<p>Thank you so much for the Horchow links. I have never looked at their lighting before and the prices are reasonable. I do love the mercury glass ones and they are reasonable. The large one is more reasonable than the beautiful small teardrop one… but one could be tempted!</p>
<p>PERMIT UPDATE</p>
<p>I was so proud of myself! I managed to get organized, get mounds of paper work and get my butt down to the City of San Diego permit building BEFORE 7am this morning!! I wanted to be first in line to pick up my goodies from the Plan Pickup desk before anyone else got there. Turns out this is an excellent time to start working the system, hardly anyone there and I got lots of questions answered (well, some).</p>
<p>First I was able to pick up:
IAS Combination Review - about to pull my hair out. Their comments are… please provide Grant Deeds and history that created the small parcel. please provide all building permits and building records that show Utility Room and Front Enclosed Porch. Uggh… Code Compliance guy has these and I submitted my originals to Plan Desk when I submitted the plans. I have no idea what has happened to all these. Because I had to turn in the originals, I now have to go back to the County and get new set of building records!</p>
<p>Planning Review - they are all worried about removing more than 50% of exterior walls or I will have to get a special Coastal Development Permit. It’s very obvious that we are removing or changing only about 10% of exterior walls, but they want a special plan sheet with all kinds of diagrams and calculations to prove to them that we are not messing with more than 50% of the house</p>
<p>Zoning Review - they are concerned about the alley and front setbacks and required me to go to City History department and try to get copies of Street Improvement Plans, etc. Poor lady spent over 1/2 hour going through historical microfiche to find some obscure old document that shows the sidewalk and street set backs. Hilarious part… Cost $2 for copy. They don’t take cash. Had to stand there while the ‘trainee’ learned how to process a credit card for a $2 payment. </p>
<p>But the good news from Zoning is that I will be allowed to have a bathroom in the Utility Room with shower if I sign a recorded Non Habitable Accessory Structure Agreement! Had never heard of such a thing. Turns out they will allow a toilet and a sink but they cannot allow a shower in the structure. Because it is a beach community they are trying to crack down on people renting out the sheds in the back of their properties. So I had a long discussion with my real estate agent and she doesn’t think it’s a deal breaker at all. This document follows the property and buyers throughout history will be warned that no one can sleep in the Accessory Structure 
But, we were not trying to upgrade the house to a 3 bedroom / 2 bath, we were just desperate to call it a 2 bedroom/ 2 bath. I will get that bathroom legally on the property!</p>
<p>So, at this point I am waiting on pins and needles for Structural to determine if main house can be connected to back structure with the little laundry addition (and any other stuff they come up with)</p>
<p>Sending lots of good vibes!</p>
<p>Fingers crossed!!! :)>- </p>
<p>cb, that’s fantastic news that you can keep the full bathroom in the shed!!! </p>
<p>I think you’re going to wind up with just about everything you want. Unfortunately, you’ve also wound up with a neighbor who’s a royal PITA – the one who “turned you in.” I hope karma kicks his butt. </p>
<p>Does this mean you can go back to working on the bathroom in the shed??</p>
<p>Great news on the bathroom! Hope the good news keeps rolling in!</p>
<p>Technically we are not allowed to ‘work’ on anything because we have a Code Violation. However, I can definitely keep moving on anything exterior such as painting and landscaping, which we have been doing - at the tune of a ton of money. </p>
<p>Nuclear fence is complete and the guys spent 1 1/2 days moving dirt around so that there is a ‘berm’ on the left of the dirt alley that directs water runoff towards the middle of the alley for drainage. We cleared all the vines and brush away from the top barricade and found the black drain box that the other neighbor installed a couple of years ago. We’ve cleared everything and placed concrete bags, gravel bags and sand bags found in the debris as a barricade up in alley directing water towards the middle of the barricade and the white pipe entry. They did a really good job and I hope it will work. It is the best we can do after thousands of dollars at this point. I don’t think one of my competitors would have even bothered to work that hard to find a solution to the problem.</p>
<p>To get ready for the day that permit approvals finally come we are working on everything that leads towards the first two inspections. Our first inspection will be ‘foundation’. However, we really only have three things that they will inspect at that time:</p>
<p>Repaired Foundation Piers under house
Small little new foundation stem walls for laundry room additions
Repaired concrete stem walls on Utility Room - these are the areas that will probably cause an issue because they like to see the ‘forms’ and tie bars before concrete is poured.</p>
<p>After that is the big triple inspection - framing, electrical and plumbing. Since we already have a code violation I’ve decided to just keep plugging away at the plumbing for the original main bathroom. We are going to put in the new water lines and sewer lines over there to try to get ahead of the game. There are no issues with the bathroom remodel plans so we can start building to those plans.</p>
<p>Sounds pretty good, considering. How long until the first inspection?</p>
<p>Cb, RueLaLa is running a lighting boutique today. Some really nice stuff, reasonably priced. One caveat is that it is not returnable. </p>
<p>Still have a long way before I can call for the first inspection.</p>
<p>Historical Review pending. My worst nightmare would be to be designated Historical.</p>
<p>Structural Review still pending</p>
<p>Then I have to consolidate all corrections and resubmit.
