Step 5 – Get a Building Permit

With the lot now officially fully improved, the next step in building your own home is to obtain a building permit.  The county website had a nice and easy step by step instruction on how to go about working your way through the process.  The first step I completed a few weeks ago when I received confirmation that my Natural Resources Assessment was approved.  The next step is to make a prescreening appointment with the county building office.  They will expect to review my construction documents, request any necessary changes and/or alterations, and address any concerns they have.  At that time I will go back to the drawing board and make any corrections they require before my final permit appointment, where I will present the updated construction documents and get them signed off by the inspector.  I’ve been working on the plans for months now, and am finally getting close to finishing them.  I’m quite sure that there will be some corrections requested, but I also don’t want to give the inspector a first impression that I don’t have a good grasp on what I’m doing.  Here is a sneak peek at what I have so far….

My goal is to complete the rest of my plans over the weekend and schedule my prescreening for Monday.  The only thing I have left to do is the details page (although it might need 2 pages).  It will take some time because much like the floor framing page above, there are lots of leaders (the arrows with explanations) and it takes time to scale the cross sections properly.  All of my computer aided drafting(CAD) drawings were created with Rhinoceros v5.0.  It was one of the most affordable decent CAD programs out there when I was shopping around but there have since been some cheaper ones released.  All have plenty of online training videos and courses you can take to become proficient.  I had a great time working with CAD and once you get the hang of it, it really isn’t that difficult.