Out With The Old & In With The New

Finally some progress pictures for you! As soon as we got our garage permit, Jerm was dying to get started. The reason we were in such a rush is because it took forever to get our permit (until November 18^th to be exact) and winter was quickly approaching.

Let’s have one last look shall we?

The very next day, Jerm was out there after work with two friends getting ready to knock it down and haul it out. The next step was to rent a jackhammer and break up the old slab. This sounded like an easy task since the slab didn’t seem to be reinforced with rebar or mesh (it was cracked all over), but much to our surprise, we found another much harder, reinforced slab under the first one. The jackhammer wasn’t even being very effective so we soon had an army of sledgehammers in our backyard chipping off tiny little bits until it was finally gone. The whole process took much longer than we thought.

Because Jerm and I both work, we had to do a lot of our garage work at night after our day jobs. Thankfully, we had very understanding neighbors. Instead of complaining or calling the cops on us, they came outside and offered us the use of their garage lights and set up portable lights for us. We are so blessed to have them.

Anyway, after finally getting the slab up, our next step was to prep the space, dig footings, and put up forms for our new slab. Jerm’s family has and old Allis-Chalmers tractor that made easy work of moving some of the larger rocks around. We also used a laser level to make sure our forms were level and to make sure that our stone “foundation” for under the slab was level. Looking back on all of this, I picture those couple weeks as the most labor intensive work we’ve ever done. There was a lot of digging, rock moving, and working late into the night, but for once we got lucky and the snow held out on us.

After the ground was prepped and the forms were up, it was time to get ready to pour the slab. This is one of the few things we didn’t do ourselves because we didn’t want to mess up thousands of dollars of concrete. We hired a local family owned company, and they did gorgeous work. One thing we did to keep our cost down was to purchase all materials and do all of the prep work ourselves (like rebar, mesh, and visqueen). Jerm also wanted in-floor heat, so we ran about 400 feet of pex flexible tubing throughout the shop side and zip stripped it to the mesh. He has big plans for that in the future, but for now, it is all in place and ready to go. Because we did pour in colder weather, we had to keep the slab warm with tarp “blankets” for about a week.

Finally, it was time to start building, and I got a nice surprise upon coming home from work one Saturday—the first two walls were up! In case you are wondering, we bought all of our wood at a local lumberyard called State lumber. Smaller, local businesses are often more reasonable than you would think and we got better quality wood delivered right to our house (vs. picking through all of the warped boards at a home center).

Once the building started, it went much quicker than I thought. Pretty soon we had more walls + our metal beam up to support the loft. We got lucky and found the perfect size beam behind a friends’ barn, so that saved a few hundred dollars.  Once the main floor was framed and partially sheathed, we started working on framing the loft, dormers, and roofline. We are truly grateful to all of our friends that came out to help us night after night. We couldn’t have done it without them.

The most challenging part of the framing was getting the huge ridge beams for the roof up into place. For the second beam, Jerm had to get creative and use a hoist to lift the beam up and into place.

New Years Eve was spent sheathing the rest of the roof, and finally, three days before the first snow on January 6, we had a roof.

Roofing was the only other thing we didn’t do ourselves. For one, we were in a hurry to beat the snow and couldn’t have done it as fast, and for two, Jerm didn’t like the idea of being up on such a steep roof. We hired a guy from our church, and they did a great job for us. We chose a 30 year architectural style shingle in “weathered wood” that he supplied.

Whew… That covered a lot of ground in one post. Next up, Jerm goes crazy and spends all of our money on insulation… Just kidding, but he did really prioritize the insulation in our garage.

Getting a Variance

In my last garage post, I shared some of what we went through to get our garage building permit. After several months of back and forth, we were finally able to convince our town that we knew what we were doing and were following all of their rules. BUT… they still decided to make us get a variance, because that was the standard set in the past when someone else wanted to build a large garage.

The variance process meant more time and more money. We had to resubmit two blueprint sized copies of our plans (not cheap to print) along with a $100 check for who knows what. Our “hearing” was set for a Thursday night, and we were the last on the agenda. Basically, we had to present our plans before a panel of 7 board members, and they would vote on whether or not to allow us to proceed in getting a permit. After watching the three people ahead us get voted down for various business ventures (things like a school in an industrial park…?), things were not looking promising. I feel like all of the board members secretly wanted to be judges in court because the procedures and formalities reminded me a lot of when I was on jury duty for a case. It was almost comical. When it was our turn, Jerm went forward and presented the plans. He told them what we wanted to do, and why we wanted to build a garage that large—I think his speech lasted all of about a minute. He is a man of few words when it comes to public speaking like that.

