As mentioned in the previous post, I decided to apply for the permits I will need rather than involve a general contractor. In this post I will detail what I did and the experience.

On February 24th, I made a trip to the local permitting office. They explained that I needed to fill out two documents. The first one is an owner/builder affidavit where I acknowledge that as the “general contractor”, I agree that any sub-contractors I hire will be licensed and insured. It also spoke to a few other things like my responsibility to any employees I bring on, which will not apply in my case. The second document was the permit application. In it I was to explain the scope of the work along with the estimated costs. I filled that out as best I could, but provided separate documents to provide details. Here is the description of the work I provided:

Accompanying the description, I provided printouts of selected views of the 3D SketchUp model I created. Learning to use SketchUp took some time. Between that and the many trips to the house to gather the measurements needed to make the model accurate (accurate enough to be of value), it took several weeks to complete the model. I submitted the application on March 21st. Although it took a lot of time, I’m glad I made the effort. SketchUp is a very useful tool and one I will use in future when modeling anything I intend to build.

For the model to be truly useful to me, beyond providing pictures for permitting, it needed to be based on relatively accurate measurements. I know the measurements weren’t perfect, but accurate enough that I was able to really play with the rooms to understand what would fit and experiment with different ideas, all without spending a penny nor lifting a tool. It also made it much easier to create an accurate bill of materials before I go shopping. Here are some of the pics I submitted to the permitting office.

There were more images submitted, some with greater detail, but from what I have shown above, you get the idea.

I submitted these documents on March 21st and then waited. During that time, there was little I could do on the house without a permit, so moved back into the garage some of the things I had stored in the house while the garage floor was being done. I also identified and marked the wire in the attic above the garage that will be used for the new garage outlets. Of course, those were just a couple of small jobs, so I got a bit impatient and decided it was of minimal risk to do a little more demolition. So I pulled off the strapping exterior wall in the laundry room, the master bath, and master bedroom in preparation for framing them.

After hearing nothing after almost three weeks, I sent an email on April 5th inquiring about the status. The next day I was told the application was rejected because the application form I filled out had a page that was for a different city. That is, the form that they handed me and highlighted was, presumably, the wrong one. So, there are two issues with this. The first was that I filled in the documents they provided. Secondly, they never contacted me to let me know there was a problem. So I went to the permitting office the next day (April 7th) to address it. I spoke with the fellow to whom I handed my application (40+ pages) almost three weeks prior. He remembered the house, but could not, at first, find the documents. That was very disconcerting given that it cost me quite a bit to get so many color printouts. Eventually he found them (whew!) and discovered that the problem with the application was not as described to me in the email. It was simply that I did not provide an estimated cost for the electrical and plumbing work. I updated that then handed it back.

On April 18th, I got a response from the permitting office that I needed to provide an electrical plan and details about the slab cutting and subsequent re-filling. So I got onto Google to find out what an electrical plan was. The electrical plan is a 2D floor plan that identifies how the house is to be wired. So my first thought was that I would update my 3D SketchUp model to add that information. Although it can be done using a SketchUp extension, what was required to make that happen would be overkill. So I looked for another software solution and chose a product called EdrawMax. It required a $69 six month subscription, but was better tailored to the task, so I signed up.

So yet another software tool I had to learn, but it was pretty good and gave me what I wanted. I completed the electrical plan April 28th, so about a week’s work once the tool was chosen and installed. Here is what I submitted.

The above image just shows the electrical plan for the kitchen and bath rooms. That is all they requested. But I decided, since I was at it, to create a plan for the entire house, which would be useful for me. It’s a bit busy, but here is the full plan.

With this I am able to identify what devices each breaker covers, so I’ll be happy to have this on file.

As mentioned above, I was asked to submit a cross-section of what will be done when filling in the parts of the concrete slab I cut out. This is what I created.

Both the cross-section and electrical plan for the kitchen and baths were submitted on May 2nd.

I got a response on May 5th expressing concern about the access to the toilet in the master bath and asking for information on the French doors to the lanai. I discovered that I made a mistake when transferring the measurement from the 3D SketchUp model to the 2D floor plan, which made the entry to the toilet alcove seem narrower than it should be. A good catch on their part. So I corrected that. Note that what I show above is the corrected floor plan. In the original I had it about a foot too long. As for the French doors, I informed them that I was not looking to permit that, as it was done professionally last year and the installers took care of the permitting. I sent my response on May 8th.

On May 12th, I got an email informing me that the permit had been approved. Woohoo! On May 13th I picked up the permit and displayed it in the front window of the house.

While waiting for the permit, I decided I would look for someone to cut (re-cut) the slab. I have to open that up again and make changes so it passes inspection. In the original effort, no soil treatment was done, nor was any vapor barrier added. Also, the wires I ran to the island needed to be enclosed in a conduit and one of them needed to be a larger gauge (12/2 instead of 14/2). So these mistakes necessitated a redo. Not only that, but an inspection will be needed before the holes are filled in. The one thing I was not keen on redoing myself was cutting into the slab and having to break up and dispose of large chunks of concrete. So after picking up the permit I scheduled a crew to come in and do that next week. So it looks like I am finally back in business.