Preliminary Meeting and Red Tape to Cut Through

After a few months of dialing in the design/architecture for the treehouse, there was still one big question:  We have an exterior staircase going from the main structure to the "hang out" structure; Will this pass as a minimum of 735 sqft that is required?  We were getting to a point in our design in which we were ready to send to the engineer, and I didn't want to be sending the engineer a design that may have to completely be re-done if the city didn't give the OK.... 

Jams on the road are a key component to any important meeting...

I set up a preliminary meeting with a few city contacts - Building and Safety Land Use and the architect was going to be on the phone through the meeting.  With any important meeting, I make sure all my ducks are in a row; the night before I was gathering any information that would help my case and make it easier for the city contacts to see the vision.   A key component with any important meeting - Throwing jams on my car stereo at a good volume to pump myself up...After 1.5 hrs of being well pumped, I walked into that city structure ready to dominate (yet nervous the city may shoot down the plans completely.....)

San Bernardino Land Use Services Department

I walked in to the meeting and more and more people started coming in; apparently there was a lot of interest in this project and I took that as a good thing ;)  By the end of the meeting, there was a good 8 of us in the room discussing the project and it felt good to have all those city contacts at my fingertips with any questions.  In the room we had the following city contacts:

Supervising Planner
Building and Safety Supervisor
Land Development Engineer
Structural Engineer
Building Official
Fire Prevention Officer
Architect

And may I also add, in the building department you don't see too many females, so I used that to my advantage and worked my charm ;)  Needless to say, the meeting went well and we were given the "preliminary official" OK that the architectural design is a go!

Treehouse Inspiration Boards

Ideas, Ideas.....  Back to the boards for inspiration pieces for the different rooms as well as material (exterior, flooring, cabinets, etc)  I will begin to do research on the materials we want to use.  The plans are to start building after the snow is gone...  In the meantime I am finalizing details on the design, sending the design to the engineer and then will be submitting the proposal to the city and obtaining permits

Meeting with Contractor

Shea's pretty into the outdoors:)

After getting a better feel for the design, I needed to make sure we were still in budget for the contractor work.  Originally the structure was going to be a small structure in the tree, with a roof deck, but after talking with the city, they let us know that the structure needed to be a minimum of 725 sqft.  This shifted things around a bit.  A few posts ago, you saw the updated design which shows a structure connected by a staircase to the main structure.  This "extra" structure, adds an extra 280 sqft that we had not accounted for....

I met with the contractor to get a feel for what sort of price range we were looking at and unfortunately it was a bit more than we were hoping for...

Back to the budget to see where we can move things around...  after moving our expectations, we are paying more than we thought we would on construction, but still in the budget (I doubt we'll be "in" the budget much longer....hehe)