Moving Forward

The lists of chores to do before the Delaney House gets moved has gotten significantly shorter.

We've been moving plants and cutting down trees in the back yard, and the place where the house will go is almost completely cleared. We've removed the back stairs and filled in the floor. Most of the work we wanted to get done before the move is now done.

So do we have permits? Of course not, but there is a chance we'll actually get the Delaney House permit on Monday. This assumes that the City of Berkeley doesn't decide to put us through yet another series of hoops, but we think we've satisfied what they want to date. This includes a water tank in the back yard, new sewer laterals, a drainage plan and a traffic plan. Not a traffic plan for when the houses are being moved - a traffic plan for when we have people working on the house.

I have to admit, that last one stumped me: what does a traffic plan look like? Mostly, we are doing the work, but when the foundations are going in, there will be other workers on 62nd Street doing the work. So I guess the traffic plan is "They will turn onto 62nd Street from King Street, proceed 4 houses, and park" We do not have residential permit parking on 62nd Street, so no one has to move their car every two hours, and there is plenty of parking.

We're still fighting the good fight, trying to get the City of Berkeley's bureaucracy to move in our direction before they manage to bankrupt us. We are still trying to figure out how we appeal the demolition permit they required us to get, even though the project doesn't meet the requirements of a demolition permit.

Tomorrow, we're letting anyone come who wants to take some of the redwood mulch that is still piled in front of the house where the two redwood trees were. We've been moving a lot of it ourselves (Elliott has done most of the hauling) and there is still a lot left, so we've ben letting neighbors and friends take what they want. Now we've put an ad on Craigslist to see if we can just give it away, and so far, several people are planning on coming.

So we hope to have Phil Joy back on site soon, hauling our houses around. Maybe soon we'll have both houses on 62nd Street. Stay tuned.