Update on the Home Construction (or lack thereof)!

Since last we talked about the house, we've made a few changes. Some of the changes were driven by the Roxborough Park Design Review Committee and some we chose to make.

This is the perspective view looking at the house as if you were coming up the driveway. The biggest change we've made recently is to take off the third garage which we had intended to use for storage of our trailer.

Several things drove that decision. The rental for storage place for the trailer is half as expensive here as it was in Alameda. We negotiated a longer term contract with the storage location that gets us a free month each year, so the price dropped even further. Another consideration is the road configuration in Roxborough Park. While the main road is large, the side roads and cul-de-sac roads are narrow and turn at right angles. I measured some of the turns, and found that it would be near impossible to get the trailer into the driveway! I'd really be mad if I built a house with three garages and then couldn't get the trailer into one of them!

Deleting the garage simplified the drainage and excavation plan ($$), reduced the amount of concrete to be poured ($$), eliminated the need for 70 feet of retaining wall ($$$$), shortened the length of the steel I beam roof supports ($$$), etc. All in all, probably a pretty good decision.

But, I didn't go softly! Deb and I decided to trade the reduction in garage size plus the elimination of a soaking tub in the master bathroom for a built in wet sauna in the bathroom! Sounds to me like a great trade!








The sauna is accessed through a glass door in the shower of the Master Bathroom. The shower is tile with glass door to the bathroom. We're really looking forward to saunaing (sp?) in the winter after a hard day of snowshoeing or cross country skiing!










The other change was forced on us by the Roxborough Foundation Design Review Committee. Our lot, and the one directly to the East of us, have zero lot lines (meaning there's no setback). The original intention of the developer was to have a shared driveway between the two houses. The land to the East of us was built out with no driveway, and when we placed our house on our lot, there was only 5 feet to the property line and another 10 feet to the neighbor's front porch. The East wall of our house is about 20 feet high, and relatively unbroken - few windows and not many architectural details.

RFDRC thought that arrangement might overwhelm the neighbors, so they asked that we move the house 5 feet West and 3 feet North on the lot. Of course, that meant we had to re-compute all of the drainage and erosion control measures for the lot - an expensive process - and ask for a variance from Douglas County to build outside of our setbacks for the lot. That's maybe not very interesting to you, but in a nutshell, that cost $2,000 and two weeks time delay. But, it's done now and we expect to have  final approval by Thursday this week.

So that's where we are. Next steps are to finalize approval through RFDRC and Douglas County, get an firm quote on construction costs for the house, submit for building permits, and dig dirt. Hopefully we'll see the dirt fly in six weeks or so.

Cheers!