We’ve been really anxious for getting our basement finished this year. It’s been “in progress” for the last… well, practically since the first year we lived here. It’s either been an issue of not having the money to spend on the supplies to progress on it, or finally when I was working two jobs, having the money but no time to put into it. The main floor was so crowded with the stuff of life, that I had made a decision to just move it all down into the basement so we could have a decent living area on the ground floor. Then, when I finally went down to one job, we had so much stuff in the basement that we couldn’t start working on it.
Now that we seem better able to handle our cost of living, we have been able to get some money saved up for home improvement, including working towards finishing the basement. So this year, we have put a lot of effort into emptying it out, and once we were close to ready, we started getting quotes from professionals. The quotes were more than we were hoping for, but we figured the cost was justified, and finally picked someone that seemed to have an eye for detail that I could respect.
When we had the house built in 2004, the base price of the home did not include a basement. Most of the models by Tuscany Homes cost $10,000 to finish the basement, but we selected the “Stillwater” plan, that would only be $7,000 extra for an unfinished basement. Then, we added other upgrades, including air conditioning, windows in the upstairs bathrooms, an upgraded bathtub in the master bathroom, an island in the kitchen, upgraded the shelves to pull out like drawers in the cabinets in the kitchen, and linoleum in the dining area. On Rebecca’s father’s advise, we also asked Tuscany to finish the bathroom in the basement for $4,000 more, as it would cost much more than this to actually finish it after the house was done.
As we initially got a permit to finish the basement back in 2005, it had long since expired past the extensions the city gave us. Our contractor called the city to ask about getting a new permit, and contacted us to inform us that the city had no record of the bathroom in the basement ever having been finished, and this could add complications to getting the work done, from a time and money aspect.
This really frustrated me, and I went into the city hall to find out more information. According to Beverly, the lady in the planning department, their documentation showed the basement as “unfinished” during the initial inspection of 2004, with no indication of the bathroom being inspected. I explained that the basement was technically unfinished, as most of it was still raw foundation and framing, but we paid Tuscany to finish the bathroom. She continued to push that the inspector made no record of this during the final inspection. I found this annoying, as the bathroom would have been impossible to miss, so either the inspector purposely ignored it (which I think would be illegal) or simply failed to record details regarding its inspection. She explained that they no longer had the floor plans from 2004, so they could not verify it was part of the initial build of the house. She went on to explain the people who worked for the city back then were no longer around, so there was no way they could verify the bathroom was finished. I mentioned it was listed on the floor plan we submitted for the permit, and those floor plans were the same we submitted back in 2005 to get the initial permit.
Fortunately, she had a record of the original permit request, and was able to pull it up and verify my claim. Even though it was listed there, she was still determined not to bend on claiming the bathroom needed to be inspected, and the rules for 2004 had changed three times to now, so things that might have passed previously could pose a problem. Unfortunately, I don’t see any other way around this, so we just need to wait and see what happens when we go through the inspections.
At least we’re finally moving towards getting the basement finished! He originally said we might be done by Thanksgiving, although with the delays on the permit, that is looking less likely. I just hope we can have it done before Christmas.
