There was miscommunication with our architect such that she thought we were in town when we had already left. There were application papers for us to sign that apparently could not be a faxed version. So we had to wait until we got home from visiting my in-laws for Christmas to bring the plans to the city...before the end of the year!
The morning after we got home, we drove straight to our architects to pick up the plans and application. Signed the forms we needed to and rushed over to the city planning office. Lo and behold, they were closed! Starting in December, they're closed on Wednesday mornings and open at 1pm. Also, they do not take our plans after 11:45am. ARGH! So we had to try again on Thursday, December 30, the very very last day to submit plans for 2010.
Dec 30: We woke up early to get to the city planning office early to be first in line to guarantee our plans made it in on time. Well, lovely for us, there are two doors to the planning office. And of course, we were waiting at the wrong one. Double ARGH! We ended up as third in line instead of first. boooo.
Since it was the holidays, the office was pretty understaffed plus the process for submitting your plans and application takes a while so we waited 45 minutes before we sat down with a city planning worker. He was a really nice guy and (thankfully) took our application. Phew! Mission accomplished!
Later that day, our architect called to make sure that the plans were submitted. She was relieved to hear that they indeed were submitted. We were supposed to call her after turning it in - oops!
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
Architect and planning
May 20
We met with the architect today. She is a close college friend of my mother-io-law. Basically, it was a sort of a getting to know us and what we wanted type of meeting. We didn't go through the usual round of interviews to select an architect because we figure that she'd do a good job for a reasonable price. Although, we still had the option of not using her since we hadn't signed any contracts or paid any deposits yet.
After seeing her ideas for the remodel, we decided to commit to her. She definitely had some creative ideas *and* she keeps the cost in mind as she doesn't want the remodel to run her friend's kids into the ground. :p
Throughout June and July, we worked on fleshing out the layout. She came up with a brilliant idea that maximizes living space and minimizes hallway space. Then at the end of July, we left for Taiwan until mid-August. For August, she went on vacation. So we didn't work on the plans again until September.
For the months of September through November, we were working on fine tuning the floor plans, the electrical plan, and elevations (e.g., where the windows would go). In October, when the floor plan was pretty much done, our architect brought a structural engineer on board. We were working up through December with perfecting the plans we were to submit for permits until our architect set a hard deadline to submit the plans. This is because if we submitted our plans in 2011, we would need to comply with the new 2011 building codes.
We met with the architect today. She is a close college friend of my mother-io-law. Basically, it was a sort of a getting to know us and what we wanted type of meeting. We didn't go through the usual round of interviews to select an architect because we figure that she'd do a good job for a reasonable price. Although, we still had the option of not using her since we hadn't signed any contracts or paid any deposits yet.
After seeing her ideas for the remodel, we decided to commit to her. She definitely had some creative ideas *and* she keeps the cost in mind as she doesn't want the remodel to run her friend's kids into the ground. :p
Throughout June and July, we worked on fleshing out the layout. She came up with a brilliant idea that maximizes living space and minimizes hallway space. Then at the end of July, we left for Taiwan until mid-August. For August, she went on vacation. So we didn't work on the plans again until September.
For the months of September through November, we were working on fine tuning the floor plans, the electrical plan, and elevations (e.g., where the windows would go). In October, when the floor plan was pretty much done, our architect brought a structural engineer on board. We were working up through December with perfecting the plans we were to submit for permits until our architect set a hard deadline to submit the plans. This is because if we submitted our plans in 2011, we would need to comply with the new 2011 building codes.
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