Moving Weekend and Progress Update

Whew! I did not have any concept of what exhausted felt like until this weekend. My boss graciously gave me Friday off and Jody took a half day. We spent the entirety of three whole days packing, moving to the in-laws, and hauling things into the storage unit (which is fixed now-thank you Mobile Mini!). The house is still not totally empty, but we have successfully cleared out the basement, kitchen, bathroom, Alex's room, dining room, and study. Our bedroom and the family room are nearly done, but still need some sorting and packing. We have determined that all of our furniture will not fit in the outside unit. So we'll have to wrap it up and store it in the rooms that are not being demolished. The only work in those room will be new windows and refinished floors, so it shouldn't be a hassle to have a few pieces of furniture to move around.

We gave away our old gas stove on Freecycle last night and are looking to give away the microwave hutch. Next we have to roll the fridge into the dining room where it will be stored during construction along with the new dishwasher and gas range.

The bank has officially approved our builder, Justin and our application has been submitting to underwriting for final approval. With any luck, we should be able to close Monday at 4p. After that, we'll sitting on our hand waiting for the county to approve our plans (we resubmitted them for the second time on Friday because of some minor details that had to be added by the structural engineer/architect) and issue the building permit.

I'm so glad we get to take a break from all of this uprooting and enjoy some down time with family and friends over the long Thanksgiving weekend. Hope you have a wonderful turkey day!

Storage Update

After a stern email complaint, our sales rep from Mobile Mini has promised to send out a repair guy to try and fix the door problem. He explained that if the unit is not on a completely flat surface, or if loading half the unit with heavy furniture causes it to become uneven, the doors can become...well...stuck. Awesome. So either the repair will fix them, or, here's the best part, we get to unpack all of the stuff we've loaded (including our couch, dining room furniture, and many, many, boxes) and put it into a brand new unit! Yay.

But I have to say the folks at Mobile Mini have been very responsive thus far.

A big shout out to our neighbor, Robert, for having his construction buddies fabricate a huge steel tube that we can now use to slide over the stuck handle and yank it open! THANKS ROBERT!

County Rejection and Storage Woes

Permitting

I wish I could blame the county for potentially delaying our project, but I can't. After clearing the first hurdle of the Arlington county permitting-zoning-we were rejected again by inspection services. Apparently, our plans are missing some relatively minor details about wind shear, leger board locations, etc. The architect's draftsman has graciously moved our plan revisions to the top of his list and I hope he can get them back to us before Wednesday so we at least have a chance of getting inspection services to review the plans before Thanksgiving. *Note to future Arlington renovators: be prepared to make no less than one trip a week to the county offices. They do virtually nothing online (except tell you if your plans have been rejected). You have to check out the hard copies of your plans with each rejection and resubmit them, in person, after waiting in line to be seen, with revised pages. Fingers crossed that these revisions will be the last!

Storage

As you may have guessed, this rather large renovation requires us to move nearly all of our possessions (and ourselves) out of the house during construction. We looked into renting a Pod or other household-name-brand onsite storage unit, but they are all small and relatively expensive. My parents had rented a repurposed steel shipping container (the kind you see stacked up in ports) when they renovated their kitchen. These things are huge-ours is 20 feet long x 8 feet wide x 10 feet tall. It seemed perfect for what we needed.

Well, turns out the space is great, accessing the space is another story. There are two doors at one end that swing open, each with two rods that lock at the top and bottom. There is one master handle in the middle that opens the unit. We had successfully, and with relatively little effort, opened the doors on two previous occasions-once to check it out and once to begin moving things into it. This past Sunday we had planned on spending many hours moving many boxes and bits of furniture into the unit. That was before we tried to get the unit open again. Let's just say it took both Jody and I throwing our backs out yanking on the main handle, and our neighbor with a steel mallet and a crow bar to get it open. And an hour and a half later, we were finally ready to move things in.

Take home message: do NOT rent a unit from Mobile Mini. Not only are their units unsuitable for frequent entry (as needed in a residential setting), but their customer service is terrible. I emailed our salesperson when I though the unit was leaky (turns out the wood floor was moist from the condensation of the grass it was sitting over), and he did not even have the courtesy to respond to my complaint. He only responded when I emailed him asking a question about our billing invoice (which confirms I had the correct email address on file).

This weekend is the big move to Jody's parents' house. Looks like we'll have a little bit of time to get the house totally cleared out after that. Stay tuned for permitting updates....