Pilings, Permitting & Power Cookies

Faith can move mountains but to stabilize a foundation on the layers of muck and sand in a Florida swamp, you need 50 underground concrete pilings, a few miles of rebar and a very persistent project manager. That's what we've come to learn during the last few weeks after our soil testing came back with results that showed we could have some settling issues if we did not make provisions to fortify our stem-wall foundation.

Our project manager plowed through the process with the engineer, who devised a system that would tie the plumbing to the rebar under the slab and would also include those aforementioned concrete pilings that would be driven 25 feet to good soil.  But the engineer didn't devise this system overnight. After an appropriate amount of time, still more days of waiting and several phone calls, I decided to try a different approach. I dropped off a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies at the engineer's office. Within minutes, our project manager received an e-mail that said, "Very nice. I'm dropping everything to work on this project." He mentioned the word "bribe," but I prefer to call it "encouragement."

On 5 o'clock on Friday before President's Day weekend, the engineer called to say the packet was printing. He was done. Shane was ready to make the drive to the county seat in St. Augustine to apply for the permit -- except he needed one thing: the contractor's signature. Did we mention our contractor is in Kuwait? Shane is working through that, and we hope, we hope we can go to permitting this week.

In the meantime, we do have a permit to prepare the lot. One hundred loads of dirt were ordered to raise the level of the lot well above the 100-year flood line, and the dirt guys are either finished or are close to finishing this phase.

We are confident the project is moving forward, but, in our minds, we are already living in that house. The girls are planning their new rooms, and we are already imagining the possibilities that await us there.