Look out HGTV, we're renovating!

In my previous post, I talked about how Judy's mother purchased a piece of commercial property that we could convert into a quilt shop.  The building wasn't exactly "move in ready".   Besides extensive renovations to the building, we had to convert the vacant lot next door into a parking lot.
 
The first thing we had to do was figure out the best way to finance the renovations.  We thought that was simple.  We'd mortgage the property and make payments out of our income from quilt shows until the shop was open and it could support the payments itself. Oh yeah?  You may recall that when you borrowed money on real estate in the mid 2000's banks had a unique way of determining the qualifications of borrowers.  The loan officer would grab your wrist and say "that pulse is really strong.  We'll lend you the money." Then came the financial crash of 2008 (what a surprise!).  When you went into a bank to borrow money in 2011 the Loan Officer would look at you as if to say "what are you trying to pull?  We'll need three forms of ID, a credit check and if the President of the Bank approves, you can speak to us about a loan and try to prove why you're not trying to rip us off!"  So Judy and I decided to use the old tried and true method of finance - we'd pay for the renovation ourselves.

That decision out of the way, we decided to become our own general contractors.  How difficult could that be?  Our first problem occurred with building permits.  The property was zoned commercial so we thought could easily get the necessary permits.  What we found out was that we had to get a "Change of Occupancy" certificate from the County before we could legally open for business.  Building permits were a part of getting the "CO".   Off I went to the County Building Department to apply for one.  The person behind the counter asked "Where are your drawings?"  I said, "I don't have any drawings, but if you give me a piece of paper and a pen I'll show you what we're trying to do."  I got the "look" from that person. He said "sir, we're going to need architectural drawings from a licensed architect".  And actually kept a straight face when he said it.

So off I went to find an architect.  Ginger Moore, daughter of Carlos Moore of Carlos Moore and Associates agreed to take on the project - for a fee of course.