Category: Plans and Permits

Developing floor plans, getting permits, working with our architect, and figuring out timelines

Bit by Bit

June 26, 2019 / / 6 Comments

It’s been a few months already, so I should probably update you all on where things are, huh? Well, when it comes to visible progress, you haven’t missed much. In order to make progress on the house, we need to get the loan. In order to get the loan, we need the contract, specs, and plans. The contract and specs are also waiting on the plans, so we’re really waiting on the plans.

Don’t we already have plans, you might ask. Well, yes and no. Years ago, I made drawings in SketchUp, we worked with an architect, and we got approved drawings and permits. That was at the end of 2012. Unfortunately, permits don’t last that long, and the plans we have are not accurate in several ways. We got the original permits as a soup-to-nuts omnibus permit that covered everything we were doing. However, since we’ve been doing this mostly ourselves, slowly, that hasn’t worked out as well as it might. It may have been better to break it up into smaller pieces, but that wouldn’t really have worked either, because it wasn’t discrete projects. What it comes down to is that the permit system isn’t really designed for a long gradual project like this.

Our builder suggested an architect he’s worked with previously, and since we weren’t super-thrilled with the architect we had before, we decided to have him revise our plans. He started with the structural plans we used to frame the second floor, checking the work the original architect had made against some of the changes we had decided to make along the way. Then we sat down and went over what we needed to finish everything, and he suggested we draw up new plans that were both correct and, more importantly, only covered the remaining work. That will make it clear to the City, for permits, and the bank, for the loan, the scope of the work.

Instead of having a complicated contract, we can simply have the detail in the plans and build to that. Well, the long and the short of it is that he couldn’t take the plans drawn by our previous architect and update them, apparently they can’t do that. He had to start over, and that meant it took a lot longer than we expected.

He finally finished a few weeks ago. Since then we’ve met with the builder, talked to the bank, started the permit process (again) and met with several of the skilled trade contractors, including plumbing, electrical, and HVAC. Next we need to get quotes and commitments from them so we can put their names on the permit, as well as get their numbers into the bid for the contract, so we can take that to the bank and finalize financing. This will most likely eat up the next couple of weeks. Permit itself typically takes upwards of a month (we’ll see how long it takes us since our luck isn’t great on that front). Financing from where we are is supposedly a couple-few weeks, so we’re hoping that actual work may start around the beginning of August. How long the work will take is still an open question.

So, despite my lack of updates, the only thing you’ve been missing out on is a lot of waiting and a lot of trips to the storage unit, filling it up with all the things in the first floor, which still has a ways to go. Since I hate to make an entire post without photos, I’ll give you our not-quite-completely-full ten-foot-by-ten-foot storage unit.

Still lots of room

Mechanical Room Layout

October 12, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Original plan

Original plan

The location, dimensions, and layout of our basement mechanical room have shifted as we developed our plans and then those plans ran up against reality. The original plan our architect developed put the mechanical room in the back North corner of the basement, but this resulted in a twisting hallway and a lot of wasted space.

Early revision

Early revision

I started playing around with the design, moving the mechanical room over to the South corner, but while this plan worked and gave us a lot of room for storage, and kept the front area of the basement big, it didn’t work when it came time to install the boiler and water heater. Since we didn’t have the interior walls built when we needed to start installing equipment, everything needed to be on an exterior wall. The boiler and all the radiant equipment didn’t fit on one side of the window, which meant we needed to change the plan to make everything fit.

Later revision

Later revision

With everything shifted toward the front, the back room gets a lot bigger. The issue with this plan was that despite the back room being big, there was almost no wall space for storage shelves. The back corner has an electrical panel, and the top (North) wall is effectively the hallway because the door is along the wall. There’d be room for maybe two shelves. So I shifted the bathroom and door back from the top wall so that there would be more room.

Nearly final

Nearly final

This plan took some space from the mechanical room, but everything else seemed to work great. It could fit three shelves along the North wall, moved the utility sink from the laundry so we’d have a temporary kitchen when we moved to the basement, and I was sure this would be the final plan. Once again, reality intervened. When I installed the panel in the mechanical room I aligned the front edge with a floor joist so that the wall between the front room and bathroom/mechanical room could be along a floor joist. As a result it moved toward the front by almost a foot. Bath tubs are sold in convenient five-foot or six-foot sizes. Since the back wall aligned with the steel column, it meant that the nice simple rectangle for the bathroom needed to be adjusted to accommodate a five foot bath tub in an almost six foot wide room.

Final revision

Final revision

With this adjustment made I had to play a mental game of Tetris with the various items in the mechanical room, namely the ejector pit, sump pit, and hot water heater. The challenge is the existing sewer pipe under the ground prevents the sump or ejector from going in certain spots, the trench for the weeping system imposes additional challenges, the water heater already has piping, venting, and gas lines to its current location, and at the same time I need to allow sufficient clearance to get in and out of the room, including not just servicing but replacing equipment in the hopefully very distant future. I think I’ve accounted for everything and worked out the final locations so I can start digging some holes. The plumbers are supposed to start this week, so whatever plan is in place is the last plan we’ll have.

Floor Plan Revision

October 3, 2014 / / 0 Comments

We’ve made a couple of changes to our first floor plan. The first change came about because of stair planning, which moved the landing further back to accommodate required headroom. It also meant the space behind it that was supposed to contain both a pantry cabinet and a coat closet was not big enough. Instead we’ve modified the plan to have a larger cabinet that we’re hoping can still hold the same stuff (in separate cupboards).

