The Tom and Lynrae Show

As far as showing our house plans to the Landmarks Commission, we had it down. The calm, cool way we swept into the conference room and set up our laptop. The buddha-like detachment we displayed while presenting our house plans. The Snoopy dance we did afterwards when we were at least 100 yards from the City building. The celebration dinner at some Thai restaurant where we would order Curried Garlic Chicken and Pho Bak with lots of Hosin Sauce. Mmmm, hosin sauce.

Where was I? Oh, so last Wednesday we did the final show and let me tell you, it was WAY different. This time we were in front of a dozen architects who had metal name plates in front of them and we all sat in front of microphones because everything was taped for public records. So, the meeting was started and we were called up to present our plans. I was so nervous. Tom said afterwards that my voice was squeaky and I ended my sentences as questions? Which I don't recall doing probably because I was busy listening to the roar of adrenaline rushing through my body. Anyway, we finished and one person asked for our justification for moving the front door and another asked why we chose a certain window in front. That was it. They then said, "Yeah, okay", thanked us and went on to the next property. A bit anticlimactic. I didn't realize our plans had passed until an hour later at our recovery Indian dinner.

So, now Tom is working on the permit drawings and I continue to pack, and condense our house stuff so it will fit in our 19' RV.

My Fairy Godmother

If I believed in a Fairy Godmother, I would name her David Schroedel. Why? Because it was David who helped get the ball rolling on our variance last month. The City of Tacoma has a website with a forum and I posted a question about how long variances really take (we were entering month #7). David answered my post, asked for our permit number and said he would check it out. He was somehow able to infiltrate the City offices, find out where our application was and put in a word for us to a reviewer. Variance approved within 2 weeks. Now, whenever I asked the City our variance status, it was like playing 20 questions (...is our application sitting on something square? Is this square thing used as a desk?...). David has many good karma points headed his way. To be fair, the City is very understaffed at this time and they did a very thorough and detailed report on our house.

Last week we did our dog-and-pony show for a few people on the Landmarks Commission, which went well. They did give us a few pointers for our next and final presentation, which is this Wednesday. This weekend we moved the office out to the studio. Still working out the bugs with regards to our internet hookup out there. We also rented a storage unit here in town and moved a truck load of stuff into it. Tom also built a temporary cattery out in the back yard for the cats. He did such a beautiful job that I may want to keep it up.

Went over all the plans with our builder, Chris, on Saturday. Now it feels like it's really happening. I'm finding I know very little about remodelling a house. I thought we'd just tear off the roof and back portion and frankenstein on the addition with some huge sutures.

Variance and Reviews

We finally got our variance on April Fools Day! Last Wednesday, we sat down with a couple of the Historic Preservation people to go over our drawings and prep us for the review process. They had helpful suggestions on where we needed to make clarifications and also found some errors~ very minor stuff, really.

A few weeks ago, we got the gutter installed on the back side of our studio. Our gutter guy, Mike from The Gutter Experience, did a nice job installing the downspout so the runoff will flow into our new rainbarrel. Works great!

West Side of House

I scraped and painted the front and the front portion of the sides before being waylaid by thyroid cancer back in 2001. You can see where I last started scraping (lower left corner) before getting sick.

South Side of House

Wow, why would we ever want to improve this?

East Side of House