Village Hall, Take 1

Well, I spent my lunch hour today down at the village hall submitting the plans my mom drew up and filing for the General building, HVAC, Plumbing, and Electrical permits. We got it all baby. The way they calculate these things is by the amount of square footage affected by the proposed alterations.

Although the dormer itself is only a couple hundred square feet, we need to do a lot of structural reinforcement and correction first. Especially in the Master Bedroom.

Believe it or not, the current joists in there are only 2x6 joists - and they're spanning above the living room which is 17 feet long!! The max span for floor joists is generally considered 1.5 feet times the width. So 6 times 1.5 = 9 feet. The current joists are almost spanning twice that length! No wonder it feels like you are walking in a salad bowl when going across that floor!

We also want to fix some structural supports in the basement underneath the living room and under the kithen. SO they pretty much figured on calculating the entire living area of the home, except the middle of the first floor (dining room/office). In addition to the 47 electrical openins being added / changed upstairs, and the plumbing fixtures... the total bill came to $1200! And that is including other items like replacing the garage door, running HVAC, etc. I couldn't believe it was that much. We may just have to change our scope of work to include the kitchen remodel too (we were originally going to include it in a few months) since we've already paid for the square footage!

I must say that despite the outrageous costs and rules, the people working at the village are pretty helpful. I think they tend to treat me better as a homeowner than they do the contractors who come in there and do things on behalf of other owners, but the structural engineer and administrative people have been very helpful in making sure everything that needs to be on the plans are on there.

Now, the plans are kicked over to the zoning people to get approved before they can go through the plan review part and receive official approval. Unfortunately, we can't technically do any work until it is approved - that includes demolition. The only thing we are allowed to do is remove carpeting. Yeah right. ;-)