The following provides some background on how (and why) we got to Whidbey Island and the preparatory steps we had to take before construction began.
The Chicago suburbs in Illinois had been home since the mid-1960's. Sooja and Wayne met there in 1970, married in 1971, and, after renting a flat for our first two year, bought a house in Wheaton, IL in 1973. Little did we realize that we'd be there for 28 years. As we started to think about retirement, we decided to relocate to an area of more moderate climate and more varied natural assets. Chicago is a great city, but Illinois offers little else for those of us who love nature and the outdoors. "Sun communities", e.g. Florida, Arizona, etc., were quickly eliminated as too boring without a change of seasons, not to mention too hot for a large part of the year. The choices soon were narrowed down to the norhtwest and the mid-Atlantic states. The tie was broken when our good friends, Eric and Inge Nussbaum, retired to Whidbey Island outside of Seattle in the early 1990's. After several trips to visit them and explore the region, we decided it was for us and in January 1995 bought a couple of acres of land in the town of Freeland on Whidbey Island.
After Sooja retired in 1999 and Wayne in 2000, we planned to spend a year fixing up our Wheaton house to put it on the market and, after selling it, move to a rental house on Whidbey Island whiling building the new house. We had never built a house and didn't want to do it long distance. While we had made many improvements to the Wheaton house including a major addition in 1980 and some minor remodeling in the 1990's, fixing it up to sell was a major effort. It included painting every room in the house and replacing the flooring in the kitchen, entry, and screen porch with new tile to mention just the two most extensive jobs.
As we were doing all the fix up work, we were also talking to real estate agents to appraise the house and create a plan for marketing it. Our plan was to finish the fix up work by November, go to Whidbey for the winter (just to make sure we could stand the rainy winters), return to Illinois and sell the house in the spring of 2002, and then relocate and start building in the summer of 2002. It didn't quite turn out that way. During the summer of 2000, we started telling all of our neighbors of our planned move. Without officially putting the house of the market, with got a handful of inquiries and two bids on the house for immediate sale. One of those bids came within the realtors fee of our target price. In addition, it was from a young family with three boys who just loved the place and whom we felt would be an excellent match for the house and the neighborhood. As a result, we ended up closing on the Illinois house the last week of October, 2001 and drove out to Whidbey Island the first week of November to meet the moving van at our new rental house in Freeland, WA.
All of this worked out for the best - we say in retrospect. A major move across the country to an area in which we had never lived with the prospect of building our first house in an area that required wells and septics which we had never experienced was, to say the least, thought provoking. We did indeed have second thoughts. No one knows for sure, but it is possible that if we hadn't bought the property and told so many of our friends of our plans, that we might have backed out. Even after the decision to move, there were second thoughts. The first two months we were here, it rained almost continuously. If we had managed to follow plan A (try out the Seattle winter & sell the Wheaton house in spring), it is conceivable we might have gone back to our comfortable Illinois house and not return. But having sold it, that was not an option. Now, having experienced an ok winter (after January 1st) and a great spring, summer, and fall, we love the area and have no second thoughts about our move.
After recovering from the fix up, house sale, and move during November and December, we started to wheels rolling for the new house in January. This appeared to be a staightforward operation with just four steps:
We figured we'd break ground in May or June.
Step 1 went according to plan and worked out very well. Since buying the lot in 1995, Wayne had been evolving a floor plan for the new house using 3D Architect, a PC application that let's you specify a house plan and can even construct a 3D image of the house from the plan. With lots of iterations and advice from Eric Nussbaum, we did have a viable plan by the time we moved. As a result, we opted to go to a designer rather than an architect to get the blueprint drawn up. While a designer will not do a lot of innovative things as an architect might, he is perfectly capable of translating the plans and insuring that they make sense and meet the local building code. Did I mention a designer is also a lot less expensive? We chose James Kringler who came with a good recommendation and has been doing this for many, many years. As James drew up the plans, a few minor changes were made, but the basic layout was preserved. We had a usable set of plans by March.
Step 2 also went fairly smoothly during the first round, but then had a totally unexpected incident which we'll get to later. We followed standard operating procedure and got recommendations from our friends and, after eliminating those who were not available in the June timeframe, selected four and requested them to bid on our plans. Here on the Island, all of these operators are fairly small, but people do differentiate between those that actually run a contracting business, i.e. have employees and probably do more than one house at a time, and those who are independent and will just focus on your house. We requested bids from two of each type although we already had a predisposition to the independent contractor feeling he would be more focused and perhaps easier to partnet with. We had hoped to get the bids back and make our choice before going on vacation the third week of March with the hope that the contractor could then pursue permits while we were gone. First lesson, that didn't happen. In fact, one of the business contractors got insulted when he found we were putting the job out for multiple bids and pulled out, i.e. refused to put together a bid for us. When it became clear that most bids would not be there before we left on vacation and one contractor had dropped out, we added one more independent contractor to the list who had recently been recommended to us and promised to have his bid ready by the time we returned even though he'd have less time than the others. This last contractor made the best impression on us and upon reviewing the bids found him to also be the lowest bidder. We, of course, asked for recommendations and visited at least three of his clients in their new houses. All were enthusiastic. Within a week of returning from our vacation we selected Tim.
