House Post: We can haz building permits (almost)

Progress!

At least, I think so.

glaurung just called me from the appropriate municipal office to tell me that our building permits have been approved in principle - our draftsperson made one small error that has to be redone on the plans, and once that is done, we will have the building permit.

Which is A Good Thing, because our contractor is ready to begin tearing down walls and things early next week.

We still have to apply for the plumbing permit, which is a different creature altogether (we are compeltely redoing one bathroom plus moving the location of the laundry room in the basement), but there are no weird things to try to fudge over in that permit, so it should be simple.

See, there is this whole annoying on-going business about whether the city is going to let us renovate in such a way that I will actually be able to get into my own house.

There are two existing entrances:
1. At the front (east side), where the house is highest above grade (it's on a slight downslope), there are some very nice but also very steep concrete steps.
2. At the south side, there is an entrance that's almost at grade, but of course, once inside it's a half-flight up to the main floor and a half-flight down to the basement.

Neither entrance, therefore, is one that I can use because with each of them there are lots of stairs with a rise that's standard or higher.

The back wall (west side) has a garage built right onto it, facing to the side street (our house is on a north-west corner lot). The other side (north side) is about two feet away from the neightbour's wall.

So the only place I can put an accessible entrance is at the back. Which means tearing down the garage (not a problem, neither of us drives or ever will as long as we live in this city), but it's illegal to remove an onsite parking place.

So our solution is to build this strange sort of L-shaped deck/stairs arrangement at the back. We put in a new door at the back on the farthest side of the house from the street, and build a long narrow deck running perpendicular to the back wall that's about six feet wide and 13-14 feet long, and at the end of that, we build a set of shallow-rise stairs running parallel to the back wall, toward the street. There is a 10-foot space between the stairs and the back wall, where the part of the garage floor that hasn't had a narrow deck built over it will serve as a somewhat shortened parking pad.

The trick is that this space is no longer long enough to be a full legal parking space that is wholly on our lot - when a car parks there, the back 4-5 feet of the car (dpending on the car, of course) will actually be parked on the city easement - so we were worried that the permit might be rejected for that reason. But either they didn't notice or they didn't care. Whew!

Eventually, we intend to fill most of that space in to create a full-size deck, and put in a new parking space (which by law must be paved, alas, which means a great deal of unendurable stink in our backyard for probably at week sometime in the future)) further toward the back of the yard. But we don't have enough money for that right now. So we do it in stages.

Of course, there is still the problem that the kind of stairs I need built are illegal, but we're handling that in a roundabout manner, on the advice of both our draftsperson and our contractor. The problem there is that for me, ramps are actually more difficult to deal with than very shallow steps. But the city building code requires steps to have at least a 5-inch rise. What I need is steps with a 3-inch rise. What we have done is submit plans specifying a 5-inch rise, and once the contractor knows who the building inspector on our project will be, he will set up a meeting to explain to the building inspector why we are not building stairs according to code. In a case such as mine, the contractor is confident that an understanding can be reached such that the inspector will approve the variance from the permit and the code - apparently, such understandings are negotiated every day.

And we've just about put in all our orders for bathroom fixtures and tiles and paint and other stuff that we have to pick out for ourselves. So it's all ready to go. If nothing falls apart, that it.

This whole process so far has been fraught with things falling apart and centres not holding. I've had enough nervous breakdowns to last me the rest of my life.

Onward, licensed carpenters, hasten to your craft,
Wiring folk and plumbers, see, our plans aren't daft -
With the city's blessing, the starting hour is nigh
Forward into renovation, wave our permits high!