May 20, 2009
Another setback: Our credit union has been unsuccessful in securing a lender who will carry the mortgage for us due to the plummeting market in real estate. Apparently there is a “problem” with the appraisal that is preventing now three lenders from finalizing the mortgage. We have not yet received details but needless to say, this has been a real blow to our plans. We are still hopeful for a solution, but as of now it’s not looking good.
More to come….
April 21, 2009
So we did switch gears and are now headed towards closing on the refinancing of our home at a much lower interest rate than we currently have. The appraisal of our property took place last week and went well. The appraisal came out lower than the county assessor’s figures, but not below a figure with which we can live.
The plan now is to break ground around the middle of May to build a new house on to our existing home – two stories with a basement. The second story will also have a deck coming off of it. It will house a huge living area, bathroom and our bedroom. The main (ground) floor will have a new kitchen and bathroom and laundry room. The basement will go unfinished for now.
The main (current) house will get remodeled once we move in to the new space. We will keep the four rooms in it (the current kitchen will become a room). The current bathroom will become an entry hall/closet from outside.
We are currently building a temporary fence in the front to house the dogs while construction is in process:
The backyard will be reconfigured with a nice large yard on one side and a smaller dog area on the other side.
We are very excited about this summer’s building! More to come….
March 25, 2009
Yesterday we learned that our property is zoned rural residential and not R2 (for multiple dwellings) as we thought. This means that only one single family dwelling per half acre. We have 2/3 acre and we wanted to build a duplex. The duplex is out and so we cannot build the high thermal mass/passive solar duplex we wanted (we were going to rent out the other half). We were also told that although we could spend up to $3,000.00 to apply for a zoning change, the city council would likely not approve it.
How disappointing!
So we have once again gone back to the drawing board and are planning to build on to our existing structure and remodel the existing structure.
More to come….
March 20, 2009
Today we got our dumpster that will live on our property until we have cleared it for inspection by the bank! This will probably take 2-3 months, depending on how fast we work.
This is one of buildings we are tearing down – the falling apart greenhouse. This is also where our new house will be built. The garden in front of it is usually filled with vegetable plants in the summer – but not this year with our building going on. We will re-locate where we garden this year.
March 16, 2009
We now have the plans nearly complete and are about to send them to an eco-architect in Tennessee, Howard Switzer, who specializes in eco-building methods. He owns Eco-Architects and his wife, Katey Culver, is the permaculture designer Howard teaches natural building at the Ecovillage Training Center and in Perry County, TN. We are very excited to have Howard assisting us in finalizing our plans.
Here are photos of the plans we have made to date:
Basement
Ground Level
Second Floor
See photos of our property in its current use by clicking on our Gardening Aventures Tab.
March 15, 2009
We recently had an offer on our property in West Jordan by the owner of Gardiner Village, just behind our property, to purchase it for above market value . The reason he wanted our property was because UTA was planning to build a parking lot on 5 acres of G. Village (for the TRAX station that is currently under construction) and he was trying to avoid capital gains taxes. We told him we would like to take him up on his offer. While we were waiting to finalize the deal we found two properties in Salt Lake City (where we would ideally like to move) that would have been perfect for our personal home and for the Utah Peace House (each being one acre, close to the Fair Park). Each day brought with it excitement over the possibilities.
We learned after a few weeks of the initial offer that the deal between UTA and G.Village fell through because UTA decided it wasn’t going to construct a parking lot after all (which is actually a good thing) and therefore the owner of G.Village no longer needed to purchase our property.
Disappointed, we immediately turned our sights back to our original plan and are closer than ever now of having a new duplex home built on our currently property by summer’s end (2009). We are collecting materials and bids for the construction of two technologies combined for our personal duplez home: high thermal mass and passive solar. We are still excited about the location since it is close to the future TRAX station. We have been working towards taking action on this concept for a few years.
