2025: Year of the House
It’s 2025 now. Which means it’s been 2.5 years since this blog saw an update. That’s not to say things haven’t been happening — more that anytime we had an update to share, it still felt so precarious that talking about it out loud might jinx it.
A pretty morning in line for the ferry at Fauntleroy.
This week, we’ve hit some big milestones with our house.
And, this week, as hammers bang and walls go up on the home we’ve been planning for fully half of a decade at this point, I’ve been glued to coverage of the wildfires in LA.
Watching thousands of people — many of them friends and acquaintances — evacuate, only to return to find their houses gone, their communities leveled, their homes forever changed even if their own walls are still standing has been heartbreaking. I think about all the love and planning (and tears, and stress) that we’ve given to this house and it’s not even really a house yet, and I just can’t imagine how it would feel to have it crumble, even before we’ve filled it with memories and with our treasures and our family heirlooms and our favorite things.
I’ve been looking around our rental house, thinking about what — if we had just moments to pack a bag and leave — I would take: Anna’s rainbow paintings and her latest princess drawing series, the baby books, the five stuffed puppies and three pacifiers that Rory can’t sleep without, the jewelry box filled with gifts given over decades, the dogs’ meds.
I can’t even leave the house to go to the park without forgetting something critical, so, what happens when you get to safety and realize that the wedding band is still on top of the cabinet, or that the beloved ballet leotard procured in Paris is still in the laundry basket, or that the sweatshirt that belonged to Justin (irreplaceable) is still in the dresser?
Moving houses, and preparing to move houses again, and also moving through these phases of early childhood and rotating so many things in and out to serve the different ages that the kids are at and that they grow out of so fast has made us less attached to a lot of our stuff. A lot of it we’re ready to leave behind. But the things we’re taking with us… I’d grieve them if I lost them, deeply, and I can’t wrap my head around the scale of loss in Los Angeles. I hope everyone who is being forced to start over can find home again very, very soon.
The idea of home, after all, is why we’re doing this whole thing. If I could go back 5 years and warn then-me about what it would look like, and how long it would take, and how many times I’d feel totally hopeless, and how expensive it would get (god, so expensive), I’m not sure I would have been game.
But here we are. And ‘home’ is still the goal. We are as excited as ever to get out of the city and move to Vashon, to let our girls grow up outside and in a small community, with the forest and the beach in our backyard, and to let our pace of life just chill out a little. And we are getting so excited to live in this beautiful house, which you’ll see soon is really starting to feel real.
To quickly recap some highlights:
We submitted our designs to the county for permitting at, I want to say, 11:56 PM on December 31st, 2022. That got us in for processing mere minutes before certain code changes went into effect, which would have required redesigns of some of our systems and spaces. Shout out to our architect for burning the midnight oil with us at a computer instead of a NYE party and for making the champagne worth popping.
The time stamps tell the tale.
It took the county fully 11 months to issue our permits. ELEVEN MONTHS. We are almost five years into this project so at this point there aren’t many delays or hurdles that surprise me. Eleven months was unexpectedly protracted. Extraordinarily long story short, our stuff was on somebody’s desk and got overlooked for a long, long time, but after calling through the phone tree for weeks on end Tim was finally able to speak to a human who got us sorted out in a matter of days.
To the point above — if any fellow UX designers want to join forces to put some competition up against mybuildingpermit dot com, the worst website, there is an opportunity.
Goodbye, sweet house!
We sold our house! I don’t know if you’ve heard but interest rates aren’t great. This meant that this last spring, when we were finally ready to get rolling on actually building, it wasn’t an ideal time to be selling a house. It was also not an ideal time to be borrowing a construction loan. We decided that, regardless, the best and quickest path to breaking ground was to sell our house in Fremont and use the proceeds to fund the build with cash to get it as far as possible, then reassess what borrowing would look like. So that’s what we did. It was bittersweet to say goodbye to that house. While conveniently located to my office and Anna’s school, our current rental isn’t as comfortable and is a lot more expensive month-to-month. And I think the only word to describe our process of moving would be ‘traumatic.’ But we did it.
Tim, my dad, and Tim’s dad and uncle all put in some serious sweat equity out on the lot in the spring clearing trees and overgrown scotch broom to get the site as prepped as possible, and in May we broke ground.
Us and our dirt and our weeds.
