Mud Dogs

What an appropriate name for the crew that came to build our footings and foundation.  The guck is still very wet and seeping into the dirt where the house will be. 

This week the footing forms were set, rebar tied in, inspection completed with approval, and concrete poured.  

Yep, in the back left that's Dean helping out - he just HAS to!

Hooray!  1 inspection complete – 15 more to go!

Stay tuned!

Did I mention the February rains?

We've had a wonderful Washington winter to tear apart the landscaping and porches and fences preparing for the mobile to depart and the new house building to start.  From the rainy season start (10/1) we only had 10.7" of rain compared to a normal 24"...until February 10th when the skies opened up.

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There were 16 back-to-back storms.  The week between February 10th and 17th, we had 6" of rain (normally 3.3" (which is more than enough)).  It's now the wettest February in 15 years.  The snowpack in our passes the first of February was at 60%.  This month they have had more than 10 feet of snow and the snowpack is at 104%.  

Besides the normal Washington winter gloom what does that mean to us?  Well, on February 19th we started having things done on this project.
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On the 19th, the mobile moved out - dragging thru the glop.  On February 20th and 24th, the foundation was dug out with oozing muck in each of the piles.  And on the 25th, the Mud Dogs came to build our footings.  Still gooey.

 Today the sun is shining. (Snow forecast for Sunday).

Stay tuned.

Mixing incompetents from two firms does not make for a successful transaction

When you get the Jefferson Confederate Bank and the Same Old Crap Title Insurance company trying to accomplish a simple loan, you are almost asking for too much.

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Monday we were called by SOC Title Insurance.  They told us that they had corrected all the incorrect numbers.  Come in and sign.  What a delight: nice coffee, beautiful view, and a pile of paperwork an inch high.  Yes, the dollars were now what we expected but each legal description was in error and each in different ways: missing a distance or a direction or a "thence".  The title officer said that it wasn't their problem as all those papers came from JeffConFed.  Well, having the Deed with an inaccurate legal was not anything we were going to sign.

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We took the papers home, spent hours going through the papers again and found the loan terms had changed also.  As you can imagine, JeffConFed caught our wrath the next day in a face-to-face meeting.  Their excuse was their computer program won't allow a legal as long as ours (non-excuse) and that their loan calculation program automatically puts in the wrong numbers unless they catch it (inexcusable).  They weren't able to fix those errors at that sitting and we came back the next day.  At that meeting, all of the numbers had been corrected and the legal from SOC had now been added to the papers.  Of course, it was odd looking with a page 6 of 5 and page 12 of 11.  (JeffConFed tripping up one more time.) We got that fixed.  The bank offered to hire us to be their proofreaders!  SO NOT FUNNY!

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We wondered why we hadn't got the title report.  We should have, we were told.  We laughingly said maybe the Springer family (remember Jerry 2/7 blog?) got it.  Shockingly, the JeffConFed rep looked up shocked and said they are processing a loan for the Springers.  Egad.

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This whole fiasco brings to mind The Peter Principle : "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence ... in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties ... ."

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Stay tuned!

A record that's hard to beat

6 water pipes – some of them broken three times – and one 6" drain.

After the mobile move and the clean up, we were ready to rest the next day.  
But, oh no, daybreak and we've got a tractor in our yard.

Yep, time for the septic tank move.  

Very simple process:  Dig a hole, plop in new tank, connect the house end in and connect the field line end out, cover it all up and make a short day of it.  

Well, not quite...

Not even close.

Tractor did a fine job of digging a hole. 

Septic deliverer – not so good.  Needed to be towed to the hole and towed back out.  Mucky. 

Tractor driver helping out septic deliverer backed over and crushed the sprinkler box (break 1 – main line).  (Septic deliverer gal was cute maybe repair worth it.)

Connection into septic made.  Going great.

Can I flush now?

Connection out of the septic?.....where is it?....over here...no, over here...(break 2) what does the plan say?....oh, never mind, that isn't right...it's gotta be over that way (break 3 – 4 – 5 and 6), it really has to be over here (break 7 – main line again).  There it is - finally - 20' off the "as-built" diagram!  Connect septic to field line.  Repair 6 pipes.  Whew!  What a job.

New pipe section - from septic to field line - 5 broken pipes in the red cicles

Oh, we have some time left?  Let's start the leveling process for the new home.  Oops, forgot what the owner had said about the white pipe sticking up – ka-chunk (break 8 – main line again).

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Crew is off until Monday.  The tractor is still here, more digging is to be done.  Hard to believe they will try to top the record of 8 breaks in one day but we will see.

Stay tuned.

(2/24 UPDATE: RECORD STANDS - WILD TRACTOR GUY ONLY BROKE ONE PIPE TODAY...TWICE.)

