Busted!

I guess I really should have written this blog entry way back on October 23rd, just a few days after my last entry. That's when the City of Vancouver decided to pay me a visit, decided they didn't like what they saw, and decided I couldn't work anymore. I was doing repairs without permits, and even though I was restoring the house back to the way it was before it had been chopped up into suites, that really didn't matter.

It seems I needed building permits for the interior work being done, and development permits for the exterior work. As I soon found out, development permits are a serious pain in the butt. The documentation required to substantiate ANY development work is no less than what's required to build a new house from scratch.

I found this out through what seems to have become an endless stream of trips back to City Hall (5 so far), each time being told "Oh, well, you're missing this document. You really need that as well for the work you're doing".

None of these are simple documents to put together -

• detailed floor plans for each floor, with all dimensions, rooms, appliances, etc marked, including existing and proposed work;
• lateral and longitudinal cross-sectional diagrams of the house
• elevation drawings (side views) of all 4 sides of the house with existing and proposed work (so far they're letting me do just 2, as the only exterior changes were on the back (that new roof), but I fully expect that at some point they'll decide 2 isn't enough);
• a site plan, showing all dimensions of the entire property (including heights), floor space ratio calculations, and site coverage statement
• a landscape plan, showing the location of all bushes and trees, both existing and proposed;
• a street plan, showing our house among the others on the block
• an exterior materials sample board, including final exterior colours
• an aeriel view, showing setbacks of our house vs the neighbouring houses
• photo montages of the rear & front view of the houses on the block, and the view out front and back from our house
• scaled-down drawings of all of the above to be sent to neighbours for approval

In total, it's about 80 pages of documentation. And of course there are the fees, still unknown at this point, as they're decided by the city, based on how much work they say we're doing.

Assuming our development permits get approved (all of this for a stupid little roof around the back of our deck!), we then have to submit detailed building plans before we can get a building permit and only then can we start work again.

Needless to say, after 6 months of working at this, the entire family is pretty frustrated by the whole process.

The moral? If you have to work on your house, make sure no one else can see you!