After he was done, the head of the building department spoke up and started praising Jerm’s resourcefulness to all of the board members. He also told them how much he admires what we are doing and the dreams we have for the garage. It was really nice to hear someone that understood us, and I think he really helped defend our case. I was definitely having a proud wife moment tearing up in the back row listening to him praise Jerm. After a few questions, they unanimously voted to allow us to move forward. We celebrated with chipotle! But we weren’t home free just yet.

After we won that battle, they still would not approve our plans without a licensed architect’s stamp on them. I don’t think they are used to homeowners drawing up their own blueprints, so they wanted another opinion to make sure everything was structurally sound. What did that mean for us? More time and more money… I was beginning to sense a theme.

Luckily, our local lumber yard gave us the name and number of an architect that lived a few blocks from us. He invited us to come over that same night so we could go over the plans together. As it turned out, he is into auto racing just like we are, so we had a lot in common. I think the majority of that first meeting was spent talking cars rather than garage. He gave Jerm a few changes to make to the way things were drawn on the blueprints, but overall our initial plans were just fine. The next day we went back with our changes and he stamped the drawings for us. We were very lucky to have it done so quickly and I think we only paid about $300 – way less than if we would have gone through somewhere else.

With our stamped drawings in hand, we went to finish applying for the building permit. But, it turned out that our county demo permit had expired in the time it took to get the variance and the drawings stamped. Guess what that meant! Yup… we had to shell out another $200 to get the demo permit re-issued. Very frustrating, but by that point we just wanted to start on our garage.

After getting that straightened out, we finally were granted this very coveted piece of paper—our building permit.

We wasted no time in demoing our current garage and getting to work on the new one. We were both so glad when this permit process was over and that we didn’t have to compromise what we wanted in order to build it.

Asking Permission

Did you know that the only thing harder than building a garage is getting permission to build said garage? Yeah, we didn’t either. This step in our garage-building journey took us six months and had us jumping through a lot of hoops. Every town and state will be different, but I’m sharing what we learned in hopes that it might help someone else—or at least give you a bit of a laugh at some of the ridiculousness we went through.

Our first step was to check with our town to see what was required to begin. They told us that we needed to start by applying for a county demo permit, then apply for a town demo permit, and finally apply for the building permit. The catch was that we couldn’t demo anything until we also had the building permit because they don’t want people just going around demoing things and not replacing them with anything. Makes sense I guess. I also wondered why we had to apply for two different demo permits, but I learned that the reason had to do with property taxes. If we didn’t get a county demo permit and built a new garage, we could be charged property tax on both our old and new garage since there wouldn’t be any record of the demo.

The first bit of confusion came from the county demo permit. Our town had copies of the application, so we had filled one out and mailed it in. Rejected! Turns out that we also needed to include a $200 check and a full asbestos inspection report completed by a licensed company.  We also had an outdated application.

Nowhere on the application itself did it say this. Back to square one. I found a link on our state’s environmental health department site that listed all of the licensed inspectors, so I started calling around. Some were very expensive, so it is a good idea to price this out. I was able to find someone local that only charged $150 for the inspection plus $50 for the report.

The inspector came out on a Monday and I was able to pick up the report on Wednesday. Since their office was close to my work, I left in the afternoon to pick it up. For some reason the storefront of the inspector’s office was completely covered with newspaper so you couldn’t see in from the street, and I had to enter through the alley entrance. I was a bit creeped out since I was alone, so before I went in, I opened my little utility knife and kept it in my hand in my pocket. It all turned out fine, and I felt a little silly afterwards. The things we do for asbestos reports… But seriously, if no one knew where I was, I wouldn’t have gone in. You don’t want to mess around in a situation that makes you uncomfortable.

Thankfully we were in the clear for asbestos, so we were approved for our demo permit from the county.

Now for the hard part: our town. Even though our town doesn’t have a whole lot of new construction going on, we have a large building and code enforcement department and they can be sticklers. When we came to them with our original application, they sent us home with a long list of things they were concerned about.  Jerm is apparently very passionate about exterior man doors.

