<p>My agent busted her butt yesterday going to the City and the County Assessor to try to get historical permits for the house - that’s a good agent. She did it for me because she knew that I am so busy. I had to give her all kinds of signed letters and my LLC docs before the City and County would let her look at the records. We have evidence that the original 1936 building permit has the ‘utility shed’ fully permitted. This is excellent because it is located on the lot line and does not have set back from property boundary. </p>
<p>So, the location and existence of the Utility Shed is permitted. However, there is no evidence in old building permits that all of that plumbing was included in the original permit. But we know that it is original to the house because the age and condition of the cast iron plumbing matches all the other cast iron plumbing. There is no way that someone went in there many years later, dug out to main sewer line and put in all that cast iron. I’m guessing that the City inspector blessed the utility shed and the original builder quickly put that extra bath stuff in there? The original permit clearly states that there is laundry plumbing but we don’t know where that was. I think the only place is the shed</p>
<p>The usual long discussion last night between agent and myself about permits vs no permits. If I pulled a permit to turn the Utility Shed into livable space with a permitted bathroom, there is a chance that they would require setback (but I doubt it, it is grandfathered) but then they would be all over the place and getting their nose into everything else that I am doing. No way I could get City in there to focus just on the Utility Shed. This becomes a risk between extra $$$$ and time to get the square feet and bathroom permitted, versus trying to sell the house with the extra sq ft unpermitted.</p>
<p>Final decision - and you are all going to start raising your voices 
in fact I am OK if you start yelling at me in ALL CAPS… The utility shed is going to be turned into livable space. The walkway area between main house and utility shed is going to get enclosed. I am going to punch a door in back of kitchen for a ‘walk through’ laundry area between these buildings. Shed is going to get turned into an office with full bathroom. It is very important that we can have two full bathrooms - houses with 1 bath just don’t sell.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, all that plumbing is located in the NW corner of the utility shed, right where the excellent views are. So, we are going to have to cut concrete and move the plumbing to the SE corner of the shed so that I can put windows in NW corner for views in the office. We have inspected foundation of this shed and it’s solid as a rock, same size and shape of main house foundation. But, the walls are flimsy wood frame with major stucco on outside and the whole roof and pitch need to get replaced. In fact, original permit says shed had siding, but for some reason it has thick stucco on it now ??? Since the roof is shot anyways, we will build a higher pitch and do a professional job of getting roof connected properly to main house.</p>
<p>We are going to fully disclose that shed location is permitted (which will be the largest issue for a buyer) but that square footage and bathroom were not originally permitted as livable space. This takes us from a 1,017 sq ft house to a 1, 300 sq ft house which is a huge bonus. </p>
<p>This is very common in the older neighborhoods of San Diego. Noone is going to bat an eyelash, they will just inspect that it was done in a workmanlike manner. And, we are not going to call it a bedroom, it’s just a bonus room/office.</p>
in my neck of the woods, things under that roof would not have a chance. </p>