I have to make an appointment with each reviewer separately.
They can ask for more corrections
Repeat until they “issue” with a Permit Nbr</p>
<p>I’m looking forward to the face on your neighbor, who “turned you in,” when you finally sell for $949K. </p>
<p>I almost wasted my day driving downtown yesterday, then realized it was a holiday.</p>
<p>Today I am going to County building to get more sets of the original building records, which are only available from the County Property Tax Assessor, earliest visit to property that they have recorded is 1960. But those are the ‘records’ I have to get for the Zoning Review guy.</p>
<p>Then upstairs at the County building to get the Non Habitable Accessory Structure document notarized for future recording by the City.</p>
<p>Then off to the City to turn these in to the Zoning review guy so that he can continue his review - hopefully I prove once again that the Utility Room is permitted in it’s location and the Enclosed Covered Porch was permitted in the original building.</p>
<p>Might just pop in at the desk of Structural review guy just in case he has any ‘questions’ !!</p>
<p>Boy, this is just dragging on. </p>
<p>Took all kinds of documents into Zoning reviewer today. I got very lucky that the gentlemen was sitting at Public Desk today and I was able to talk to him. He said he didn’t want the docs until I returned final corrected plans. But he did mention that IF I closed the wall between new addition and Utility Room that it would gaurantee the Utility Room is considered “Non Habitable”. </p>
<p>Why he couldn’t they just say that in their corrections? Hes not supposed to tell homeowners what to do. They can only reject the plans. I guess there’s a whole industry of Architects and Designers that I am supposed to be paying. My Designer who is drawing plans is not helping much. When I requested him to close up wall he did mention that if I made the new exterior door to Utility Room with glass I have to redo /repay for new Title 24 calculations. OK, plain boring door.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Structural Review is at the “supervisor”, might be ready by Friday.</p>
<p>This reminds me of getting one’s products approved by Whole Foods. They demanded ingredient lists, and would reject specific truffles and accept others without specifying the ingredients they didn’t like. Which was incredibly annoying, since in many cases there were other options available. They rejected my Black Forest truffles because they contained Kirsch. I pointed out that I could choose to use only Trimbach, and they carried Trimbach wine. They finally approved the flavor. </p>
<p>It’s kind of like a guessing game, isn’t it.</p>
<p>Wow Consolation, that sounds fascinating!!! You make truffle products in your home and sell them to Whole Foods? </p>
<p>(I know I am thinking that is another “what I do with my days” thread I might read!)</p>
<p>I have just received a four page list of ‘issues’ from Structural Review. I don’t even know where to begin. The main problem is they wrote the issues thinking I was requesting the Utility Room to be converted to a legal bedroom with bath. That is nowhere on the plans!!! I don’t know where he got that idea. But for some reason he has dozens of corrections to be made to make it a legal bedroom - which are all doable if I want to do that. Now I have Planning review saying it cannot be a bedroom and I have to record a legal document and Structural Review telling me what I can do to make it a bedroom. For heavens sake… which one is it??</p>
<p>Even worse, he has pages of requirements that I have to submit an application to the FAA because I am flight path of San Diego Airport. I’m not raising the roof of this house one inch, there is just no way this house impedes any flight path. Airport is 4 miles away, there is a large hill behind this house between the runway and property. The plane would have to run into the hill first before it runs into my little house which is single story surrounded by two story homes. This is verging on the ridiculous!!!</p>
<p>Wow. The FAA?!! That’s the craziest thing I have heard this week. Hang in there, cb!</p>
<p>Yes, there is some giant application that gets sent into a black hole at FAA headquarters in Texas and it would take 4 weeks to get approval. There is just no way this is a legal requirement, I’m going to have to research how to get out of doing that - maybe some kind of official looking something on the plans confirming height of house.</p>
<p>Per my last 30 minutes of research, this only affects structures over 200 ft within 20,000 feet of a runway. Have no idea why this guy is insisting on this requirement, I don’t meet any of those guidelines.</p>