Mortgages by the Jefferson Confederate Bank

Just one of the little frustrations of every day life:
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We got approved for a mortgage to close as soon as we got our building permit.  We'd crossed the t's and dotted the i's.  We were ready.
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But one week went by.  When do we close?  Nothing yet.
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End of the 2nd week:  Mortgage broker called and said your mortgage is no longer approved and you have to take less of loan and/or increased interest rate. 
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Whaaattt the heck!??

Dean went out and did the guy thing – hammering and knocking things apart.  
I did the lady thing: ranting and b*tching and saying nasty things. 

We decided to quit working with JeffConFed bank. 
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Ah, but then the broker called back "all is back to the previous terms and is approved".  Hooray!  They will work on the paperwork on Tuesday. 
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Tuesday went by.  Wednesday went by.  Thursday went by.  When do we close?  Nothing yet. 
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Friday 3 PM – we still haven't heard from the mortgage broker BUT the S.O.C. Title Insurance called and asked us to come in by 4 to sign the papers and close our mortgage.  Remember SOC TI?  They now had our phone number and name correct!  And, heavens to Betsy, we need only bring 1/4 of the funds we were last told we needed for the close.  Wonderful! 
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Suspicious and nosy, we asked the SOC TI rep where she came up with that number and she volunteered to send us the Closing Statement via email.  Great.  We like paying many thousands of closing dollars less.....

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Unfortunately, though the Closing Statement now had our name and address correct, none of the figures were correct..................NONE!!!!!

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So we forwarded this Closing Statement to THE mortgage broker (no longer considered "OUR mortgage broker" ).  "Oh," the JeffConFed mortgage broker said, "those figures were from when you first came to see us (we checked that out – nope, not us).  We have somebody new in our office and you are just the guinea pig as we get her trained." 

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Oh, hoorah.  Perhaps while training, someone might check the work going out of the office? 
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Scary, very scary!
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So Friday went by.  Nothing yet.  ... Stay tuned.

Mucky Poo - The Mobile Departs

What a show!  The Mobile-movers arrived on Wednesday to haul away the two sections of the former Sow's Ear.  There was plenty of mud to go around. But much better than Monday or Tuesday, when there was a couple of inches of water over much of the area. 
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But they have done this before and came prepared.  They have a cute little (6 ft +/-) specially built cleated, diesel-powered tractor that can hook onto the hitch with a hydraulically powered ball, and move just about any direction. 
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It dove down to the nearly buried hitches at about a 35 degree angle, raised the nose of the trailer section, and backed itself (and the trailer) up the slope, pulled the wheels – half buried – up the slope onto the driveway, around the corner onto the main road and set it down, where one of the tow trucks hooked on to it and headed south.
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Section being pulled out by the little tractor

Then back to do the second half. A bit more difficult because that's the "heavy" section, with all the plumbing and kitchen appliances in it; but pretty much the same scenario. Out onto the road, hook up the lights, and off they went.   

Sure would help if all these wheels went in the same direction 

This creature can do what the towing trucks can't

Oh .... did I fail to mention that the little tractor is remote-controlled.

The operator just walks alongside or behind the little devil, and works his joysticks. So sensitive that when the main mover man says "Four inches", or even "An inch and a half", the little tractor can move four inches or an inch and a half. Grandkid next door says that's the remote-control toy he wants next.
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They were here about 7:30, and job was done and they were gone by 11.
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Of course, there was a mess to clean up on the road, but only for a couple hundred feet. While Dean was scraping goop off to the side of the road, a county guy came by doing something or other, and said "Maybe I can get the county sweeper to come by". Dean thanked him for the offer but figured it was a fat chance, even if the fellow did request it from his dispatcher. An hour later, with a roar and a swoosh along came the county sweeper/vacuum, and made four passes. We don't think we'll get charged for that, but it did a great job of getting the remains of the goop off the road.
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Things are starting to happen!  Stay tuned!

In case of divorce....

... and we split the house, I want the side with the bathroom. 

In a week that has had daytime temperatures below freezing, 3" of snow, and predicted 10 back-to-back rainstorms, we have had bits of sun and clearing like today.  And this is the day a crew came to prepare the mobile to go down the road.  Lucky guys.

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They rolled up the carpet, cut off utilities, removed the peak roof shingles, 

unbolted the sections, jacked the sections up and split them apart, 

With this jack and track, one fellow can push the mobile sections apart

stapled visqueen to seal the exposed section walls, added axles and wheels,

and spent much time digging the frame out of the dirt so they could add a tongue to the front.

They worked until after dark and plan to be back at the crack of dawn tomorrow to finish up.  Of course, they couldn't have made as much progress without Dean helping them all day!
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Sunday is the planned day for transit.  Of course, heavy rain is forecast.  Let's hope the sections get out of the hole before the rains fill in!
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Stay tuned.