We got a foundation poured, plumbing roughed in, radiant heating coils installed, and the slab poured before it was time to go back to the bank. Given that construction had started, our financing options were limited, but ultimately I think this worked in our favor. Our loan is through a private equity firm, which means that the rate is steep but we were able to close on the loan relatively quickly. I say relatively because it was not quick and it was not painless but a traditional bank would have made the process much more drawn out with more hoops to jump through. As to the rate, the construction loan ultimately is a short-term expense, and we’re just keeping our fingers crossed that rates have dropped by the time the house is done and we’re getting into a normal mortgage.
Financing closed in November and then it was really full steam ahead. Our builder has the exterior of the house completely framed and the interior will be done next week; we’re a month-ish behind schedule because of staggered sickness over the holidays, but everyone’s upbeat and optimistic and committed to getting back on track.
In the meantime, we’ve been locking down more details. It really is wild that even when you spend two years designing a house, there are still so many decisions to make and details to refine as you go along. We found a (significantly) less expensive window vendor whose product is actually a better fit for our house (they have an off-the-shelf color option for the metal frames that’s a warm bronze, which will give a softer, less stark look than black). We met with our cabinet manufacturer to lock down what’s a door and what’s a drawer, what the grain orientation will be on the cabinets, etc. We’ve figured out places to conceal mini-split heads for heat and air conditioning, and we’ve met with a lighting consultant to detail out our lighting plan.
What else? Had Rory been born yet when I last posted here? We had another baby. She’s almost 3.
So, it’s happening. Framing is nearly complete, so we can actually walk through the rooms now and get a feel for it. The living room feels huuuuuuge, it’s going to be so lovely and open and light. It’s funny; when the slab had been poured we walked around on it and the house felt small. Now that walls are up and the roof is on it really feels massive. I’m sure once drywall and windows are in it will feel totally different again. At 2400 square feet it’s no sprawling mansion, but we’re feeling validated in our choices to prioritize square footage in the public areas like the kitchen/dining/living space. The bedrooms aren’t gimantic (Anna made that word up this week) but we’re going to have room to breathe in the spaces where we’re all be together.
And the parties will be great.
You may recall that due to budget (lol what’s a budget :sobbing_face:) we have postponed building our garage to a later phase. Given that, I’d been a little bit concerned about storage. We have a large pantry area, and a lofted storage space above the powder room, but that space is now being used in part to hold the tank for our fire suppression system. And with the decisions we’ve made to disguise mini-split heads, the closets in the guest bedroom, kids’ bedroom, and office have shrunk a bit in terms of functional space. We’re going to have be more minimal when it comes to clothes (ha) and toys (ha ha), but then what do we do about the keepsakes and seasonal stuff — the skis, the Christmas decorations, the photos and, critically, the American Girl doll collection?? This week, our builder pointed out that above the rooms with dropped ceilings, we are going to have a lot of insulated open space that we could use for storage, which was a real eureka/hallelujah/insert-exclamation-here moment. So now in the primary bedroom closet and the laundry room we’ll have access panels to attic space, where all my dolls and dollhouses can live in creepy comfort like the good attic dwellers they were always meant to be.
Ok. Some more photos?
July picnic/important multi-generational architectural rendez-vous on my parents’ lot next door (did I mention my parents are building a house next door?)
Bench-test of the framing materials.
The appropriate level of enthusiasm for the future guest-room floor.
We were in a real crisis of indecision for days over what color to choose for the kitchen range. None of the whites pictures made the final cut.
Casework huddle.
The ferry ride home is ideal for continuing the design discussion.
The bedroom wing partially framed up and blue sky through the rafters. This picture makes me think of a quote from a Hallmark Expressions card I bought in high school and quoted often to describe high school drama in conversation with my friend Maria: “Barn’s burnt down. Now I can see the moon.”
Anna and Rory LOVE that the house wrap has a frog on it.
Doing our best to keep them away from nails and other sharp objects and tripping hazards outside the primary bedroom patio.
View looking back at the house from the corner of the lot where Anna needed to pee.
Standing in the dining room. Tim and the girls are basically standing right in front of where the kitchen island will be. The big opening behind Rory will be one of the large glass folding doors — the dining area has one on each side, one opening up to the front yard and the other opening up to the back. The opening over Anna’s head is the front door of the house, which opens into what we’ve been calling the ‘gasket’ and is the rectangular foyer between the bedroom wing and the living wing.
Kicking sawdust, a formative tactile memory.
Rory posing in front of the back entrance to the gasket, on what will be the back patio.
Looking up at the house from the backyard, primary bedroom on the right and the living wing to the left with the guest bedroom at the far left.
Gang’s all here!
Until next time, stay safe.
