how's it going? how is the house? Did they demolish it yet? what's going on? is your house still there? did you move out? when will it be done?
I get asked these questions every. single. day.
My response is like so:
"It's going ok - thanks for asking! We have had a slight snag in the permitting stage but I just take it day by day. One day it will get done! NO big deal!" said with a nice calm voice and a wide smile.
But if i was even a little bit honest my response would be like so:
"UGGGGHHH. It's horrid. I'm paying a mortgage on a house where no one lives at except for spiders as well as paying monthly for a rental home that is filled with crickets. Nothing is happening. No permit. No Demo. Nada." said with a Jersey accent and steam coming from my ears.
do you know about a texting app called Bitmoji? its hysterical and free!
house update
Now I know what people mean when they say...things take twice as long when you are doing projects like this. It has been THREE months since submitted to the county. It's frustrating and scary.
We have moved out of the house (we needed to move out early for the disconnects to happen) to a rental home about 5 minutes away. Luckily this home is cute but small, on the same bus route for the kids and if we wanted, we could walk to the mall. :)
The first week we lived there - the heat was broken and it was inundated with crickets. We have lived here now one month and thank goodness - we only have a couple of crickets that we have adopted as pets and the heat was fixed!
did you know crickets are really crunchy? ewwww
A tree expert? really?
Our new discovery that was unexpected and just plain annoying is that we are now in the process of hiring and paying for yet another engineer called a Certified Tree Expert who will set up yet another drawing to locate and display the trees (and their subsequent sizes) on or around the property. What we should have done was do our research and make sure that the civil engineer was licensed to do this type of tree drawing. (It all seems to go back to the horrid mistake of hiring the wrong civil engineer.) But - I can't look back on that now and need to keep-on-keepin-on.
By the way - there is someone who gets Certified to be a tree expert? Who knew?
We actually had to have a special coordination meeting with the county reviewer because we were having so many issues. After we get that tree drawing, then we resubmit to the county yet again. These are the kinds of things that I wish that I had someone help me with before we went in for permit.
SIGH. This piece of the permitting process will likely set us back at least another month or so.
this is me lately
Tree Canopy Law
We discovered that there is something that Montgomery County has established for the Conservation of trees. From the county website: "The Tree Canopy Law requires property owners to plant new shade trees during development. Planting shade trees helps offset the impacts of development on the natural environment."
So here are the options:
- plant 12 shade canopy trees on our property
- hand over $3k (I'm going to assuming they plant trees with that money?? hmmmm)
Tree shopping
Montgomery County has what they call an Approved Shade Canopy Tree list. If we want to plant new trees instead of paying $250 per tree required...then they have a list of trees that they will allow you to plant.
I looked at the list and did what any designer would do...go online tree shopping! I looked for trees that are easy to maintain, fast to grow as well as some that flower and also some that change colors depending on the season. Let's face it...it's all about the aesthetic.
Here are the trees I'd love to plant (especially since we cut down all the beautiful trees in our backyard anyway - see previous tree drama post)
tulip poplar - this one blooms with cool bright green flowers
sugar maple in the fall
sunburst honey locust podless
So that's the scoop...I really am trying to look on the bright side. Because let's face it - one day it will get done right?
