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)

Soothing the Bump in the Road

Shea checks out the tree's, while dad
does some off-roading

Last we talked, the city mentioned the treehouse was too small and we were most likely going to run into city problems.  After talking with the city, we had 2 options

1. Go the Major Variance Route (Pricey and still a big chance it wouldn't go through)
2. Go Directly for the Buiding Permit with 2 buidings on the property

I called the city contact and did a pre-chat and told him we were thinking of possibly seperating the minimum square footage in 2 different structures.  (One above the garage and the other being the treehouse)  I was trying to get a feeler from him, and if this would pose an issue on the project.  He let me know that if we proposed that, we would essentially be proposing for a duplex (because there are 2 seperate structures on 1 lot....) 

I then asked the golden question: What if we have stairs attatching the 2 structures?  It sounds like this idea may be easier to obtain a buidling permit for and so we are on this path.

What that means for the next step:  Get with the architect and design a seperate structure close to the main structure and have it connected with stairs.  We have been playing with the design and once we get it down I will post it ;)

Bump in the Road

Architect Designs are good, and we are ready to move forward.... we send our design to the city and we hit the next bump.

Needless to say, this project has some uniquness in many aspects.  When we designed the treehouse, our initial way of thinking was to design according to the guidelines of a SFR (Single Fmaily Residence, a standard home)  In our first meeting with the city (trying to convince the city to let us tie into the tree) the city agreed to let us tie into the tree if we followed the guidelines of an SFR.  The main reason we would need to follow the guidelines of an SFR was because this would be the only property on the lot.  If there had been another property on the lot, the treehosue would be secondary and we would not need to follow SFR guidelines.  When we talked to our architect, he began to mention that building a treehouse, the size of a SFR would be far to big for the treehouse to be mainly supported by the tree.  The minimum size of an SFR is 725sqft...  He advised that we desing the treehouse and later go through the variance process. 

When the treehosue design was emailed to our city contact, the bump arrised.... ugghh.  We knew the bumps were on their way, so here we go.  Nothing about the current treehouse design follows SFR guidelines.  Our architect, (who knows treehouses ;) is being a big help when helping communicate with the city.  We have been talking to multiple people within the city and once we get some good info we will be making our next move.  Whether that requires to change the designs, add on, or go through the variance process.  More to come...

3D Walkthrough of Our Treehouse

We are loving the design process of the treehouse and although it's constatnly changing, we have a 3D walkthrough of the design thus far ;)  Lots of fun balconies, which we are loving.  Our architect has some great indoor/outdoor designs.  (He has created the windows on the first floor to open up to the balcony, creating a shared living space with nature)  Not included in the video is the bedroom and bathroom on the first floor.  This video is also not accurate to the material we will be using for the structure.  Have fun checking it out!

Pretty Close to the "Final" Set of Blueprints

We've had so much fun working back and forth with Dave, our architect.  He truly is an artist who not only listened to our vision, but also was able to create it better than we could have thought it up ;)  He has a passion for creating treehouses and unique projects of these sorts; I have only good things to say about him. 

Below is an exterior picture of the treehouse to take a look at.  I have also attached a link of the full blueprints.  Soon, we should be receiving a 3D walk through of the treehouse, and I'll make sure to post on the blog for you treehouse fanatics ;)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6AA0hs6PYac0YteVNOUkd1WTg/edit?usp=sharing