Finally Approved
After months of planning and replanning, trying to find funding, interviewing builders, contractors, subcontractors, and then submitting our plan to the city and waiting, waiting, waiting, and some more waiting, our home addition plan was finally approved and we received our permit!!!
We have lived in our current house for 17 years. I never thought we would still be here. We actually tried to move last year and build a new house that would have had a mil addition for my parents so that we could help my Dad better after he had his stroke. The funding fell through on our new house and I thought my world had come to an end because I didn't know how to help my parents. Little did I know that God had a plan in place. In January of last year my Dad passed away--our new house wouldn't have even been started until March or April of last year and it would have all been for nothing because my Dad was gone. I felt grateful that the new house plan fell through. Watching my Dad die and seeing my Mom's loneliness this past year and hardships in trying to take care of her house and yard by herself prompted us to rethink our plans. We had talked about adding on to our house when my Dad was alive, but, our city would only allow us to add on a small apartment that would not have been big enough for both of my parents. With my Mom being alone now, that small apartment was plenty big now.
My husband and I prayed and fasted about this option and we both have felt really good about it. We made the deal that we would continue to move forward with our plans until we couldn't anymore. The couldn't has never came, we have always been able to move forward slowly and at times in different ways than we had expected. My husband spent many many hours engineering and drafting up mil apartment plans that we had to revise many, many times. Next we needed funding and planned on just refinancing our house, but, we felt very uneasy about that because we have a very low interest rate and we are about 6-8 years away from paying off our current mortgage. We felt instead to redo our home equity line of credit. The next step was finding a builder or building ourselves. I couldn't believe how hard it was to even get builders to talk with us. No one wanted to do such a small project. A few actually came and talked with us but, didn't follow through. I really didn't want to build ourselves, but, it was looking like that was going to be the plan. I finally felt prompted to contact my sister and tell her about our plans and that week she met a neighbor who happened to be a retired builder who just did a few small addition projects each year to keep busy. Coincidence--maybe, but, I like to think our builder is a miracle from Heaven. He has been so awesome to work with. We have had issues with the city approving our plan, and He has gone in and taken care of the whole permit procedure. He has shared ideas of things that we hadn't thought of and helped make this process a whole lot smoother.
So we continue to take steps forward.
P.S. Of course days after our plan got approved we got the biggest snow storm we have ever had living at this house!!! We got over 2 ft of snow--kind of a disappointment because this will delay us in starting, but, kind of nice to have one last chance to play in our backyard before it gets demolished. I have a feeling the weather this year is going to play havoc with our building plans!!!
We have lived in our current house for 17 years. I never thought we would still be here. We actually tried to move last year and build a new house that would have had a mil addition for my parents so that we could help my Dad better after he had his stroke. The funding fell through on our new house and I thought my world had come to an end because I didn't know how to help my parents. Little did I know that God had a plan in place. In January of last year my Dad passed away--our new house wouldn't have even been started until March or April of last year and it would have all been for nothing because my Dad was gone. I felt grateful that the new house plan fell through. Watching my Dad die and seeing my Mom's loneliness this past year and hardships in trying to take care of her house and yard by herself prompted us to rethink our plans. We had talked about adding on to our house when my Dad was alive, but, our city would only allow us to add on a small apartment that would not have been big enough for both of my parents. With my Mom being alone now, that small apartment was plenty big now.
My husband and I prayed and fasted about this option and we both have felt really good about it. We made the deal that we would continue to move forward with our plans until we couldn't anymore. The couldn't has never came, we have always been able to move forward slowly and at times in different ways than we had expected. My husband spent many many hours engineering and drafting up mil apartment plans that we had to revise many, many times. Next we needed funding and planned on just refinancing our house, but, we felt very uneasy about that because we have a very low interest rate and we are about 6-8 years away from paying off our current mortgage. We felt instead to redo our home equity line of credit. The next step was finding a builder or building ourselves. I couldn't believe how hard it was to even get builders to talk with us. No one wanted to do such a small project. A few actually came and talked with us but, didn't follow through. I really didn't want to build ourselves, but, it was looking like that was going to be the plan. I finally felt prompted to contact my sister and tell her about our plans and that week she met a neighbor who happened to be a retired builder who just did a few small addition projects each year to keep busy. Coincidence--maybe, but, I like to think our builder is a miracle from Heaven. He has been so awesome to work with. We have had issues with the city approving our plan, and He has gone in and taken care of the whole permit procedure. He has shared ideas of things that we hadn't thought of and helped make this process a whole lot smoother.
So we continue to take steps forward.
P.S. Of course days after our plan got approved we got the biggest snow storm we have ever had living at this house!!! We got over 2 ft of snow--kind of a disappointment because this will delay us in starting, but, kind of nice to have one last chance to play in our backyard before it gets demolished. I have a feeling the weather this year is going to play havoc with our building plans!!!
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