Some of their main concerns were:

1. The size – This was their biggest concern. When we designed the garage, we made sure that it wouldn’t be taller than our house, because that is one of the local codes. Our garage is set up with a two car parking section with a loft over it, and an open shop side for Jerm’s lift. Because of the square footage, they wanted to call it a four car garage, and four car garages are not allowed in our town. We found a number of pre-made garage plans online of a similar dimension that were labeled as three-car garages, so we presented those to them to plead our case. They finally agreed that ours was also a three car.
2. The portion of our lot that would be covered by impervious area – Our town has a code that no more than 50% of your lot can be impervious. If we included the garage, the driveway, and the house, we would have been well over 70%.  We obviously couldn’t change our house, and we were unwilling to compromise on garage size, so we looked to the driveway to gain that space back. Jerm found permeable pavers as an option and started doing research and getting quotes. We learned that they are considered permeable because they are installed with larger gaps in between to let just as much water flow through as just plain dirt or grass would.  The problem was the price. From the two initial quotes Jerm got, it looked like we would have to drop $15,000+ on pavers… No thanks. On one of our Menards wandering trips, we stumbled on a similarly rated permeable brick paver for only $0.69 each. Our town ultimately decided to allow it, so we were able to get around that rule by being creative.
3. The comparables – In the past, two other people that wanted to build large garages in town had to get variances, so to be fair to them, we would have to get a variance as well. I don’t think they have too many people that draw up their own plans, so I think they were worried that we hadn’t thought it through enough. They just don’t know Jerm, I guess, because they would be hard pressed to find a better designed garage in the town.

I guess I would rather have them be picky rather than allow anything to be built in town, but it sure was frustrating to go through this when all we wanted to do was start our garage before it got too cold out.

Have you ever dealt with your town’s building department before? Thankfully we had a much easier experience when it came time for inspections.

Bakery Kitchen Design Board

I spend my days working in my family’s appliance and cabinetry store, so I am surrounded by cabinetry, countertops, and appliances all day. Very dangerous if you ask me, because I’m always bringing home samples and coming up with new ideas for our house. Based on some inspiration from our own kitchen combined with my dream kitchen, I came up with a design board for a bakery style kitchen.
For starters, the cabinetry –I always find myself drawn to white or painted cabinetry. I think white cabinets in a bright, window filled kitchen are perfection. The nice thing about painted cabinets is that you can pair them with a wood floor without worrying about the cabinets and floor clashing or being too matchy-matchy—two common mistakes. As for the door style, I like a simpler, vintage style flat panel door. One tip to mention if you are shopping for cabinets is to look for similar door styles in different brands. For example, the door I had originally picked for this inspiration board was Silverton by Dura Supreme, but you can find a very similar door style like Lincoln Square by Kraftmaid for less.

I also love the look of concrete countertops, and we are considering them for our loft workspace. For a less labor intensive (and more durable) option for the kitchen, there are lots of quartz companies that have a similar look available. For that creamy grey color, I like Templeton by Cambria and Misty Carrera, London Grey, and Haze by Caesarstone. Pair with a light grey or white penny tile backsplash for a neutral look. I think it’s a good idea to keep the main components of a kitchen neutral and non-trendy, adding in color through paint and accessories. If your style changes down the line, it isn’t near as expensive to swap out accessories as it would be to change your cabinetry or backsplash.
For the appliances, you could easily go stainless in a kitchen like this, but I love the new white ice collection from Whirlpool. The silver handles add just the right contemporary touch without being high maintenance like stainless can be. These definitely aren’t your grandmother’s white appliances. The one tip I have for doing white appliances with white cabinetry is to make sure your cabinets are a true white. If you pair bright white appliances with even a slightly-off white cabinet, it could make the cabinets look dirty.

I tried to keep the accessories functional, yet beautiful. You can’t go wrong with a Kitchenaid stand mixer in a fun color, and I love the idea of displaying baking ingredients in glass jars on an open shelf. It lends to that bakery feel and keeps them easy to access. You can also use unconventional items as art, like a beautiful cookbook or a set of pretty cookie cutters hanging on little hooks.

Cabinetry // Countertops // Penny Tile // Appliances // Sink // Hardware // Faucet

Cupcake Love Print // Glass Jars // Cookie Cutters // Cake Stand // Cook Book // Stand Mixer // Measuring Cups

Mint // Grey // White // Peach // Copper

I hope to slowly add in decorative touches like this into our kitchen. I have plans to take off two cabinet doors for some open shelving display space, but we’ll see if Jerm will go for that or not.

How about you? Any kitchen reno plans for the future?

Planning For a New Garage

 When we bought our house, we knew that someday we would be replacing our garage. It wasn’t a matter of if… it was more a matter of when. Our little two-car garage would have served its purpose with some TLC, but we needed more space.

