Project No. 6461743

Seattle Municipal Tower. DPD is on the 20th floor.

Trees House is officially Seattle Dept. of Planning and Development (DPD) project number 6461545. I went in for a "building permit coaching" session--free except for my time fighting traffic and $10 for parking. Richard, who doesn't have a business card and didn't offer his last name, wasn't all that helpful. He was negative and discouraging and didn't make eye contact.

First, he was very concerned about the expired permit associated with the property from 2010. He said that we would need to resolve project #6240581, probably with a field inspection. That's the acronym we want: an STFI ("Subject to field inspection") permit that doesn't require plan review.

Update 3/1/15: We're already confused. I couldn't access 6461545 online, but I could start a new one 6461743. Now I can't access either online. Update: 3/2/15: I think we're settled on 6461743; I'll get them to retire 6461545.

Unwrapping the tangled, interrupt-driven conversation, we have:

1. Request a Pre-Application Site Visit ($142.50). The form needs to be accompanied with a site plan (max. 11" x 17") showing the entire lot and the proposed work. They accept fax, email, or mail or they have an online system. (Richard should have suggested that I pay the fee while I was there.)

2. File a Preliminary Application Form (PAF), which also needs a site plan. Not clear which comes first, but it probably doesn't matter. After the site visit, they'll file a site visit report, and that is required for step #3.

3. File a Request for Relief From Prohibition on Steep Slope Development or Modification to ECA Submittal Requirements. According to Richard, the property is in Environmentally Critical Area (ECA) for Steep Slope, Potential Slide, Known Slide, and Wildlife. Richard thought that the survey was missing a few ECA things, and I said I need to know what's missing, because the survey was sold as ECA compliant. Richard mumbled, well, it shows Top of Slope, but it doesn't show the 15' buffer zone from top of slope. He couldn't come up with anything else that was missing.

Richard said that they will bargain--ECA exemption, but you have to do a full plan review. Or, ECA exemption and no plan review required, but you have to submit a full geotechnical report. The starting point is that there is no development allowed in an ECA. This is supposedly explained in Tip #327A.

4. Then we can talk Construction Permit. Because the project is more than 300 SF being added, it won't get a Small Project exemption. But it might qualify for STFI if there are no beams over 14'. I said, we have a 16' garage door, and he said there's an exception for that. So, STFI if there are no beams over 14' except for garage door headers no wider than 16'. Nothing is definitive--it's STFI if they say so, not if they say it's not. What a zoo.

I took in a 1"=10' site plan showing proposed additions. I used A.9 except that I showed the Trees Room extending to the south wall of the main house. Also, I deliberately showed the garage 2' closer to the street. Richard picked up on that, but said it was a Zoning issue and I'd have to talk to them. He explained about the 15' buffer zone from top of slope, which makes me think that Trees Room could come even further south.

Master Works Construction

Nick McClellan of Masterworks Construction visited this morning, along with Mike, who I think is his brother. One talks, the other doesn't. Nick is the one who talks.

Masterworks remodeled Greg and Chris Schwesinger's home at 8th Ave and 122nd in 2008.

I found Nick by knocking on the door of the Schwesinger's home, which I have admired. If the house was remodeled in 2014, I'd wonder how it would hold up, but this remodel is almost seven years old. From the front porch, I could see that the good design continues inside, with a sharp-looking cable railing around stairs to the lower level. (Nick mentioned that that railing was $150 a foot.)

I gave Nick the tour and showed him the latest plans (A.9). He ballparked $200,000, but he had nothing to go on. In general, he'd like to give me a bid with "allowances" for "discovery items" (that is, problems that are discovered once they start). The allowances wouldn't be binding at all--the extra work would be time and materials. I sensed that Mike thinks Nick talks too much. It was nice to hear Nick's enthusiasm for the house and my designs in any case. (I would be smart to hire only people who don't kiss my ass, I think.)

They pointed out sagging in the eaves and the hip roof, particularly the hip over Ba3. Metal roofs reveal such imperfections more than composition shingles, in my opinion (Nick didn't necessarily agree with me), and it would be imperative to repair the roof structure before putting on the roof--this makes metal that much more than comp. Nick gaily arm-waved an engineered ridge beam over BR3...basically rebuilding the entire garage roof. 

They liked the clean, dry basement, and they seemed shy about replacing forced air with hydronic--every hydronic they've done has been above the floor, encased in Gyp-crete. Mike knew about the heatshield for underfloor installations, though. Remarkably, they spoke easily of replacing all the ducts when we put in the new furnace. He wanted to put in a heat pump to handle air conditioning, whether I wanted it or not (I don't want A/C).

We had a more productive conversation about the sequence of things. Nick painted a picture about pouring new foundations without touching the existing house, then framing the new walls and only then removing the old roof. From that point, it's a race to button up the "cap," as he called it, so that the existing house is only exposed to the weather for a short time. Work inside would proceed once the new roof was on--under the umbrella, as he put it. Nick waxed rhapsodic about the smooth, clean fascia line and new gutters--can't you just see it?--and this utterly perfect roof installation, with vents for planned plumbing changes installed even though the bathrooms were only on paper. But then, after that, no one needs to go on the roof.

