The County Inspector Arrives - A Non-Political Post

August 2017

Not much picture-worthy work has happened at the cabin recently. There's only so many pictures of cut trees anybody wants to see. I will say that we did get locked into the tree slash dump site by some random lady. It was weird but thankfully we were only locked in for a few minutes before somebody showed up to rescue us. There are some odd ducks living in the mountains - one of which wears bright patterned leggings, cowboy boots, and a straw cowboy hat.

With what feels like a sloth's pace, we are getting closer to remodel plans from the architect & designer. We decide it would behoove (that's a cool word, right?) us to make sure there are no BIG surprises and budget hits when the county inspects the "old", non-remodeled parts of the cabin (read the Cabin History for the backstory). Of biggest concern was the deck. It's big, old, a little shaky, double decker, and built on a very steep slope. To replace it in it's entirety would cost a year's worth of college tuition, and I'm not talking community college. So we definitely needed to know early on if this thing was going to cause us to fail an inspection.

Those are some scary deck footings, posts, and sagging beam.

The double deck

I tried scouring the 1970s building codes (thanks, Sheri!) - no specific section on decks.
I had a contractor look at it - he had no idea what the county would or wouldn't accept against 1970s code.
So back to the county we go. I emailed asking to pay them for a preliminary inspection on the deck. Their response.....
Yeah, the response isn't missing. It just didn't happen. Tried calling and leaving a message. No response. Hey, at least their consistent.
J.D. got involved and again, crickets...at least for a couple of weeks. My normally quiet, man-of-few-words husband writes a lengthy email that catches the attention of the Head Inspector, and not in a good way. Let's just say there were PowerPoint charts involved.
She didn't seem happy. I don't know if he wore her down or just frustrated her. She agreed to send an inspector for a special fee BUT it sounded like she was directing all the inspectors NOT to address our concerns on the deck but rather to determine the order of the permits. This inspector could make or break the timeframe and budget and I needed to attempt to get all the info I could on what would fail inspection.

So I put on my friendliest face and anxiously awaited the inspector. I kept hearing my mother in the back of my head, "you get more flies with honey" (raise your hand if you have a southern mother!) and made sure that my questions and demeanor were in check. I have to say that the inspector was one of the nicest guys. We discussed the remodel we are attempting to do and he completely understood our point of view of not wanting to waste time or money or be surprised with a big expense at the end.
He very generously walked through the cabin to point out issues.
The verdict was good news: only need one permit to cover the remodel AND getting the C.O., which saves us $1000, and we identified issues with the deck upfront as well as a few other items. It adds to the cost that we'll have with the deck repair but at least we know about it now vs. later and can factor that into the remodel budget.