A week and a half after we submitted our second set of plans, we received HOA approval on our revised plans from the architectural committee. Their only notes were that they wanted paint chips for the colors, and they were interested in our re-vegetation plan, since they were concerned about invasive weeds moving in once we disturbed the ground.
Sometimes when people say they feel like weight was lifted off their shoulders, it isn’t entirely a figure of speech. When I got the approval email I could feel myself release tension I’d been holding in my shoulders for the past week or so.
The vegetation issue shouldn’t be a big deal; we basically wanted to try and return the lot to what it is now, a sub-alpine meadow. Now we just needed to wait for engineering to finish up so we can submit for permits with the county.
A bigger deal was that during the next pass of structural engineering, the engineers wanted to add structural steel around our living room windows to account for the new roof pitch and higher walls. It was about a $20,000 add-on, which slowed things down a bit. Ultimately, Shaun couldn’t figure a way around the steel beyond filling in about half of the window wall. The window wall/corner orients basically the entire public side of the house, so it was worth the bump up in the budget to us, though it wasn’t a welcome change.
The next day, we got the signed approval from the HOA architectural committee, though they had a couple of final questions for us.
As of 3.5 months into the project, we were about a month behind and had increased the budget around $35,000. And we hadn’t broken ground or pulled permits.