Oh, but then Nick saw that the electrical service entrance would have to move. Oof, he said, with more elegant words. "That's five thousand right there. Easy," he said. 

They arrived late for our 9am, but they stayed 90 minutes or so. It took ten days from my email contact until this meeting. They left without leaving so much as a business card (Blue Sound left a portfolio with company details). Mike lives in Everett and Nick lives in Arlington, which is north of Everett--45 minutes without traffic. However, they did the Schwesinger's house, and they mentioned more recent work in Seattle. They didn't want to work farther south than that, though, they said.

We left it that I would send them preliminary plans by email, and Nick promised to respond with prices, value engineering ideas, and product specifics.

Nicholas McClellan

Master Works Construction LLC

20902 67th Ave NE #339
Arlington WA 98223
425.531.4258 F 360.403.3061

masterworksconstruction@yahoo.com

Focus on the front yard

Curb appeal starts out front, obviously. The plants in the front yard are overgrown ("mature") and clumps of juniper are not current, but overall, the existing yard is not bad.

Existing front yard (with garage extension shown)

As we consider floor plan changes that eliminate FDC (Front Door Confusion), and apartments with separate entrances, the front yard seems like a worthy subject of study.

I like to identify plants, but it's hard. The surveyor calls out a Cedar (far left), a Fir (with the crooked trunk that impacts the driveway), and a smaller Fir on the upper right. There are two ornamental trees--I'm not sure if they're Japanese Maples. The juniper hedge by the driveway and the clump in the middle of the yard might be Tam Juniper. The bushes with Schefflera-like leaves are almost certainly Azaleas (either Rhododendron occidentale or Rhododendron macrophyllum). We have two good-sized ferns that I'm guessing are Polystichum munitum--Sword Fern.

 

A design solution begins with the cars. There's a 15' w x 14' d area to the west of the driveway. That really isn't enough for a parking space, but it might be good for a Y-turn area. The crooked trunk tree almost makes it hard to get a second car into the garage on the west. I'm thinking that we might want to widen the driveway on the east--take out the little rockery and the juniper hedge. And we want to pave or gravel a parking spot along 118th uphill from the driveway.

The homeowners will pull into their 2-car garage and enter the house that way. They will back out, and might like being able to turn around (Y-turn). When service people visit, they need a place to park that hopefully doesn't block the driveway. From where they park, they need to identify and reach the front door. Peggy and I agree that if there is any kind of a door closer to them, or more visible, they will try to make it the front door--knocking, leaving packages, general FDC.

The renters will park in their space outside the garage (which may be the same as the service people) and they will need a walk to their entrance. This is either around the garage to the west or toward the living room on the east.

Update 2/28/15: 12' x 12' area west of driveway

Hate those damned brass tacks

“All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what I called ‘guessing what was at the other side of the hill.'” — Duke of Wellington

So, how much will Trees House cost to create? And another question: Is it better to venture one best guess, or to sum up a list of smaller guesses? I suspect the latter: that the smaller and less complicated a project is, the more accurate the cost estimate will be, making the overall number a simple matter of addition.

The result of this budget exercise is a basic "houselift"--that is, improving the kitchen and baths, finishes (flooring and paint) and the roof of the existing house--ranges from $57,830 to $88,425. Options I'm pretty sure I want to add include:

• Extend the garage ($17,000 to $19,500)
• Trees Room ($40,320 to $56,000)

And a bunch of mix-and-match options that bring the total up to $171,230 to $232,925.

Using the mean halfway between low and high estimates, for convenience, we have Houselift + Garage + Trees Room = $139,538. Which of these additional projects would you spring for?

• Upgrade roof to metal $10,000
• Hydronic heating, gas boiler $11,500
• Wolf and Sub-Zero appliances $10,000
• Extend kitchen north $11,740
• Extend to the west $13,500
• Finish basement as wine cellar $2,750
• Enclose front porch $1,250
• Sun tunnels, skylights $1,800

Talking about real numbers is depressing, except that it means real improvements are that much closer to reality.

Let's Probe Deeper...Deeper...

Call me impatient, but I want to know what we'll find when we tear into this house, so I cut a few exploratory holes. I was curious how easily the "popcorn" finish would come off the Living and Dining Room ceilings, so I scraped it off the beam, revealing the marks from the room dividers that they removed for "open concept" reasons.

First, I opened the back of the coffee maker. It really is connected to water (with a 1/4" ice maker line).

Next, I explored the exterior wall. The 2x4s are about 1-1/2" x 3-1/2", so we won't have to furr out. And, there is insulation: About an 1-1/2" batt faced with roofing felt.

The clean-shaven beam without its popcorn finish.

