Adventures in Home Ownership in Miami-Dade County

It's the first Friday the 13th for 2012 and while today isn't considered the luckiest of days, I am actually feeling pretty dang lucky!

While I sit here and type this post, I have two extremely professional and capable electricians installing a new outlet in my family room...this is their second day here and they are working hard to get things under control for when my electrical inspector arrives later today to do a rough inspection.

For those of you who aren't familiar with my story...

In 2009, I purchased my grandparent's first home - the home my father was raised in, the home I spent many a Christmas morning and had many a Thanksgiving dinner.

My dad riding his bike on the front porch in the 60's

My husband and I had been renting it for quite a few years and were thrilled to be able to purchase it and make it our own.

We installed new flooring and base boards, painted, replaced the 50 year old appliances, added new counter tops, and then our biggest project - we hired Home Depot to install new windows and french doors.

Our home became party central after we start renovations!

That's when it happened...when the Miami Dade County inspector came out to do the final inspection, he found the layout of the house rather odd and pulled our original blue prints from 1959 to compare. They didn't match up. Then he pulled a record of all of the permits that have ever been pulled for the house and found that there weren't any building permits pulled. EVER.

We were hit with a code violation for illegal additions. Even though we did not build onto the house and actually purchased it that way, it was now our responsibility to bring two bedrooms and a family room up to code and pay hefty fines and penalties.

We had two options, actually. We could tear down two bedrooms and the family room and restore the house to it's original layout, or we could hire an engineer, draw up plans for legalization, and then go through the process of bringing it up to code, etc. We chose the latter.

I spent A LOT of time at the Miami Dade County permitting offices

That was over two years ago...and today, I am watching the electricians try to complete the last portion of my plans.

What are they doing?

Rewiring 15 outlets because they lack a ground wire, add connectors and the proper receptacle. Install 3 new outlets and a light switch in my family room. Install four smoke detectors and wire them to the circuit breaker box...and fix all of the loose wires that they found dangling in my walls.

And they're almost done.

We are hoping to have our rough inspection passed today, and then our final inspection on Monday - fingers crossed that we pass that too! Once that is done, I can call the county to come out and do my final inspection for my master permit...

I'm hopeful. I feel good about this. Many times over the last two years, I became so overwhelmed with emotion at the daunting task in front of me that I was unable to take steps to move forward. There were times that I pushed the entire ordeal to the farthest recesses of my mind and completely ignored what was happening - going months at a time without making any progress.

But somehow, I've made it through and I now find myself at the final stretch - with exactly 15 days until my master permit expires.

I'm not worried anymore.

I got this.