I picked up our building permit from the City of Monte Sereno today at 10:15 am! After paying the school fees yesterday and engaging Charlie Touchatt to excavate the basement, having the building permit in hand was sweet!

I called Bill Brown and everyone else involved so we could start mobilizing to start the excavation on Monday morning.

At the same time, I was looking at the materials that were delivered yesterday to build the temporary deck to cover the swimming pool. I wasn’t particularly pleased with the quality of the materials as the tongue and groove plywood was badly warped. I suspect that this will make the installation more difficult and time-consuming, but it was too late to replace the materials.

Warped Plywood for Pool Deck

It is a beautiful blue-sky California fall day and I’m looking forward to Paul’s arrival so we can get the deck built to cover the swimming pool.

Pool Cover Site

Charlie delivered the excavator to the project site at 4:30 pm so we can ‘break ground’ on Monday morning.

Yeah!

Oh, I almost forgot. I engaged Jose’s tree service to remove the 75 ft tall Canary Island Pine tree on Saturday. It is time for everyone to pay their last respects to the tree. I have to confess that I was saddened by the upcoming event.

Last respects to Canary Island Pine

Yesterday, while I was attending Ernst & Young’s 2008 Financial Reporting Development workshop in Mountain View (hey, I need those CPE credits!), Michael and his team completed backfilling the pool and compacting the soil.

Today, I was on site for our weekly construction progress meeting at 9:00 am and was impressed with the work completed yesterday.

After the meeting, I went to the City of Monte Sereno and learned that my permit was not ready to be issued. Daylight is burning …

Charlie Touchatt, the excavator and hauling sub-contractor, visited the site in the afternoon and we went to a potential site that needs soil in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Charlie, who is a native of San Mateo and has been involved with the development of the peninsula over the past 50 years, shared some interesting stories with me as we drove back to 17509.

SpaGood Compaction on Backfill

Deep End of Pool Looks GoodSteps Into Pool

Elevations were Taken from the Monument

Steps Out of Deep End

Compaction Behind Free-Standing Wall

Ready for the Pool Cover Now!

After completing the gunite on Saturday, Michael’s team arrived on Monday to strip the forms and prepare the site to backfill. Given the existing pool left a void where a free-standing pool wall had to be built, it requires backfilling and compaction.

Ready for backfilling (looking east).