Flip This House - ADUs

Parents Forum Parent Cafe
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I’m sorry I have not been on the forum lately. I’ve probably missed quite a lot of Home Improvement discussions. I just want to bring anyone that is interested up to date on our projects.

Conversion of Basement and Garage into a Junior ADU (500 sq ft) and ADU (760 sq ft). We have been waiting over 9 months for the permits on this project. When we got back from the Hawaii project, I had to scramble to find work in small jobs for the guys to keep them employed. That is a time consuming task and I don’t want to have to do that again. It’s very difficult to meet with clients, spend time going through estimates and then manage 2 guys over at one place and 1 guy at another place and rotating who is not going to have work each week. The guys have been fantastic and understanding and sticking with me through this mess.

The permit was finally approved last week. We were in Issuance at the beginning of October but then, just at the last minute, someone at the City decided that we had to go through Landscape Review!! We went backwards all over again. This is because adding two ADUs requires a ‘tree’ to be planted. The City missed this when they setup the project so we never went through the Landscape Review with all the other reviews. So, that took another 4 weeks between the review and getting the plans updated to add a tree. Then another 2 weeks to get the permit pushed through Issuance phase again. It was a total nightmare. The owners have been holding this without rental income for about a year now.

We will now be working 6 days a week over the holidays (just our luck!!) trying to get done before February 1st. The project is really not that interesting so I haven’t been taking photos. We are just gutted down to the studs, rearranged a lot of walls, added windows, etc.

But when we finish this project we are moving on to something that will be interesting. We are going to build a Studio apartment over an existing garage. This is something that a lot of people are doing here in California because it is being pushed by the State to increase affordable housing. I’m in the middle of trying to get that permit pushed through the system and finalized. But, the State and the Cities are blowing smoke with all their legislation to make the permitting process faster (Cities are required to approve within 60 days, but that is NOT happening) and cheaper. For this single 500 sq ft Studio ADU, the fees include School District fees $5,000, Permit Fees $3,500, Water Fees $3,500. So that’s $12,000 just to try to get a permit!

My estimate to build the 500sq ft ADU is about $95,000. I will post more information as we get closer

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Welcome back! Hope your projects aren’t too far from home so you can enjoy the holidays.

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Wow! I feel loads better about our permitting fees for our basement renovation!

Hang in there and thanks for checking in!

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I feel your pain! Have spent 9 months trying to get the remodel of existing (but unpermitted) ADU approved. City did nothing but asking for one non-existent document after another. Finally just requested a roofing permit to repair the existing roof which is over 40 years old and in terrible condition and will cause leaks/damage to the garage underneath if not repaired. The roof permit should have been a simple approval—but it was denied because a GC applied for the permit, not a roofing contractor. So now we have to start all over again…

The new roof will be architecturally complementary to the main house (terracotta clay tile gable vs white asphalt shingle shallow pyramid roof) and a huge improvement in appearance

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Oof!

Took us about 3 months to get through the permitting process because the historic preservation society objected to the type of egress window for the bedroom. Lots of back and forth with our architect until they found something they would OK.

We’re within a couple of weeks of hopefully crossing the finish line so the end is in sight here.

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Took us 2 months to get a green light for our PV system install (the big city a few miles away approves these things in 2 days!). I feel everyone’s pain.

But so glad to see @coralbrook!

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Do they really require permits for repair work? I’ve never heard of such a thing!

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Yes, they do. If you want to replace your front door or a toilet–you technically need a permit.

You definitely need a permit for a re-roof. And for the electrical box upgraded needed for the 220 line for the EV charger in the garage.

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Wow. Glad our town is not so draconian when it comes to repairs. Resided the house - no permit needed. For reroofing, permit is required only if certain roofing types are being changed. If no plumbing or electrical changes are involved, stuff like tile, toilet replacements, light fixtures replacement can be done without permits. Ditto resurfacing of a deck if no new posts are being added etc.

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Just reroofed, didn’t even think to ask about a permit!

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Our roofer had to apply for a permit because we were ripping our a cedar shake roof and changing to a metal roof (needed to add plywood underlay which cedar shake roofs don’t have). If we were changing from a composite to a metal roof, no permit would have been needed because the plywood would have been there… it is a roof Tetris :laughing:

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Good to see you @coralbrook !
Happy holidays!

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Wow—welcome back @coralbrook! Sorry for all the woes and delays you’ve been subjected to. We don’t need and have never gotten permits for repairs, but our permitting system is definitely broken. If your permit takes longer than a year to be approved, you have to start over again. That’s a problem many are facing here as the dept is very slow.

