A non-traditional house

Looking at the pics below you will notice that this lot is very narrow....it's worse than it looks..

Our neighborhood has 50 foot wide lots, unfortunately our empty lot is only 40 feet wide. When highway 50 was built in the late 1960's they moved the house that used to be on this lot and the state bought the 10 feet closest to the freeway for the right-of-way.

Oh, and then there is the issue of a 20 foot utility easement on the side of the lot closest to the freeway...running the entire length of the lot are gas, water, and sewer lines for our local utilities.

And don't forget the side yard set-back on the south side of the lot, (5 feet). We spent several months going through the zoning variance process to get a 2 foot reduction in the side yard set-back....

For those of you without a calculator, that means we have a 17 foot wide buildable space.

Our house will have exterior dimension of 17 feet wide by 71 feet long and 3 stories high. In essense, a triple-high, single-wide!

Our official name for the house is `Casa de autostrada' as it will sit up above the freeway and have stunning views of rush hour....

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Fridge is in

The kitchen cabinet bases are all installed, the only appliance we have placed is the fridge. The others will go in over the next week or so....you can see the Eucalyptus veneer on our cabinets....yes, they are from IKEA.....it has been a lot of work for Jeff to put them together, but they were significantly less expensive than the other choices we looked at.

3rd Floor bathroom progress

One of the cool things about the house is that when taking a shower in the 3rd floor bathroom, ones head will be in the skylight dome....Do they issue tickets for flashing a helicopter? You can also see that the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) guys started last week. They started to pull duct work up to the air exchanger and fan on the 3rd floor.... All 4 of the toilets in the house are wall mounted Geberit low flow toilets with dual flush mode. You can see the `carrier' for the toilet in the middle of this pic. The tank for the toilet is hidden in the wall cavity. We bought almost all of our plumbing fixtures online. The sinks and toilets were purchased from Ira Wood & Sons in Kentucky. They have an excellent website for comparing products: http://store.yahoo.com/irawoodinc/tewamotosy.html

Disaster averted....One step closer

Yesterday the City Utilities Dept. sent out the guy that is Mr. Sewer for all of East Sac....He had an old map of our part of town that showed the water and sewer lines running diagonally across our lot!!! After one quick look at the manhole in the front of the lot and the manhole in the alley, it was easy to see that the sewer line ran parallel and well within the 20 foot easement....excellent, but what about water? Today the Utilities Department sent out the guy that is Mr. Water for all of East Sac...he had one of those retro 1970's-esq Fu Man Chu mustaches, not that I noticed.... Anyway, he brought all sorts of fancy pipe detection equipment and in no time at all he found the water pipe....It was also well within the easement and does not run under house site....phew... Pat at the City Utilities Department just called, she had that perky and cheerful voice that most people get when they can tell you that a problem has been averted, she used that voice when she told me ...

Mike and Jeff's New House

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