Not much new content, so I figured I'd say a little something that I am quite excited for! Yesterday I went down to the county permit office and officially filed for a permit to finish my basement! I was expecting a huge setback. Truth be told, I was 99% sure I was going to be rejected on the spot and sent back home to revise plans.

A few months ago I posted a few screenshots of what I wanted my finished basement to look like. I even mentioned "getting the permits takes a lot of work with precisely drawn dimensions." Those 'precisely drawn dimensions' were down to the stud and nail level. I knew exactly how many and what types of wood I would need as well as drywall, nails, feet of tape, etc.

Unfortunately, after reading a lot of forums, I realized I underestimated the studs. To be able to hang drywall, you need at least two (three is recommended) studs on one wall in the corner to reach out past the perpendicular stud. So I redrew that crap and was quite excited to pull the permits. I called ahead to verify I had everything I needed, and they responded with an email:

Well shit. If you follow that second link you'll find a Finishing Basement Guide pdf with what I need to show. And its basically just a outline of where the walls will go... which, for my basement is basically the walls of my basement and a divider wall to split off the laundry room. I also had to label the two required exit points as well as the overall dimensions of the room.

Which was a royal annoyance. So I whipped out Google Sketchup and did a quick 2d model of the floor plan and headed on in with my four copies of my plans and one copy of the Permit app (which admittedly wasn't completely filled out... I had no idea what some of the terms even meant).

Immediately got sat with a lady who quickly looked over my floorplan to make sure I was hiring an electrician, wasn't doing any plumbing, and entered the info from my application into her program. I then paid the cashier and waited for about 10 minutes while the building inspector signed off on my plans and was back out the door.

All in all, I was in there for about 25 minutes. And now I officially have my permit displaying in the window to my house and I can legally begin work on the basement.

First things first is putting in the spacers for the walls that run parallel to the ceiling joists. I'll be doing that tomorrow for a small section, then I'll hopefully have one wall up by the end of the day. It's a small 10' wall, I have all the lumber already cut and ready to go, so I'll just be nailing away. :)

Anyways, I'm pretty damned excited. The permit is good for a year, but when I get the walls inspected prior to drywall going up, I get it extended an extra year from that point.