Waiting

July 16th


Sitting, Waiting, Thinking, Wishing....



That's about all we do anymore these days. On Tuesday we received word back from the city that our building permit was "incomplete" and therefore placed on hold until we submitted further information.

The blue prints were professionally designed by a company I took as large and reputable; however, they failed to inform us that we would need to get the two little pilings on my drawings professionally engineered. Dad started calling around trying to find out who in the city would be able to put there stamp on such an easy drawing for us. The answer: Remple! The problem: On vacation! It is frustrating when every construction place in the city recommends the SAME structural engineer who happens to be on holidays until MONDAY. Admitting defeat until next week Dad and I continued on our search for cheap granite counter tops in this city (an almost impossible feat!). While talking to a contractor about our granite we mentioned the engineering problem; he mention a name that took both Dad and I for surprise. It turns out that the man who demolitioned our house is actually a structural engineer who holds his certificate still but does not practice. Dad called him up (since we still owed him for the work on our house he was glad to hear from us). Dad drew up some diagrams and took them over to him the next morning and he gave us the stamp we so badly needed!

Then it's back to sitting, waiting, and wishing. We need the city to re-process the application. We were told it should only take a day or two; however, if it takes two days that makes it the weekend and pushes us to next week before we can start any excavating. We leave on Wednesday for BC! (yay for working all day then driving all night). This gives us very few days to get the excavator guy set up and ready to go so he can work in our absence.

Yesterday, and some mid-afternoon entertainment, we pulled out our lawn chairs and sat in the ally way to watch the gas line guys work. Apparently they work about as hard as we do. A crew of about six guys showed up and no more than one person worked at a time. They used a Ditch Witch to dig a narrow trench from the main line to the new meter in our yard... it was basically a big chain saw that cut through the dirt two feet down! They were friendly guys and even used their excavator to pull out the stump in our neighbours yard.

In between minor diversions, Dad has used his spare time to re-arranged our garage about six times. His latest endeavor was to create enough space make his stack of hardwood flooring into a double bed rather than a single.