18 months to the day

You'd think it's a fairly simple process to buy a house, design a new house, tear down the house, and begin to build a new house. It is, really, if you allot 18 months and include the following people:

• a real estate agency 
• an architect
• a structural engineer
• a builder
• 25 neighbors
• the city zoning board
• a plumber
• a roofer
• an excavator
• a window contractor
• a framer
• a local loan officer
• an investment adviser
• an insurance agency
• a tree surgeon
• the postal service
• public utilities
• the electric company
• a young, able construction crew
• redemption distilleries

From here on out, you'll get a blow-by-blow account of the demolition and resurrection of the house.

Estimated time of completion: April 20, 2015.

Six more months, and counting down . . . . 

It's DeSollar, it's De Lovely

We are not architects.

We may have the ability to look past the obvious flaws in a house and imagine the possibilities, but the Lean-to as imaged needed to be rendered in physically sound terms. With math.  Lots of math, and lots of imagination. We are not good at math and we do not imagine whole structures well, but Sam DeSollar, architect and crusader for neighborhood rejuvenation, can do all that.

Here's one of Sam's designs from Houzz.com:

Here is Sam's rendering—after several options (many of them more cost efficient)—of the Lean-to, heretofore known as "the house." It shows the house from its new south-facing facade. It's pretty awesome.  That second story balcony? Off the master bedroom. Morning coffee mecca.

Begin the Beguine: the slow dance of a property search

When looking for a house, most people consider these important things:

• number of bedrooms
• age of the roof
• soundness of windows
• total square footage
• layout on each floor

Or these inane things HGTV has taught us to consider:

• wall color
• rug choices
• furniture arrangement
• bathroom fixtures
• flower boxes

Looking for a tear-down is a different matter. Enter Zak Szmansky, a local realtor and Most Patient Man on the Planet. 

With Zak, we started looking two years ago, in October 2012, competing with would-be landlords for property near campus (where we work) that fell outside various historical districts. Zak walked us through every conceivably workable structure.

Here are the questions this kind of house hunt entails:

• how far is it from campus?
• is the foundation solid and the basement dry(able)?
• how old are the furnace, AC, and water heater?  
• what's the 1st floor square footage?
• what's the set back from the neighbors' houses?
• how hard would it be to get a backhoe in here?

Simply put, we looked for location, location, location, and whether or not the foundation would hold up the Lean-to. For Zak, we were probably the weirdest clients ever. At some points, perhaps all three of us despaired of ever finding a suitable property.
 
Then one morning in March, we got this phone message from Zak with an MLS listing:
     "THIS is your house. Get it. Get it. Get it. Get it."

"THIS" was a ranch we'd walked by many times despite its being out of our price range. The 30% in price drop that morning, however, put it right in our zone.

Stable foundation. Lovely lot. Great neighborhood. And all the things that you don't want to see in a house for sale:

• a 50-year-old kitchen
• 1980s paint and wallpaper
• mismatched hardwood flooring
• inoperable bathrooms
• low ceilings
• dark paneling
• termite damage
• a basement reminiscent of "The Silence of the Lambs" (minus the corpse)

It was, truly, our house. No one would buy it with the intention of simply repainting, and no landlord would have thought the basement suitable for an income-generating habitat for undergraduates.

Here it is, its larval stage, the future site of the Lean-to:

The Lean-To

We started off, about 20 years ago, talking about the "Lean-to."

The "Lean-to" was our imagined house: a kitchen and mead hall worthy of Beowolf—able to accommodate friends and family in huge numbers for dinner—with just enough living space tacked on for the two of us to sleep in (that's the lean-to" part).

Something like this . . .

from http://imgarcade.com

 . . . but a bit more modern, and illuminated with electricity.

For a while, we lost track of that vision and aimed for a historic house to rejuvenate. Then, we looked for commercial property that would suffice. Neither tack worked.

But then we met an architect, married to a newly made friend, and the notion of building resurfaced. And the idea of the Lean-to took on a different life: build a modern structure on the lean-to principle in the middle of an established neighborhood. 

What does it take to build a suburban loft?

•  a good real estate agent
•  a derelict property
•  lots of drawings from a talented architect
•  a patient builder
•  the Zoning Board of appeals
•  agreeable neighbors
•  an iron will and a penchant for debt 
•  encouraging friends
•  enthusiasm for insanity

This is the story of building the Lean-to, of turning an uninspiring 1950s ranch-over-basement into our dream home.

Join the fun as we document the process!