Building a house...Part 1

For a long time I've had the yearning to build a house. I think it actually started when I first had my cat. I remember thinking to myself, "when I build a house, I'm going to cut an opening in the wall and create a space for the cat box that had like a little kitty door in front of the opening so that the litter box would be hidden and out of the way". There's just no good place in a house to put a litter box and hence my whole first idea of a house plan revolved around where to put the cat box.

Things have changed a bit since then.

It didn't become clear to me until last year why exactly I wanted to build a house. Now the vision is clear and I'm just pushing forward as best I can. I can't control this. If it's meant to be, it'll be.

Archie, the neighbor's dog :)

Jaw and I found a property in Fallbrook, CA which is way way way north county San Diego. It's an unincorporated town, known for it's avocados and history of artists. There are also about 10 churches of various demoniations along this one stretch of road and the first time we explored the area, we encountered a "preacher" of sorts giving a speech in the parking lot of the corner gas station.  So with divinity on our side, we purchased the lot. It's a pretty amazing piece of land. Situated on about 3 1/2 acres, it had a graded building pad, septic layout and all the makings to be an extremely peaceful and wonderful place to build.

Jaw set his RV up at the property and we spent some weekend days up there, got to know most of the neighbors and were feeling pretty good about things. I (more than Jaw) wanted to get started on the project, so I made contacts with a loan guy and got the skinny on construction loans. We would be approved - it was just a matter of getting a design and a budget over to the bank and then poof - we'd have a loan. So, I hired an Architect and got them going on a schematic design.

In the meantime, I did some research on the other utilities for the house.  Water was not a problem - there was a meter for the property and that was set to go. The house would be on septic, so all we had to do was update the old septic layout and submit it to the county. There's no natural gas to the site, we would be using propane - that's easy to set up... Finally, there's power. I mistakenly thought that since there were houses around us and a "road and utility easement" along the north side of our lot, that power would be readily available. I was wrong. But with multiple meetings with the electric company, the contractor and the neighbors, we finally (after about four months) got it sorted out. Needless to say, we'll be looking into solar systems to get off the grid as soon as possible!!

Next up - meet the fire department to make sure they're happy. You need a happy fire department or else you're screwed. The Architect and I met the Fire Department and worked through a couple of

issues. The fire marshall is amazingly nice and I pray to the Gods above he doesn't retire before my project goes through! I need to pave the driveway (this I knew). The driveway needs to be 16' wide, but if it's not in some places because of the terrain that's ok (Phew - because I'm pretty sure it's on the brink of being barely 16' in some places). I don't need to put in a fire hydrant (the nearest hydrant is more than 1000' away) as long as I have a fire water storage tank (wayyy cheaper than extending the water line to a hydrant and installing a hydrant). Yay!

I took the schematic drawings to a builder in Fallbrook to get pricing input and have been working with them to finish the plans. It's starting to come together and we hope to start construction in July. Yay!

Our vision is to build a house along with a secondary structure to act as a training facility / music studio / yoga room. The house will get built now and then sometime in the (hopefully not so distant future) the second phase will get built.  It's all very exciting!


Cheers!
Mer-ooO