Garage Progress

Finally, we are getting somewhere on the garage. When we moved here a year ago we knew that this tiny 3 bedroom house was not going to be big enough for a family of 9 and a baby due any day. So we set out to build a building that we call the garage, but it is really more like a school room/play room with a bedroom in the upstairs. There is also going to be a mud porch, something I am very excited about.
We moved here in August, had the baby, then got to work. Sort of. First we got our dimensions worked out--measuring and laying out the best place for it to go. Then again. And again. You see, we kept forgetting things and changing things since we weren't working on it all that frequently. MY excuse was the new baby. You would have to ask my husband what his excuse was. Finally in October we got to the drafter. He kept getting things wrong so there was a lot of back and forth with that. He was cheap, though. At the end of October we got the plans in to the city. We aren't in city limits but we are in the urban growth boundary so, Oh joy, we get to go through the city planning department. Come to find out, there is a 6 week wait. So we wait...and wait. Then we get a letter with all the things we need to change to make it right. Sigh. Now I know why other people pay so much to have someone else do their building.

December 15th was the big day. We went down to the city and forked over our $800 and they gave us our permits. Yay! Then, "It's almost Christmas," we said. "Let's wait until after Christmas to start on the foundation." Good idea, right? With 8 kids Christmas is a bit time consuming. But this is Oregon. What does it do in winter in Oregon? If you are in the Willamette Valley, it rains. So it did. In fact, we got so much rain that a good amount of our property was flooded and the neighbors said they have never had this much flooding since they moved here 17 years ago. I think it rained most days between the end of December and the end of April. The nice thing about all the rain was that we now knew how high we had to have the pad.

To make this really long story a little shorter, we finally did get to start on the foundation in about May. Somewhat, anyway. Between soccer and gymnastics there were very few open weekends for us to get much work done. Also we really didn't know how to do what we were attempting to do. But we did it and about 3 days before our permit expired we got our first inspection. Whew! Safe for another 6 months! I thought that being summer, work should go pretty quickly. Not. We poured the first part of the foundation in Mid-June and didn't pour the second part (the pad) until the first of August. My excuse is 4h fair and numerous other activities. My husband's excuse is that he doesn't want to work on it without me. Awww. How sweet.


This is a picture of where we are right now. The lumber list should be ready today and then we will start framing. Probably next week. I'll get back to you on that.