New House

So if you follow another blog you will know that we have bought a new house. The house we live in is wonderful but it really is too big. So we decided to downsize but didn't want to move too far from our current neighborhood. We found a small 912 sqft 2 bedroom 1 bath across the canyon.  This was much smaller than I really wanted but the price was good, relatively speaking, for the area and we decided that we would expand the bedroom and add a master bath to bring the house up to a 2 bedroom 2 bath. The new addition would add an extra 110 sqft.

We made the offer and went into escrow in October. We wanted a long escrow and ended up closing in January. From there we had to interview contractors and then deal with the permit process. Today the foundation was finally poured.

We knew adding an addition could be challenging and was it ever! Being on a canyon means that there are special circumstances when digging or encroaching towards the edge. Plus it doesn't help when you have a crappy retaining wall to begin with. The retaining wall really isn't a retaining wall, it is a bunch of rocks mortared into the shape of a wall.  To get around having to dig close to the wall the contractor will cantilever the structure. The original plans call for the foundation to be a foot into the ground and three feet above, but as they were digging the soil was very soft from previous work that had been improperly done over the years. They ended up going down to three feet and still failed the inspection because of the so called retaining wall.  We had to call out a structural engineer and he stated that the depth below ground had to be over six feet with three feet up for a total of over nine feet. Basically we build a retaining wall for the foundation. The good news is that it will be extremely solid, the bad news is that it was extremely expensive.

Next week the framing will begin.