Slow, Slow, Slow Your Boat

If our application for a building permit was a watercraft, it would be a slow boat to China. To further massacre the nautical analogy (or the China references), this whole permit process is turning into Chinese water torture.
My wonderful, detail-driven spouse, (hereafter referred to as "that lawyer from Chicago") has been trying valiantly to stop torturing me with daily interrogations about our progress.

Bulldozer Bungalow

Power to the People

Our village was hit by a short, but fierce storm Tuesday night that knocked out the power and downed hundreds of old trees. Bad enough, right? But the power in our rental villa was out for four long and dreary days. The houses across the street had power so each night we would gaze over in envy and anger. Many of our neighbors without power fired up their gas generators, which sound as if someone is mowing the lawn underneath your window 24/7.

What does this have to do with building Barbie's Dream house? Nothing, as in nothing got done this week. No building permit applied for because no one involved had power.

Money, Money, Money, Muh-nee

The title of this post is supposed to be a clever reference to the O'Jays song "For the Love of Money." If you don't get it, you are either way too young or I am way too impressed with my cleverness.

The real point here is that our money seems to be leaking from our checking account before we have dug even a spoonful of dirt. That detestable, detached garage needs to sit on hallowed ground; graded, leveled, retained and drained.

The Slippery Slope

It turns out that the tiny box that represents the garage of our new house will not stay put on the blueprints. We finally agreed  that my plan to put the garage facing the street was best (no surprise to readers of this blog) and now we find out that the lot is sloped 4.5 feet from front to back. (Garage door at the bottom of a slope= water in the garage.) This little hill is turning into the residential architecture equivalent of the Hoover Dam and is threatening to cost as much.

The Best Laid Plans...

Waiting for our plans to be ready for submission to the Village's permit approval process seems more exhausting than waiting for our first son to be born (30 hours, but who's counting.) There are tree surveys and land surveys and topographical surveys and copies of plans and surveys that far exceed any multiple noun I can come up with (triplicate squared?) There is no blame to be placed or mis-placed here, just a process designed in the "hurry up and waste time" mode.

The Last Gas(p)

A mountain of details seem to be escaping my notice lately. Escaping might be an exaggeration since I wasn't really aware of many of these details in the first place. For example, do we leave the gas and electricity turned on in a house we will be tearing down? (Answer: yes to the electricity, no to the gas.) Who could know that the gas company would insist on sending a serviceman to turn on the service before they would agree to cut if off?