It could be soon

Our architect gave me a call today. The goverment employee inspecting our building permit seems to think everything is fine with our permit application and we should be receiving it in the mail this Friday or next Monday. Can't wait. Will post when we get it. I can guesstimate that our house completion date will be April 1. We will find out soon enough once the building firm has the permit to build and we get a contractual date.

I drove by today and the other neighbors house (to the left) is on its way up. There are a number of people living in their houses in the neighborhood as well, at least four.

The Good News and the Bad News

The Bad:
I just heard from our architect that the sequence number for our building permit is #1040. The responsible person for processing the building permits is currently working on #960. (Remember that this is the same guy who was on vacation for a few weeks and then just took a week off sick.)

The Good:
Our architect convinced the responsible person to take a look at our application (which has been quickly reviewed once already) next week (when he finishes with the one he is on now). Possibly we may also receive a partial permit so that at least we can start building the cellar. Our architect thinks that when permit approver sees how well organized and correctly completed our applicaiton is that he might just grant us the permit anyway. Everyone keep your fingers crossed for us!!

In other news: The woman who rented us her garage has moved into an old folks home and I have to take everything out of the garage by the end of December. How annoying. Luckily I only have a few bicycles and a full set of tires in there.

Status Report

I put a few short posts recently but they seem to have gone missing in the blog software somewhere.

• Anyway we are still waiting on the authorities to approve our building permit. They seem to be very organised. If the guy working on your stuff goes on holiday or is sick you are out of luck and nothing happens. Our architect and my wife are constantly calling to check/push the status.
• One of our new neighbors is building now and has asked if they can 'park' items on our lot which was fine with me.
  
• I have been working a little on coordinating the fireplace and chimney items in a nice little communication game with the building firm, the fireplace manufacturer/installer, the architect, and the chimney sweep authority. The chimney sweep must agree that everything is o.k. with a fireplace before it can be used. Since we have a modular house and the walls are made of wood we need to be sure that the walls are fire-safe. As of today this question is still open but it moves forware slowly.
  
• I also needed to agree to the appropriate openings in the chimney for cleaning and to attach the fireplace oven. The building firm sent the fireplace manufacturer/installer a form to fill out. He filled out both holes in the basement which I thought was strange. He thought the sketch was for the ground floor and that the chimney did not go into the basement, so a little adjustment is needed --> I guess it is good that I never sign anything without verifying what it all means first