We haven’t done anything that required a permit. We did put in solar and PV.

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Sorry that you’ve gone through this! I feel your pain.
We’re still waiting on the architect and the structural engineer on my first floor remodel.

I wanted to get an “open concept” in my kitchen and found out that if we tried to do that, on our smaller first floor, that there wouldn’t be any “living room” and my husband refuses to move the wall on the front of the house.

When the contractor came out, to see if we could remove a “non-bearing” wall, it turns out that the end of the wall has a big metal support beam. So we’re waiting on the engineer and the architect.

The cabinet maker came out and took measurements of our “supposed” design and that’s all we’ve seen in the past year- other than being told that our permit is averaging about four months.

I don’t know if you recall, when we last emailed, that we were going through the bathroom flood remodel, which turned out great, but took 13 months because of all the delays. We’re going on another 13 months of waiting, to get the first floor done-Kitchen, living room, fireplace remodels, and first floor laundry area.

I didn’t know, and maybe you know, that some of the coastal cities, in San Diego County, are really strict now with fireplaces and remodels-citing the environmental impact on the coast. I found out, through our chimney sweep, that a number of coastal cities are not allowing new builds with wood-burning fireplaces and there are restrictions on the remodels of them. Given the cold weather we’ve been having in San Diego county, I’ve already gone through a half a cord of wood! You know that we usually have warm Decembers here, and a fireplace is usually just a pretty, cozy thing! In our neck of the woods, it’s been much colder than the coastal areas!

Edited to add: our neighbor next door was supposed to start an addition in October. Nothing has happened. I’m assuming that she’s waiting on the permit process. She might have to add a tree!

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@aunt_bea I’m also in San Diego and in December of 2019 before the pandemic we converted our fireplace to gas. Since we are in a townhome in La Jolla and our space is not huge so we get a decent amount of heat from the gas fireplace. We had been burning wood for 30 years before converting to the gas fire and we do miss the crackling wood sound of a fire, but we don’t miss having to store the wood and H doesn’t miss cleaning the fireplace.

We redid our master bathroom this year and it was a very long process. H did all of the demo including taking out a cast iron bathtub so that we would have just a shower. Our tile guy was very good, but we had to wait a long time for him to start because of other jobs he was doing and he had some health issues. We also decided to do hardwood upstairs which took more than 6 months to get delivered. We had the hardwood installed in the master and it is beautiful. We still have to get the carpet out of the other upstairs bedroom and H has to do some drywalling and painting before we can have the hardwood installed in there. That won’t happen until the new year. Once this is finished we want to change out our old skylight upstairs to an opening one then we can start work downstairs. I’m hoping we will be done with all the remodeling in the next 18 months (fingers crossed).

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We just found out one of our custom doors is now delayed 6 weeks. It was supposed to be installed tomorrow and we just learned of the delay today. GRRRR.

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Fingers crossed!

Good luck!

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It’s similar here, except most contractors, plumbers and handymen have the attitude that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission and try to avoid permits.

For our new home, our builder didn’t apply for the demo and construction permits until a few days before that year end. The local building dept. was changing its code adoption as of January 1. It was a big deal to me since that would have meant major changes to our house.

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Happy to see you back! Sorry for the hassles on the current job. We were hit with a landscape review on our new home, much to our surprise. No Certificate of Occupancy until the entire lot was sodded and had mulched planting beds. At least the existing trees satisfied the city.

Can’t wait to see your new project for the studio apartment, but hope you get at least a little break over the holidays.

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Wow, I would go ballistic if someone took 13 months for my bathroom remodel. No way should it take longer than 4 to 6 weeks if everything is lined up correctly (mostly, tile and fancy bathtub selected and delivered)

At the rate I am seeing the City of San Diego process permits, I will avoid it as much as I can. They are just making it too hard for homeowners. When I called in a couple of months ago I found out our permit was at the bottom of the pile because tract developers / commercial can pay a big fee for ‘expediting’ so the reviewers are all busy with these expedited projects. Homeowners are not given a chance to ‘expedite’ for ADUs or single family remodels.

I just got another ADU project - I will be busy through end of next year already. Local in Point Loma. They want to add a garage and ADU above garage on their primary residence lot and then Two ADUs on their property next door.

My general rule is if I am not adding square footage, a new bathroom or extra bedroom, NOT WORTH the permit hassle. You need the permit if you are increasing size or number beds/baths. Noone expects a kitchen or bathroom remodel permit

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