...And We're Back: Part I

As the old song goes, “After all my hard travelin’…things is ‘bout comin’ my way.”

We got our damn permit back.

The story of the last six weeks could probably be an entirely separate blog in and of itself, but I will do my best to tell the story, full of pomp, circumstance, embellishment, and artistic license. On February 1^st, I came out to the house to find a “STOP WORK” order on the house. I was not that worried at the time, as I figured it was that someone had called to ask about why this house was getting a dormer, or just called in to exercise their self-importance. On the stop work order was the number of the inspector’s office, which I immediately called. The inspector was very cordial and told me,

I: “Yeah, you just went beyond the scope of what your permit said.”

Me: “So, can I just come down there and expand the permit?”

I: “Of course, just come on down to city hall and we’ll set you straight.”

I thought, well, I’ll probably have to pay a fee for this, but no big deal. I looked more closely at the permit and the HDLC certificate, and in the permit, it did not spell out the dormer addition that we were currently engaged in putting up. I figured that the person who wrote up the original permit just neglected to put in the dormer part, so although I was a little suspicious, I was not too frustrated, as the people down at the permit office have to deal with a lot of crap. Maybe they just forgot to put it in there.

I went down to city hall and had to wait in line again, taking about an hour to actually see the inspector who wrote up the stop work order. The inspector told me what it was I needed to do, and took me from the inspectors’ room to the zoning/permit issuance room. I have to say, I don’t know how permitting is in other jurisdictions, but the entire experience of the office of Safety and Permits is akin to something I experienced while traveling abroad. There is very little semblance of order and procedure, you walk in and tell them what you want to do or who you need to see, and depending on any number of factors, you’ll be told probably 5 different things. Then someone will invariably take your hand and try to lead you through it. It was almost like I was back in those bus, train, and taxi cab stations in Europe and the Middle East, trepidatiously trusting a person I just met to tell me what I needed to do.

I plopped down in front of Ms. Crux (not her real name), and she started typing on her computer, asking me questions, but never looking away from her screen. Finally, she picked up my permit and said, “You didn’t submit drawings.”

Me: “Well, I had drawings, why didn’t someone ask for them?”

Crux: “I don’t know. But you need to submit drawings.”

I thought I could get the drawings we had to them, but then she continued talking, detailing the amount of detail we needed to get in order to satisfy the office of Safety and Permits.

Crux: “Your camelback needs to have drawings in high detail, because it’s new construction.”

Me: “It’s not a camelback, it’s a dormer.”

Crux: “The inspector says it’s a camelback.”

Me: “Okay. So what do you need?”

Does anyone remember Arlo Guthrie’s song Alice’s Restaurant? There’s a point in this song where an army recruitment officer starts talking about the requirements for a certain piece of paperwork at breakneck speed. Guthrie simply trails off and tells the audience “45 minutes…he talked like that and no one understood a word he was sayin’.” She explained to me that I needed to submit new drawings, stamped by a licensed architect or engineer, detailing the plans in high detail. Jack had drawn up great plans, but they were nowhere near the detail that the city needed. I was literally going to have to go back to the drawing board.

Arlo Guthrie was confused by that army recruiter. That’s how I felt. Well, at that point it wasn’t satirical, as in the song. It was pure insanity at that point. It was only 5-10 minutes, but the amount of work I had to go back and do was daunting. Suddenly, the entire project had stopped, and I realized that I had no idea when it could get back online. I thought building the house itself was going to be the hardest part. It was pleading for it and justifying it which was going to be monumental…thus far.

I walked out of the permit office thinking I had just stepped into a dark pit, where most projects go when they aren’t carefully planned and when something invariably goes wrong. I knew that with my luck, something like this was bound to happen, but I had just put it out of my mind until it actually happened. I had tried to plan ahead for this, but I had missed something.

So, what next?

Call your architect friends, that’s what.