Tuesday, April 2, 2013

DON'T PANIC
(in large, friendly letters)

Well, the Borough office must not have received any hate mail after my last post, or they wouldn't have told me that erecting our little school house doesn't require a building permit. Now I know that means I could tear it down and rebuild it hillbilly style, but I just don't have it in me, which is too bad because it's looking like that may be the only way we can get it done. The numbers that have been thrown around have been insane, even with us doing the finish work. Just the current cost of concrete is $150 a yard (we'd need 37 for just the foundation wall). To be honest, we had figured we could conjure up 10k to get this done (savings, tax returns and eating ramen noodles till winter) - this would have to cover the foundation, and labor to move and frame/roof the school house. Instead, rough guesstimate numbers have been between 15-20k. Ouch . . . The kicker is that, foundation aside, this isn't an overly difficult project, just one that requires lots of muscle and manpower.

This is made all the more sad because seeing the building on Saturday cemented our love for it. Even the current owners are wonderful, and had hoped to be able to use the building - however it's condition is such that it has to be torn down before it can get rebuilt (it leans, sags and probably sways in the breeze). That said, there's very little rot, and it still has an intact interior, which we weren't expecting, and the floor and ceiling joists are huge hand hewn timbers. The floor is nice pine that matches what's in our house, and the shutters and windows are beautiful, and mostly intact.





We have a neighbor who owns as excellent excavation and foundation company coming by this evening to talk things over with us. But if the news continues to be bad I doubt I'll post any further updates, it just hurts too badly to think of it getting used for firewood (yup, the other person interested in it). So maybe it is the time to panic after all . . .

2 comments:

  1. Do you have a place to store the pieces while you save the money? Burning it would be a tragedy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sadly, the consensus is that without a way of drying the wood out, storing it would just result in a soggy mess

      Delete

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