I spent three hours and 40 minutes at the Dade County Building Permitting office today. Not exactly the way I wanted to spend my Monday, but hey – you have to go what you have to do. And I absolutely HAD to do this. I have been dragging my feet on dealing with the county and my illegal additions for about three months now. It doesn’t make the problem go away. It just steals time – I already had to extend my master permit once, and I am not going to be able to do it again. If I don’t get this wrapped up in the next four months, I have to RENEW my permit.
Renewing a permit isn’t the easy “check here for renewal” process you’d imagine it to be. See, county lingo is tricky. Renewing a permit means you literally have to resubmit your plans all over again and hope they get approved. If not? Which, unfortunately, I am told often happens because county code changes like the palm fronds around here…Well, if your plans don’t get approved, then you get to take out another loan, hire another engineer/architect and draw up new plans. Essentially, you start over from scratch. So…that’s definitely not where I aim to be in four months.
I sat and waited for each of the four county inspectors for a combined total of approximately 2.5 hours.
I spent approximately 1 hour discussing the additions, my situation, what additional paperwork was needed for the four permits I need with the awesome guy at the information desk and four different county inspectors…
And I spent about 5 minutes in line waiting to pay for my mechanical permit.
I have my first inspection tomorrow morning. The inspection is for the two air conditioning ducts that were installed in the family room (what used to be the car port). There shouldn’t be any problem – SHOULDN’T be – but I am going to have my fingers crossed, just in case.
As an aside, I saw the strangest thing today. There was a woman in a “Goodwill Industries” apron walking around sweeping and cleaning windows at the county office. Since when did Goodwill employees work for the county?
That was a lot of time. Hopefully all will go smoothly from here on out…As for the apron…beats me. She or someone she knows either works there or worked there and that’s the apron she uses for work.
Maybe she got the job via GoodWill?
Who knows!
LOL While I was at the county office again on Thursday, I asked one of the employees about the cleaning crew. The name of the company is Goodwill Industries but they have no affiliation with the charitable organization. How weird is that?!