After the plans examiner called on Friday to discuss some things he didn’t like with our drawings I decided I would head to City Hall first thing Monday to change the plans. The plans examiner thought I was a little nuts I think when I told him I was going to make the changes on the spot.
Working at City Hall to make changes for the examiner so we can get out permit…soon…hopefully!
I reviewed his notes at the counter then promptly set myself up at the table and got to work. The changes were fairly simple but I had to do them by hand on two copies so it took a few minutes.
A shake down of the changes:
- Add smoke alarms in the bedrooms. Better safe than sorry is the rule with fire protection.
- Make a few additional notes to identify railing and guard heights for existing exterior stairs.
- Add note to detail construction/composition of exterior walls.
Then there was one major change but not an unexpected one.
We needed to reduce our secondary suite square footage as the city calculates their square footage in a different manner than we had. Our simple solution was to make the suite a 1 bedroom instead of a 2 bedroom and keep the 2nd bedroom for the upstairs use. By doing this we reduced our secondary suite square footage by more than enough to have this permit reviewed without further delay…and sooooo…we made the change and that was that.
Now this wouldn’t have be an ideal solution for all situations, however, it was our plan B, we knew it might come to this, so we went with that instead of causing major delays by resubmitting our drawings to the structural engineer for a second round of calculations, changes, stamps and then the city for another 3 week wait for first review. (Yeah…that doesn’t sound fun, or efficient, so we will pass. Thanks.)
I gave back the drawings to the plans examiner after about an hour and a half of changes and I left. Unfortunately I got no further indication of the ETA for our permit…but at least I know there are no further plan changes.
