Four years ago we bought our first house, it is a large five bedroom house on the same street we had rented on for seven years. We were looking for something that had potential, a house that we could put our personal touch in. Okay so we were naive to the work and money it actually took to do what we wanted, but for two years we did little cosmetic changes and even opened up the living room, we were very happy with the progress.

The upstairs has four rooms and used to be an apartment at one time. The large bedroom has beautiful hardwood floors with a small deck outside, that was our daughter’s room. One of the rooms had an adjoining room that used to be the kitchen/dining area, we used that as our son’s room. Here’s were it all becomes insane. When our son died, I wanted that room gone and our daughter would be graduating the following year, we knew she would be going her own way. So in an instant of temporary insanity we started knocking out walls. I wanted all three rooms to be open into one big beautiful room, something that would comfort my soul on those hard days. Our house is old, so all the walls were plaster WHAT A MESS! We needed to find a way to get rid of all the plaster so we rented a small dumpster. Two days later we get a nasty gram from the township building inspector. OOOPPPS who knew you had to have a permit for anything you touch in your house. I argued it is my house you can’t dictate how I remodel it. Well that didn’t get us far. After the initial inspection to obtain the $200 building permit, we found out that we also needed an electrical permit because when we tore down the plaster we unhooked the electrical line from the ceiling light fixture, AUTOMATIC PERMIT! Who knew, they never show that stuff on DYI. By the way we were also told we needed a mechanical permit because we disassembled the heat ducts so they would fall on our head. So now we are up to three permits, along with the huge list of things we needed to do to bring that part of the house to the “current code”. The inspector also told us that when we obtain the $300 electrical permit that if the rest of the house is under current code we will be required to have the whole house rewired! OH HELL WHAT DID I DO? I tried the temporary insanity plea, it didn’t work either, I guess we chalk it up to life experience.

We continued with the structural modifications, which we worked on all summer long and it was a great time for our family. We all worked together to make this magnificent room. We even bought books to help with the electrical since we now needed x amount of plugs, x amount of lighting, hard wired smoke detectors, ect. We are scared to get the electrical permit, due to the fact that we would never be able to pay someone to rewire our whole house. Now two years later, we have a big beautiful room with gorgeous windows, and a cathedral ceiling that we can not cover with insulation or drywall due to permits. The government always has to have a piece of the pie and a say in your life. You can’t even change a damn household plug, legally without a permit, just stupid!

It is now my room of insanity, some days I just sit in there thinking how wonderful it would be to see it finished, if only the building inspector would drop of the face of the earth.