De-Construction

We seem to not be able to get much done except a multitude of chores getting ready for the new house to be built.
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Once we got the building permit, things got busy in a hurry. 
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Everybody wants something:  The bank wanted a list (and prices) of items we've already bought, the mobile mover wanted the porches torn off, part of the fence and the gravel walkway curbs removed, and the builder wants our preliminary locations for electrical plugs and lights and to make decisions on colors, woods, and roofing.  Oh, yeah. 
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We've made eight trips to three different charitable organizations with "stuff" we took out of the mobile and won't be using in the new place.  Sold our hot water tank on Craig's List. 
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Made trips to the cabinet maker, roofing supply, plumber, and, of course, Home Depot.  And last week we "sold" (for zero dollars) the mobile.  This saved $6-8K that it would have cost to crunch up and haul it off.
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And in between, Dean became a one-man demolition crew/team/ ??.  With our basically dry winter, he hardly got rained upon though this last week of day temps below 30 he had to work a bit faster and wear his polypropylenes.
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He tore down the chain link fence, cut off the poles, rolled up the fencing, added blocks to protect the pole bases for reconstruction..

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He got a landscaper to pull the rest of the shrubs and park them out of the way.

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He moved out all the remaining furniture and boxes and finally dismantled the gas fireplace and chimney and plugged the hole in the roof.
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He helped the utility locators and the gas company locate power and gas lines, pull the gas meter, and cut off the gas pipe far enough away from the new construction.

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And then (in his spare time?) he tore apart the front and back decks – a really big job with many chances of having pieces come down before he was ready.  Great planner and engineer that he is, nothing that untoward happened.

Nobody rings our doorbell anymore

Getting real close to being done - Hoorah!

Long story short: by this time, this place looks like a real dump!

According to the latest plan, this coming week the mobile mover will jack the mobile up, separate the sections, put axles under them and weld on towing tongues.  He'll move it out on Sunday, the 16th. (Be aware that Murphy's Law has not been repealed.)
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Good thing --- as the septic installer is coming very soon too to destroy and fill in the existing tank and put in a new one. (The new house sits over the old location.)  If the coach is gone, he also has the contract to dig the foundation trenches.
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Big changes coming – stay tuned.

S.O.C. Title Insurance Company

Burned once – shame on them.  Burned twice – shame on us. 
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When we dealt with S.O.C. (Same Old Crap) Title Insurance (SOCTI) company before, we ended up with no access to our new home – they wouldn't give us the keys. 
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And even previous to that our neighbors who owned a vacant lot became landlocked when SOCTI developed title for another piece of property and did not "discover" (aka half-ass research) the existing right-of-way.  So we were a bit tremulous to be working with SOCTI again though we had two recent recommendations to use their "service"....
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In a matter of a week,

1) we received a piece of mail with the wrong address on it, minus the enclosures stated on the letter.  The one piece of paper included gave us two business days to fill out and return.  Needless to say, with the misaddress of the letter, it took a week to get to us and we didn't meet their deadline.   Another piece of paper in the mailing  was for refinancing a loan, we aren't doing that either.
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2) After calling and getting our address corrected, the next day we received an odd piece of mail addressed to the Springer's – Jerry's family maybe? and with a different escrow number.  The description of the property was "Property in Kitsap County, Washington".  Yeah, this is most definitely for Jerry Springer as the legal on our piece of property is much more complex.  This odd piece of paper was titled "Indemnity Agreement".  The letter with the agreement stated "these questions are not always addressed".  What questions?  There were no questions.  We have just filed it away.  I'm not sure that Jerry's family would have understood exactly what this enclosure was trying to get across.  Our eyes crossed with the convoluted verbiage such as follows:  "The company agrees that they will make demand on the undersigned for performance under the provisions of the foregoing paragraph only to the extend (sic) that the company itself is obligated to the insured named in the aforesaid policy or policies or endorsements.  However, if the company makes demand on the undersigned for performance as aforesaid and undersigned default or fail to perform as demanded, then the company may cause such liens to be satisfied, such action is to be dismissed or defended against, or such judgments to be satisfied and discharged, and the undersigned shall immediately repay the company, upon demand, all sums expended by the company in so acting, together with interest on such sums expended at the rate of ten percent (10%) per annum until paid."  
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Got all that?
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3) Upon a request by our loan officer, we called the SOCTI team and requested an action list for processing through close.  No one answered the phone, so we left a voice mail.....6 days ago.  No response yet.
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It's getting exciting.  Wonder what will happen in the next week?  Will we get to meet Jerry Springer's family?  Will we switch escrow numbers?  Will we get a process list?  Who knows. 
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Stay tuned!

Valentine Coffee

Marj invited me out for coffee at the Coffee Oasis.  

A time for a great conversation with a super lady.  

How about those hearts.  Yummy coffee. Good to the last drop. 

Very special.