Don't Fight City Hall!

Our search for a home in the Texas hills was lengthened by the requirement that a large outbuilding or place to build same existed on the property.  We settled on a small home in the community we always dreamed of inhabiting with a lot large enough for the additional building.
Prior to purchase, we visited the city planning and development office, reviewed homeowner association requirements and even visited with some of our potential neighbors already sporting similar facilities on their homestead.  We happily made our purchase and son came with his big toys to remove unwanted trees and dig out large boulders in order to level the majority of the back part of the property.  I had a mental plan, Ol' Abner had another!  Little did we know, the city had much more detailed requirements than first thought.  Our major stumbling block was the requirement for an engineered slab design!  Sounds simple enough, but barn builders, garage builders, shop builders do not work with an engineered slab.  We were finally told those are used primarily for the heavy duty, multi-level commercial construction!  A large part of our budgeted funds were depleted in an attempt to get plans and designs to suit the city powers.  Guitar Man got involved after about a year of frustration.  He brought in an engineer co-worker who designed the slab.  Guitar Man drew up the site plan set to scale per city requirements.  It finally began to take a visible shape at that point.  Ol' Abner decided to revisit the first builder we had attempted to hire, the one who refused to deal with city hall. With plans in hand, he encountered a willingness to deal. 

Day 2-Crushed Granite fill is in!

Day 1-Man and Dog checking progress