New cabinet adjacent to landing

New cabinet next to landing

The second change is a bit more significant. The original plan (as shown above) has a den at the top, the half bathroom in the middle, and an office with closet at the bottom. In the drawing they look decent-sized, but when I marked the future walls on the floor and Sarah and I walked around it, the rooms all seemed small. We decided that with an open plan we’d still have the same functional spaces (sitting area and desks for work) but each space would feel bigger by not being closed off.

Revised plan

Revised plan

The disadvantage to doing it this way is we lose the closet and the ability to close off the office. We’d considered using the office as a bedroom while we work on the second floor, but it wasn’t big enough for a queen bed and we didn’t want to leave either of the kids on the first floor by themselves. It also puts the window at the bottom very close to the corner, which is more an aesthetic issue, but we may compensate for that with shelving on the other side. If I get really ambitious, I may add a built-in desk and shelf, which would also help make up for the lost closet.

The powder room changes shape and moves but is roughly the same size and is still on the wet wall, so there’s no significant difference in plumbing. We may also need to figure out a new plan for how our radiant lines will be run, because we’d planned to put a panel at the back of the closet to reach the manifold.

Overall we like this plan better. It’s not a very big space that we need a lot from, and making it more open and pushing the bathroom to the corner makes it more functional. I started putting up the walls so we can get rolling on plumbing and electrical, but I’ll get into that in a separate post.

Stair Planning Redux

May 12, 2014 / / 2 Comments

Almost exactly a year ago I spent some time working out where the stairs would go and how exactly they would be configured. This was because the original design work I did had overlooked some issues that the architect caught, but in so doing he caused a lot of other problems. For example, in the approved drawings we have there’s only 5′ 10″ of headroom on the first floor landing. So I recalculated everything last year and had worked out a plan that was pretty good. I used that plan to position and size the basement stair opening.

However, since then I have leveled the first floor subfloor, which means the height from the first floor to the second is slightly different than it was when I made my calculations. Not only that, but if I plan to level the second floor as well I need to consider its height when it’s done rather than its height now.

Stair Planning

Stair planning with minimum required headroom

Another factor is that I read up on load and span limits for the stair stringers. Since the opening for the basement stairs prevents me from having any intermediate support for the first floor stairs, they need to be able to span the whole distance to the first landing, which is nearly ten feet. That means I need to use 1 ¾” x 14″ thick, 1.55E stringers, which are bigger than I planned. That affects the headroom in the landing going down to the basement. Finally, the rise for each step must be equal and no more than 7¾”. The current rise floor-to-floor  averages about 10’11” (131″). I can’t fit more than 17 steps, so the closest rise match is 7 ¾” for a total rise of 131 ¾”. I guess I’ll just level the second floor to that height.

So, I went back to my model in Sketchup and started re-working the plans. I got a bit frustrated because I was spending a lot of time drawing things out just to figure out it wouldn’t work. I finally realized I need to draw the required headroom and clearance, so I could see how much space I needed.

Second floor stairs

Second floor stairs

Once I did that, it started to come together. It’s a tight fit between the multiple stories, roof slope, and other available space restrictions. There are a couple of things that are less than ideal. In the picture above you can see that the second floor landing will need to be notched so there’s enough headroom coming up from the first floor, but structurally it will be fine. There’s also the roof pitch clipping a triangle of headroom above that landing, and the stringers which are notched onto the edge of the landings rather than completely on top to provide enough space to meet code.

The good news is that I can figure this out on the computer and that it will all meet code requirements and I should be able to get a queen-size mattress up the stairs (and not bonk my head on the underside of the landing). Now I can get my LSL stringers on order and start framing the first floor landing.

Next Steps

March 7, 2013 / / 1 Comment

Back in August we had  a demo party and gutted most of the first floor, but we left the front foyer and staircase because we knew it would be a while before we were ready to start framing, plus we didn’t have our building permit yet so we wanted to leave the front entrance intact. Now, with the steel beam in the basement and the permit taped up in the window, we’re ready to get to work.

That means it’s time to gut the foyer and stairs, so we’re having another demo party this weekend to do just that. With a dumpster and people coming to help, we decided to demo the office on the second floor while we’re at it. The reason for this is when we rebuild the stairs that go from the first to the second floor, we’ll be putting them about five feet further back in order to make the front bedroom bigger. Moving the stairs back means the top of the stairs will be in what is now our office, or the middle bedroom on the second floor.

Last night we started cleaning up our mess in the office and finding places to put the furniture. Some things are going into storage in the basement, but we still need to move our only phone jack so we still have Internet and figure out where to put one of the desks.

Once the demo is done we’ll be able to close up the remaining window on the North wall and replace the load-bearing wall that runs from front to back with an LVL beam and columns. LVL is laminated veneer lumber, an engineered beam that is stronger and stiffer than wood. That will allow us to have the open plan we want while still properly supporting the second floor.

The open question is whether or not we should build temporary stairs or make do with the stairs on the back porch. It’s going to take some time to get the beam in place, re-frame the joists both in the floor and the ceiling, install new subfloor, and build a proper set of stairs. We might be able to build a temporary set of stairs in the mean time just by cutting some stringers and reusing the existing treads. The only trick will be the winders that we have now. I may just build a landing and make the straight run a bit longer, but I’m not sure yet if that will fit.