings. That kind of seems odd, we haven't indicated that we're using a furnace, but obviously we are.

But, pending these changes, he is "recommending our application for approval". Yay! Happy dance in the H&M change room! So next week, it goes to "advertisement". That means something has to be posted in the newspaper for 2 weeks. Who knew anything was still published in newspapers? Hopefully, no crack pots lodge any complaints. Then we have to pay a deposit to the city to ensure that when we destroy the sidewalks, they will get repaired. And then our DP will be released.

Then we can apply for a building permit. I guess technically, we can apply for the BP now. But they won't look at it until the DP is released. We thought we could submit partial drawings of just the foundation and get digging. But it turns out that we have to actually submit full drawings for the BP, and when we do that, we can request a foundation only permit. That can be granted the same day (but the guy wanted to be very clear that was assuming the DP is fully released before we apply for the building permit.)

So now, we're back to waiting on Ryan. He has said he's been working on it, but we haven't had any discussions about interior specifics. I know that the bathroom layout he's drawn needs to be tweaked. And the kitchen sink is in the wrong spot. We also haven't figured out where the ducts, etc will be run. And surely we get input into where the light fixtures and outlets go? So, hopefully we can get a meeting with him in the next week.

Over the weekend, we were in Kamloops, BC so MrDinks could ride his mountain bike down some hills without snow on them. While he was out testing the limits of his corporate health insurance, I drove around and looked at new builds in the area. Our development permit has specified fibre cement siding, but I'm second guessing that. I thought I had found a less expensive option than Hardie board, but after getting some quotes, I've discovered it's only less expensive than custom coloured Hardie board. So I need to decide if I like one of the 8 standard Hardie colours. The closest contender is Evening Blue. But various samples and online photos are contradictory. I want a very dark blue. But some sources indicate it's lighter than other sources suggest. I found a house with Hardie board siding in a nice, dark blue. There was a couple of signs out front indicating the name of the builder, and the source of materials. So I took a photo so I could call them and ask. Then I realized that there was a truck in the driveway, but the house didn't look finished enough to actually be inhabited yet. Perhaps the truck is a worker? Perhaps the general contractor? I decided to go knock on the door and see who it was and what they know. Walking up the driveway, I realized the front steps had not yet been installed, so knocking on the front door wasn't an option. But I could see a large piece of equipment in the back yard, perhaps the truck owner was working back there? So as I'm about to walk around the side of the house, a man comes out of the side door of the garage. "Can I help you?" He was rather impatient with my single question, but he said that it was Evening Blue before jumping in his truck and driving off. So I guess I can accept a stock colour of Hardie board. And managed not to get shot. Successful day all around!

Still waiting...

Ryan replied to the city on Wednesday, April 2 with very good arguments for what we've designed. He included a suggestion for a cedar panel under the closet window in order to comply with the planner's request for more decoration and to "celebrate" the corner lot.

I fought really hard against the cedar panel. It's a common element in modern design, and one of the chief reasons I find a lot of modern design so ugly. Having a contrasting element naturally draws our attention to that spot. In traditional design, a contrasting front door highlights the entry and welcomes visitors in. Or darker colours on the bottom help make a house seem more solid. Maybe some trim is painted in bright colours to draw your attention to something a carpenter put a lot of time and skill into creating. In most modern design, designers simply add in contrasting colours to add "interest" without thought for what they are highlighting. The eye is then drawn to some ridiculous area that there is no logical reason to want to draw attention to. In our case, in order to add interest, we are putting in a vertical stripe to highlight a closet window. There's nothing special about this window. It's a little small. There's nothing inside I want to draw attention to, especially myself in my pyjamas (or less) while I look for clothes. But we have to highlight it because a bureaucrat thinks my house is too boring. And you will see it from any direction you approach the house from. I imagine getting very ragey coming home, having my attention turned to a detail I hate, which we spent money on, which represents the absurdity of city bureaucracy. Fortunately, there is absolutely no reason to keep it once we move in, so we'll be installing it with the plan of removing it immediately. I was thinking it would smell nice in the fire pit. MrDinks has suggested we slap a stamp on it and mail it to city hall.

So, we got the response in on Apr 2. On Wednesday, April 9, I noticed that the city website status changed from "on hold - amended drawings required from applicant" to "under review - amended drawings required from applicant." I assumed this was an oversight on the part of the guy updating the website. He forgot to delete the extra note. MrDinks saw it on Friday and thought there was still something missing. So I called the city to verify. They had the actual planner who is reviewing our application call me back to confirm that he has everything he needs. He told me that they have everything, and now that it's under review, they are required to respond within 7 days. I was polite and refrained from pointing out that it had been more than 7 days since we responded. I'll assume he means 7 days from the time they acknowledged receiving it. It's now been 7 business days since they updated the website status to "under review". But that includes the day they actually updated it. Friday was Good Friday. So I guess I'll have to call the city to ask about it on Tuesday.

We're trying to get foundation drawings out of Ryan. He didn't respond to 3 different emails about it. Finally, I texted him, and he emailed that we need to get an engineer involved to do foundation drawings. He also said there's no point in getting an engineer until the city approves the development permit. He had the same comment when we wanted him to send drawings to the environmental consultant. He doesn't seem to understand that we have carrying costs on the lot until we can sell our existing house. So, while it seems cheaper to wait and only pay the engineer once, if we have to sit on an empty lot for an extra month or 2, it's actually more expensive to wait.

Plus, there's not going to be any change to the foundation footprint. Period. Ever. There are 3 possible areas the city could want us to change: 1) the decorative features on the house, 2) the height of the house, and 3) the size of the garage. If we have to add more windows or decorative railings or more cedar panels, that's not going to affect the foundation. The height of the house is not a legitimate concern. It's only a problem until 1 of 3 bungalows gets torn down. We can appeal that, or wait. If they turn us down because of the size of the garage, I guess Ryan thinks we might want to make the garage smaller and make the house bigger. However, if that happens, we'll pull the plug on the whole thing and sell the lot. We are absolutely not interested in building a replica of everything else out there. If we wanted a house with lots of useless rooms and a too small garage, we can buy that for less than what it'll cost to build. So if that's the direction the city forces us in, we'll cut our losses and walk away. I guess if that happens, we'll have paid an engineer and environmental consultant for nothing, but that's a small loss compared to what we've already risked in paying Ryan for drawings, and paid the city for application fees, and the surveyor, and the real estate lawyer,...

There's also a special permit that we're going to need to get now, and Ryan may not be aware that it exists. In order to expedite building, we can apply for a foundation permit separately from the full building permit. It costs a few hundred more, but we can dig our hole and pour the foundation right away. We don't have to wait while the architect draws out the walls, plumbing runs and locations of electrical outlets, etc. We are aware of this option because our contractor, MrDinks' brother, has used it a few times to get started before winter returns. We don't know if Ryan has ever gotten one of these. And due to the delays we've already experienced, and Ryan's track record for getting drawings done quickly, we're not confident that we could dig before September without this special permit. That makes the foundation plans a little more time critical.

So, we need to have another talk with Ryan. I've been trying to construct an email in my head to respond to his about not hiring an engineer yet. But we'll be seeing him on Wednesday when we meet to review the environmental consultant's model and recommendations. Hopefully at that point, we'll have some news from the city.