Getting An Address

As promised, this post is the first of many updating you on all of the things that happened before we broke ground on our home.

One of the most important steps was getting an address.  While this seems fairly trivial and simple, it actually involved several steps and held up our building process for weeks (another bonus to getting a street address, was that we were more than ready to retire our PO Box).  So when we were informed it was time to obtain an official "911" address for our home, Muffin and I thought, "Why not do it right now?" and "We have a free afternoon."  We were so naive.  The process is actually very bureaucratic and takes a great deal of time.

Muffin did a lovely job installing our mailbox
You can find it here and the easy install cedar post here

Here were our steps to getting an address:

1. Find out that we needed an address to continue (and by continue, I really mean begin) the building process.
2. Go to the County Addressing Office.  That's right.  The ADDRESSING OFFICE.  There is an entire office dedicated to assigning addresses.  Who knew that?  Certainly not me. 
3. Formally apply for an address.
4. Find out when turning in the application that it was incomplete because we didn't have a tax map number.
5. Head over to the Tax Map Office (just two doors down the maze of county offices) to obtain said tax map number.
6. Find out that we won't have a tax map number until 2015 because the land our house will be built on was surveyed in the same tax year.
7. Scratch our heads.
8. Ask for some assistance with this problem and realize that nobody knows a real answer (leave it to us to be a conundrum for the county offices).
9. Submit application with old tax map number, a note of explanation, and a prayer.
10. Wait.
11. Wait some more.
12. Muffin pesters Addressing Office.
13. Wait.
14. More pestering.
15. Get address and find out that the Addressing Office does not like pestering and will choose humorous numbers as subtle payback (and no, they aren't negotiable). 

The easiest part of the whole address/mailbox saga was actually getting permission to set up a mailbox from the Post Office.  Our sweet mail carrier Pat personally called me to welcome us to the neighborhood and to ask preferences on package delivery.  That, my friends, is why living in a small town is so wonderful!

-Katie

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