Step 3 was proceeding in parallel with these activities. The lot behind ours owned a 34' excess path that ran down along side our lot. We decided to call him and request an easement to let us put our driveway on his access strip instead of eventually having two driveways running parallel to each other. During the discussion, he proposed selling the strip to us. We took him up on it and also proposed buying 100' of his property behind ours as a buffer zone. The net effect would be to expand our property from two to three acres. We thought we had an agreement in early March. He volunteered to come over to the island to sign some transfer papers. On the way to our place, he stopped by the lot. He apparently had not been there for several years. He was impressed by the view that had opened up when one other lot had been cleared and developed. So much so that he decided he might not want to sell and asked for more time to think about it. Many phone calls the week before our vacation were not returned and we concluded he had decided to back out. After returning from vacation, we called once more to proposed the original plan of asking for an easement only to find that he still wanted to sell and the deal went ahead. It was made official by what they call a boundary line adjust (BLA) which effectively just shifts the boundary line between our two lots, i.e. the lot numbers and everything else remains unchanged.
Step 4 got underway as soon as we had selected our contractor - actually before. Since we had bought the property in 1995, it had become totally overgrown with brush and small trees to the extent that it was hard to lay out or even visualize the layout of the house. To solve this problem, we hired someone to clear the lot in March. It turned out he also did septic systems. So, thinking we'd expedite things, we hired him to perk the soil, design a septic system and get our septic permit. There were two options for the septic system. The soil in front of the house did not perk well and required a sand filter system (at least 50% more expensive than a normal system). The soil in the back perked better, but it wasn't clear there would be enough room there for a septic system without the extra 100 feet we were still trying to buy. So we committed to the sand filter system and had that septic permit in hand by the time we picked Tim as the contractor.
At this point we think we are right on schedule to break ground in April or June. After all, how long does it take to get a building permit. Now we find out for the first time the sequential nature of permits. We discover that we can't submit the building permit until we have both a septic permit (we have it) and a signed water availability form. This was no problem either. We just had to have the private party that drilled our well and is managing sign a single sheet of paper. We had called him in February to find out if there was anything special to do to get water. He said no. The septic guy also assured me that everything was ready. Tim droped off the form for his signature and we expected to get a call or get it in the mail the next day. Foolish us. After a week, we called only to find out that he wanted $2600 for his signature. He says we owe him a monthly water availability fee since buying the lot in 1995. This is not only $20 per month as stated in our contract for water usage (not availiability), but also includes a few raises (the usage fee is now $38 per month). We protest, but he avoids all our calls and hides behind his secretary who is the only one ever in the office. After another week plus, we finally get him, though his secretary, to agree on a meeting only after promising to write him a check. When the meeting finally takes place, we're resigned to the fact that we will have to pay, but manage to negotiate a compromise to $1800 which is all seven years, but at the $20 per month level. Our interpretation of the contract is that we owed nothing which, of course, was reenforced by his February response to our inquiry. However, fighting it at this point would undoubtedly have meant months of delay and we decided to accept the fact we had been blackedmailed.
We now had the signed availability form, but it, of course, had to be approved by the county before we could submit our building permit. Next we got a letter from the county stating that they could not issue the permit since the water testing for the well was not up to date. It turned out the water had been tested in January, but the result was not on file with the county. I got a copy of the water report from the supplier and faxed it to the county. A few days later we got approval to submit our building permit. It is now the second week of June. Tim submits the permit and is asked how much dirt is to be excavated for our basement. He estimates 300 cubic yards. The county doubles this to 600 (afterall we're going to dig out 300 and then redeposit 300 elsewhere on our property - 300+300=600). This exceeds the 500 limit which triggers the need for a Clearing and Grading Permit. Within days we submit the new permit (along with the $490 fee). It is now mid-June and we accept the fact that we will not break ground in May or June. We head for a wedding in Illinois expecting to have our permits approved by the second week of July when we return. Upon returning, our building permit is indeed approved, but it cannot be issued until the clearing and grading permit is approved and no one started working on it until the building permit was approved. This adds another three weeks and we are now at the end of July.
Less than a week before this final permit is approved, we get a call from our contractor Tim, with whom we've been working since April, that he does feel he can do our job. He only says that he thinks we're incompatible. Later we find out he has personal problems and is currently going through a divorce. This is the totally unexpected incident referred to above.
This time we quickly line up three contractors, all with a contracting business after the bad experience with an independent contractor that looked so good, and starting the bidding process all over. However, just as last time, halfway through the process, one of our friends, Christie Shaffer, not only recommended the independent contractor that had done her house, but talked to him to find out that he might be interested. This contractor had actually been highly recommended to us by many people including the Nussbaum's, but had not been active as a contractor since his partner had died five years ago. He wasn't available in March when we were looking. Now, however, he was interested in getting back into contracting. We talked to him, he bid, and we accepted. That's how we got Ralph Hastings as our independent contractor. We later found that one of the things that made us attractive to him was the fact that we already had all the permits and he would not have to deal with the county. Ralph doesn't like red tape. Ralph has been great. As many of our friends said: it was meant to be.
The day after we signed a contract with Ralph, we broke ground. It was September 10, 2002.