<p>Glad things are moving in the right direction, cb. Love the vanity, but you are going to have to think of a treat for your guys on the day that thing gets delivered:)</p>
<p>If you can view the plans (unfortunately they are really small) on the Flickr photo group, you will see that we opened up the end of the kitchen with a pocket door that goes into a new small laundry room. This laundry room is built between the original main house and the back Utility Room - it is considered a room addition about 37sqft. I had a 32" door from the laundry room into the back building. I was ‘attaching’ the main house to the Accessory Structure Utility Room. Attaching the main house to the accessory structure with doorways causes it to turn into ‘habitable’ space. They will not allow ‘habitable’ space inside the 5 ft setback. The accessory structure is built right onto the property line with back neighbor.</p>
<p>To make everyone happy, I will still be able to have the pocket door from kitchen into the small laundry room with storage. But I have to close up the wall between the little addition and the back accessory structure. I will open an exterior door to the courtyard. It is not ideal, this means someone has to walk through the courtyard to get to the 2nd bathroom, but it is the best that I can do.</p>
<p>The Zoning guy was very realistic and said there is nothing stopping homeowners from opening up the wall again as soon as final inspection is done, or turning the back room into sleeping quarters. They just have to do their job and approve the plans prohibiting the back building from sleeping quarters. And, I have to record the ‘Non Habitable’ Agreement against the property because I am requesting a shower in the non habitable space. This agreement follows the property forever and it just makes sure that I cannot advertise or sell the house with a habitable bedroom in the back. Even though we are going through all these hoops I still have to build a 1 hour rated fire wall on the back of the Utility Shed on the property line and do some crazy fire rated stuff in the ceiling. So, lots of money will be spent on the back wall of the Utility Room in order to get that 2nd bathroom permitted onto the property!!</p>
<p>I have not decided whether I will open up the door later after final inspection, but since the neighbors are so nosy I think I will just leave it alone and explain everything to new buyers.</p>
<p>Regarding the large vanity… it has to get angled into a little vestibule that is 36" by 36", then turn a sharp left corner and get through a 24" wide door (largest size door I could fit into the design) by 80" high. It is going to be crazy</p>
<p>Got it. Interesting. It should be super easy for the buyer to punch in a door from the laundry area after the sale closes. If I were buying the place, I would want to know the rough cost of adding the door and to have a contractor referral. You might consider providing that to the buyer.</p>
<p>The ‘header’ for the doorway will stay inside the wall. This makes it very easy to open up the wall, remove one or two studs and put in a 32" door and just put some casing around the drywall cuts.</p>
<p>PERMIT STATUS UPDATE</p>
<p>OK, getting very frustrated at this point. I went to a lot of trouble trying to find an expensive place that will print my new revisions onto paper. I found a Staples that can do blueprint copies on a Saturday. Going to drive these paper copies to the Structural Engineer’s office.</p>
<p>Per his instructions, I called to confirm when I was going to deliver these copies. I find out that he isn’t in the office today, I just drop them off in the hallway outside his door. Then I find out he might be too busy on Monday to start looking at the plans. He might be able to review the plans on Tuesday. Then I have to go pick up his handwritten notes or whatever and get them up to North County to the draftsman who has to make changes. Then those changes have to get printed again and go back to Engineer’s office to be ‘stamped’. He doesn’t work on Thursdays. </p>
<p>So, if he doesn’t finish his review and I don’t get corrected final paper copies back to him by Wednesday, this is going to bleed to Friday. I cannot even start trying to make appointments with the City reviewers until I have these plans in my hands. </p>
<p>It’s going to be sometime middle of Thanksgiving week before I can even get appointments to try to get a final review and approval of these plans. This is verging on the ridiculous!!! </p>
<p>cb, once this is all behind you and the dust has settled, is there anyone official and useful to whom you could complain? I’ve got to believe ( silly me --) that somewhere in the City is someone who cares that jumping through all these hoops is ridiculous.</p>
<p>I think that doing non-permitted work in the first place would probably render that complaint useless. (Even though it is precisely this sort of morass that results in people avoiding the permitting process…)</p>
<p>Well, I would still hope the City would want to hear from people who have been affected by their maze-like rules and regulations. </p>
<p>You need to make your elected officials aware of the bureaucracy involved. The city exists for the benefit of its residents. You have clearly documented your problems in this forum.</p>
<p>I have an architect friend who does side jobs like this. I suspect you needed someone like him who they know down at “city hall” and who knows all the players and who knows all the regs they care about. Even if it cost $1-2k it would have saved serious time. I know my friend is very proud of the fact that his first drafts always get approved w/o revisions. </p>
<p>TempeMom, I agree. I should have worked harder to find someone who is very familiar with City permit department, the required documents and what it would have taken to get the bathroom approved, especially when there is a code violation involved. </p>
<p>The guy I hired is not helping much at all and cost about $2,600 for the drafting services. I think I could have found a better champion for the same money.</p>
<p>For those who suggest coralbrook just reach out to the mayor – may I remind you that San Diego is the 8th largest city in the US? Larger than Washington, DC, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, or Seattle? :)</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone suggested she contact the mayor. I think we just suggested “someone” in city government. </p>
<p>Actually, there were several posts suggesting just that, VeryHappy. It is no longer the sleepy little city it was back in the late 60s.</p>
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<p>It does seem like a big initiative is necessary. This run-around is crazy.</p>
<p>Yes, the big initiative resulted in a new “open” website which we are supposed to be able to track status and progress and history of permits. However, the “status” and dates on the website don’t seem to match the data that the project manager sends me in a "project status report " that seems to come out of some other computer system. And none of the dates from either system are updated or reality. So I think the poor mayor thinks he accomplished something for the citizens but all the new website is doing is confusing me with erroneous data.</p>
<p>In order to have the open website work, the folks who are approving or denying things need to keep the site updated in real time. Sounds like that’s a step that gets overlooked. Those folks are just doing same-old-same-old, which means the new website is a waste of money. I’d complain. This is your tax dollars hard at work.</p>
<p>ETA: I’d complain only after you have all your permits and inspections done. No sense in annoying the hand that feeds you!</p>
<p>OH BOY, this is getting worse by the minute. The Structural Engineer (who was recommended by two general contractor friends) has opened up the plans that I left at the office over the weekend. He says there are a lot of errors and inconsistencies and he cannot work with them as they are. He is recommending that I find another Structural Engineer that might be able to work with this draftsman, OR that I get the draftsman into his office so that he can point out everything that needs to be corrected to get a clean set of documents (on the hourly clock of course for both of them).</p>
<p>Oh… and he says there’s no way this is going to get done in a couple of days and his fees may reach $2,000 for this review because of the issues in the plans.</p>
<p>Of course the draftsman is not answering his phone and I can’t get him to go anywhere and fix anything at this point.</p>
<p>I’m sorry you are experiencing such a frustrating mess, cb. This is definitely one of those times when I would utilize a dislike button if we had one. At some point, you will be past the one step forward, two steps back pattern that has been in play for the last month or so. I hope it’s soon!</p>