The trees come down, the basement gets included and more on siding

How's that for a subject line. First, we had some fun today and took down the three "trees" in front of the house. I say "trees" because they're really overgrown arborvitae. I suppose some might intend for them to get as high as they did, but I'm not so sure. I wish I had some shots of the fun. My dad, my friend Paul and I took them down pretty quick with a chainsaw, chopped up the trunks and hauled the branched to a compost area here in town. All before noon, I might add. But, all I have is before and after...



So, the basement. As mentioned, we reviewed the contract from MOC last weekend and worked out the particulars, but we need to make a decision on the basement ASAP. Because if it's in, then that affects the immediate schedule and affects the payment schedule laid out in the contract.

Probably the biggest issue was the cost associated. It was about a $40K add to do the basement. A lot of that was simply because we weren't planning to tear down the structure of the house where the basement would go. If we did do the basement, they would have to tear down the wall frames and subfloor and then rebuild.

Well, we wrested with the cost and desire and ultimately decided that yes, we wanted to do the basement. Problem was that we then got fixated on the siding. We were getting nervous about using steel. We asked for the price difference to go back to Fiber Cement, or Hardi plank, and found out it would be another ~$8K. So, we just said yes to the basement and now we're talking about adding more $$. Where does it stop?

So, we did a field trip on Friday with Mike Otto and our architect Ryan to look more at steel. The end result only confirmed our desire not to use the steel. So, Ann and I pow-wowed once more and said, fine we'll still do the basement, which allows us to get the contract signed and this project started. And then we'll deal with the siding over the next couple months understanding its going to cost us something more, but what that is depends on whether we have some other options that are both visually and price appealing.

That means we'll finally have a contract to sign on Tuesday.

In the meantime, I've removing some more siding...