Our reasoning was:

1. Our house is small and we have big hobbies (like cars, airplanes, and vinyl cutting). Currently I cut my vinyl in our little bedroom, and Jerm works on cars in his parent’s garage three doors down. He wanted a space of his own, and I wanted a designated space for my vinyl.
2. In addition to big hobbies, we have big dreams! Jerm’s dream is to get his pilot’s license and build his own airplane, so we needed a space for him to be able to accomplish that.
3. We know we are going to stay in our house for a while, so it was worth it to invest the money into a new garage rather than putting it into the old garage.

We had talked about a new garage on and off for a year and a half before it became a serious option. We wanted a large garage but were unwilling to take out a construction loan to build it. So, we saved up until we had enough money to get started + a nice cushion for emergencies. Since Jerm could do almost all of the work himself, we knew we would save a ton of money on labor. It also helped to know that we would be spending the money gradually rather than in one lump sum—however, there were still some big purchases that would need to be taken into account like lumber, the concrete slab, the siding, and the roof.  I wouldn’t say we made a budget, but we did spend a lot of time wandering around home centers, getting a feel for how much stuff cost.

Jerm started drawing up plans for the new garage about a year before we broke ground. I’m so proud of all of the work he put into it, and he seriously thought every single thing—I mean how many people have radiant floor heat in their garage? He used programs like CAD and Solid Works to draw up the blueprints. Almost every night I would find him sitting at the computer in his glasses, working on the drawings—often times with Zu laying next to him. Because the plans were drawn by him and not just off-the-shelf garage plans, they took into account all of our needs and wants for the space.

After spending about 5 months on planning, the real fun (not!) began… trying to get permission to build what we wanted.

Minted Design Board Challenge

Minted is having a birth announcement inspiration board challenge right now, and I thought it would be fun to try my hand at making one. I love minted and I am on their site all the time, but I didn’t know that they had a design board tool. All you need to get started is an account.

First things first, I had to pick my favorite birth announcement to design my board around–this was no easy task because they are all so great! I finally settled on the sweet little ladybug by Melanie Severin. I love the vintage feel of the colors and the floral graphic–perfect for a little girl.

After extensive google searching and pinteresting (waaay too much pinteresting), here is what I came up with…

Clockwise from top left:

1// la dolce vita via merriweathercouncil
2// Glitter hangers from ontobaby.com 3// sweet little ladybug birth announcement
4// baby shoes from seed heritage 5//vintage sheet bunting via intimateweddings
6//gold chevron wall from ontobaby.com

I love the super girly yet classic color scheme with gold, apricot, and pinks…and those shoes are to die for! One of my favorite tips is to use outgrown baby clothes and accessories as decor in a baby’s room. You can hang a baby dress from a hook on a shelf or the wall with a mini hanger, or you can put a sweet pair of shoes in a shadowbox.

If you make a design board, I’d love it if you share!

These are a few of my favorite things – March edition

1.  I know I’m a bit slow to jump on the yoga pants bandwagon, but I just bought my first pair last week. I have practically been living in them ever since. I’m 5’11” so I had avoided them in the past because I could never find a pair small enough and long enough at the same time. Enter Champion C9 fitted pants from Target—they make a tall, regular, and short version in every size. Yay! I may even take up yoga now… We’ll see.
2. Oh Project Runway… How I love you and how Jerm loathes you. I have to record them and put them on once he falls asleep at night. They are now in the 11^th season + a couple all-star seasons, and I’ve watched every one. The funny part is that I’m not really into fashion. I guess I just like the sewing. I’m rooting for Kate this season (I’m behind two episodes so don’t tell me if she is gone yet), but Mondo remains my all time favorite.
3. This list needed a food item, so I’m introducing you to my new love—Chocolate and butter biscuit cookies—like these petit ecolier cookies. I prefer the milk chocolate to the dark chocolate. My grandma introduced me to these when she included them in a care package she sent to me at school, and I’ve loved them ever since. Normally they are super expensive, but I’ve found that Aldi carries a knock-off brand that runs $1.49 a box. Well worth the splurge if you ask me. Maybe I’ll find a way to DIY them.
4. My “glorified concrete boots” as Jerm calls them. I love my Hunter boots. I bought the Hunter originals in matte black last fall from zappos.com, and I look forward to snowy and rainy days so I can wear them. You won’t catch me wearing them with shorts, though.  I’m not sure where that trend came from. They were pricey, but actually are very practical. I like being able to stomp through puddles and my feet stay dry as can be.
5. Lately Jerm and I have been playing words with friends together. Even when we are in the same room. We started in the airport on vacation when we didn’t have anything else to do, and now we usually have 2-3 games running at once. I’d say we split the wins 50/50, but he may tell you otherwise.