Rehab Project Week #1

Well it was an eventful week for our little rehab project…even though we didn’t get a thing done. 

The crew showed up at the site Monday morning at 8am and proceeded to tear up all of the old carpet, begin removing the paneling from the living room and they removed a wall that we are going to move over about 3 feet to make one of the bedrooms a bit bigger. 

Well, at 9 am an inspector from the parish shows up and shuts us down for not having a permit.  Yes, that’s right, we did not pull a permit.  And on this one job, where we did not pull some sort of permit, it just so happens that we purchased this particular house right next door to a retired parish building inspector!!!  It was nice of the seller to neglect to mention that little gem.  And it was a very warm welcome to the neighborhood.   Whadda ya gonna do?  We were wrong so we move forward.

So, one violation notice and a stop work order later and we are dead in the water.  Soooo we spent the week figuring out what to do and decided the best thing, just to clear the violation and clear the stop work order, was to file for a permit to put the wall back where it started.  Even though it’s a non-load bearing wall we are required to have a set of drawings, stamped by a structural engineer, that says it’s OK to move that wall over three feet.  We finally got the permit this afternoon to put the wall back up in its original position.

At least now we can get going on the rest of the house, yes we got a permit for that too.  We can remove the paneling and put up sheetrock and we can do the flooring (no permit needed for flooring). 

We are going to hold off on putting the wall back.  I think I found a guy over on the Westbank who can do the drawings and get them stamped for about $550.  If that’s the case we’ll have them draw up the wall move and not have to waste time rebuilding it where we don’t want it.

We wasted a week and a couple hundred dollars messing with our mistake but at least now we know where we stand and we know the neighbor will be watching so…..

Stay tuned, I hope to have a photo or two to post soon.  And I hope to have a progress report to post soon too.