Rebuilding, part 1

Not a firm foundation

Occasional snarky mentions in the last several years' worth of Family Christmas Letters have done little to inform Brekkie readers of what we are really doing with our home remodel, and why. It's a long story that may or may not have a happy ending, but it must start with the question you're mostly too polite to ask: What's taking so long?

We purchased the house in 2013 in what was already an advanced state of decline. The roof leaked, the foundation under the original cabin had sunk a couple of inches, the utility systems were failing, the finishes were beyond tired. Wise heads characterized it as a likely candidate for total demolition. But we were occupied by other projects (saving the barn, dealing with creek erosion, moving back and forth to Amsterdam) and by the time we got to grips with this one we'd already lived here for the better part of a decade.

Then, too, the property is a tricky one, being triangular, half in a flood plain, and bordering a creek throughout. Our first plan took a long time to develop and to get through the local planning process, but we persevered because that's what we do. That plan had us altering the footprint to accommodate both a bedroom and a narrow bath at the rear of the house, the thinking being that guests in the barn would be able to come in and shower via that exterior bathroom entry. But changing the footprint led to discussion of rebuilding larger and larger sections of the foundation, and that prompted a geotechnical engineer to add a requirement that we do a lot more creek work to protect the new foundation. Faced with a project he couldn't possibly do for less than a million dollars, our contractor freaked out and abandoned us, and we, in turn, abandoned this plan.

The house was obviously going to have to be rethought, but the garage was a stand-alone piece of work that did not require redesign. Intent on getting something out of the many tens of thousands already invested, we went back to Planning and arranged to reduce the scope to just that one building. We found a new contractor and began construction on the garage in February 2023.

Garage under wraps

The garage took too much money and too much time, but it let us get something built while we revised our plans for the house. It also let us test out our GC and a variety of sub-contractors and got us, or rather, Talia, used to writing big checks. We had momentum, and after a few more months we had a Plan B. It was obvious that a revised design would have to leave the footprint of the house as it was, a forced economy that, I think, has led us to sacrifice very little. We get a better layout for the master bath (albeit without the door to the back deck), a kitchen that is no larger but is otherwise much improved, and we still squeezed in everything else we wanted, including an additional half bath for those dreamed-of guests. We were in front of Planning again in July, determined and, it turned out, pretty much ready to begin before the year ended. Demolition of the main house began last December.

Pack me up

This, of course, left us with the question of where we would live during construction. Marin County is not an easy rental market, nor cheap, and we have some disadvantages: Qubit, obviously, and the fact that neither of us have rented in decades so have no usable rental references. We were saved by our community: the fluvial geomorphologist who designed our original creek project happened to know of a neighbor's place coming available and put in the good word. We are now living in a cottage much like ours, which is to say old and funky and mostly unheated, but even smaller--three bedrooms only if you count one of the closets (which Gideon is obliged to) and a single bathroom for the four of us. However, it is only a few blocks away from our home-under-construction, which is helpful in all sorts of ways. Moving is always a trial, and this move was arguably the worst ever, but the house rebuild started on time and has progressed well. I write from what I expect is the midway point of construction, and in the next installment will share more details of the work being done.