The Permits

Unfortunately, getting the permits turned out to be a major production. The garage was too close to the property line to meet city codes, but narrowing it enough to avoid the 5 ft setback would make it only 9' wide, too narrow to be practical as a garage. The only way to avoid this was to put it at the back of the property (where the carport is now) or getting a plan adjustment (variance). Because I wanted the garage for many other reasons than simple vehicle storage, I opted to go for the adjustment, which turned out to be relatively expensive and time consuming, but not difficult. No neighbors were seriously impacted since that part of my property is bordered by a business parking lot, and no one objected.

Then it turned out that the new addition was large enough and complicated enough that it required earthquake engineering beyond what was in the original plans. The change eventually included replacing the cement basement/garage wall with a fire retardant stud wall, which made it possible to put a door between the garage and basement. To balance the added cost, a planned door and a set of stairs from the garage into the back yard were removed.

As a final surprise, it turned out that I had an illegal sewer hook-up (not illegal when it went in, but illegal now) because the line was shared with a neighbor. To get the addition approved I would need to disconnect from the shared line and reconnect directly to the city sewer at the street, or get a dispensation. The dispensation would have cheaper, but once I knew about it the shared sewer line would need to be fully disclosed when the house is sold, and it might come up again with any future construction, or if anything ever went wrong with the shared portion of the line. Finally, a camera inspection of my existing sewer line showed that it was sound under the house. But just past the outside wall there was a break and 2/3 of the line was blocked by a root of some kind. Nothing could be determined about the condition of the line past that point. This damage would need to be fixed if the sewer wasn't relaid and would actually cost a fair amount in and of itself. So I decided to have the sewer relaid.

All of these wrinkles added five months to the permit process and quite a bit of cost to the overall project. Some of the costs were offset by reductions and adjustments elsewhere, but not all. Remodeling is expensive! I've comforted myself with sophistry and the fact that some of this stuff had to be done anyway, while other things will have unplanned side benefits.

Eventually the permits were obtained and the actual construction could begin. The biggest difficulty in this whole process was that the problems were handled in a linear fashion. The process would have gone much faster if all issues could have been dealt with concurrently. And what I learned was that I should have been more involved in getting the right information to the right people efficiently.

Deconstruction - The Teardown