The beam inside the drywall is bizarre (see below)

Lastly, I pried off the hardboard (likely "Marlite") paneling next to the laundry door (right)

The beam between the Living and Dining Rooms is an odd case. I knew it was structural, because you can see the joists lap on it in the attic. On the Living side, we see (2) 2x8s with a 1/2" spacer doing the heavy lifting, as they say. They have a double 2x4 plate above, making the wood 10-1/4" tall. An engineered beam strapped to the plate could raise the opening height, or we could mount it flush in the attic.

Either way, the naked beam only needs to be 3-1/2" thick. It appears that someone furred out the beam on the Dining side to make the beam that much thicker and uglier. The original drywall from the Dining side of the dbl 2x8 beam is still there--buried mid-beam. The furring doesn't engage with the north wall--the drywall runs up behind the furring.

Finally, I'm not certain I hate the popcorn ceiling after all. It came off the beam very easily, suggesting that it's an acoustical coating applied in the last year or so. It's actually a pretty decent installation, and it hides a lot of 68-year-old drywall problems, I'll bet. If we pulled the old drywall down, installed new drywall and gave it a skip-trowel finish to hide imperfections caused by the old ceiling joists, wouldn't it seem a lot like the acoustic stuff we've got?

Heating Systems

I talked with Johnathan Jones last night about heating systems. The current system is an oil-fired furnace (Armstrong Air Basement Lowboy 83% efficiency unit 57,000-72,000 BTU nominal output) from Sept. 2003. An un-insulated duct network in the basement serves 10 registers at floor level.

Existing heating ductwork

A few things stand out in this analysis. First, we are heating the attached greenhouse! A round dryer vent has been crudely tacked on to the system to push hot air outside. Second, the vent under the window in BR2 doesn't appear to be connected to anything. The third thing is unimportant comparatively--the return air duct seems to run much longer than it needs to. (It could come up in the wall behind the thermostat, for example.) Finally, notice that the supply duct runs under the unheated porch; all the ducts would benefit from sealing and insulation.

We're taking out the oil tank, so we need a new heat source. We could simply swap the oil furnace for a high-efficiency gas furnace and continue to use these ducts. In this case, we would want to improve the duct network.

The alternative is to remove or abandon the ductwork and install a different system, including:

• Hydronic (circulating water under the floor)
• Mini-split heat pumps
• Electric baseboard
• Electric heaters (like BR3)
• Some kind of hydronic baseboard

Update 2/11/15: I spoke to Zach at Northwest Mechanical. I think hydronic is the way to go. They have German made, computer controlled, wall-mounted boilers that can handle hot water for the house as well as heating. You run flexible Pex tubing where you want heat--floors, walls, or through slick European radiators. The radiators look like easily-cleaned plastic boards held off the wall, but they have towel-warmers that heat the bathroom, and they can even do floor to ceiling louvered room dividers.

Zach showed me a product called Joist Trak that can be installed under the existing sub-floor, between the joists in the basement. It's an aluminum track that holds the tubing and radiates the heat through the floor. Obviously, if I'm circulating heat in tubing, I can easily run it to radiators in BR3 and Ba3. I looked inside one of the existing ducts, and it's pretty disgusting. The black dust I was seeing in the MBa toilet was coming from the exhaust fan--proved by keeping the lid closed and, voila, no dust. I don't want to circulate air through ancient, uninsulated ducts any more.

We could also remove the existing hardwood (and tile and carpet), install tubing on substrate (e.g. Quik Trak, from the Joist Trak people), and then pour something like Gyp-Crete and get a smooth, continuous finished floor. I'm a little concerned about a flexing floor causing the concrete to crack, possibly causing a leak in the tubing--it's like saying you're worried that the plane might crash. It's not supposed to, there's a lot working to keep it from doing that, but... The other reason I don't want to do this is that the ceiling is already at 7' 9"--I don't have 2" to spare.

BR3 is a different situation, however. I could put tubes on the concrete, then add Gyp-Crete. This is another benefit of a hydronic system--it can be designed to run heat under the floor, over the floor, through a radiator, whatever--mix and match.

Zach Burgett
Northwest Mechanical
3204 NE 145th St (at Lake City Way)
Shoreline, WA 98155
zach@nwmechanical.com
206.267.HEAT  -- mobile: 206.255.5699

In-wall investigation

I made a hole in a wall tonight to learn how hard it will be to remove the built-in coffee maker. It seems to be an older-model Brew Express BE-104C. I expected to find some kind of manufacturer's branding inside, but I didn't--I got this info online. (Update: I separated the unit from the gray "rough-in box" and there's the branding, model number, and serial number.) It also appears that the unit in the kitchen is broken, because nothing happens when you press the power switch on top.

Backside of a built-in coffee maker. Notice the 1/4" copper water tubing.

Next hole will be in the living room behind the brick veneer to learn more about the sheathing and whether there is any insulation. Or maybe under the window in the dining room. Or the kitchen.

Notice the unsecured white wire in the center? That's illegal, by the way (assuming it's not just abandoned). The copper tubing runs under the kitchen counter, behind/through the cabinet and dishwasher. I'm thinking the Brew Express was a do-it-to-yourself job.

Update: More pictures: