We have lived in our house for almost 2 years. When we had the inspection done the biggest problem with the house was the carport. The carport was rotting, beyond repair, and we knew we would need to tear it down and rebuild it at some point. The first two winters we parked under the carport until sometime early this year we noticed this….

Not good…we decided it was probably no longer safe to park under. Tom shoved a 2×4 under the beam to help support it and this is what we have lived with for the last 6 months or so.

We have talked about tearing it down for a while. This week Tom said he wanted to get it done before the end of October. I called the city permit office and talked to them about getting a permit. I was under the impression that I would walk in, pay for a permit, and be on my way….boy was I wrong!

I know permits could be tricky when building things but I was hoping it would be easier to tear something down. The woman on the phone told me the process:

• Hire someone to test the carport for asbestos
• Contact Puget Sound Air Pollution Control to obtain a permit for demo. Apparently you have to get another permit from them since we will be polluting the air during the demo…LAME!!
• Draw up a site map of our property – to scale – um…we don’t know how to do that!! Lucky for us my dad is a contractor – I called him up and he said he was happy to help us with the site map.
• Take pictures to bring into the permit office
• Bring everything into the permit office for their review.
• Wait 1-2 days for their approval and to obtain the permit.
• Begin project

I had NO idea it would be so many steps just to tear down the carport!!! We are planning to start the process so we can make it happen. We are worried if we leave the carport up it may collapse if we get heavy rain…since we live in the Pacific Northwest that is pretty much a given!! We want to make sure the structure is safe.

Our plan is to tear down the carport, but leave the storage shed intact for now. We are in the process of saving the $2,000-$3,000 we will need to rebuild it in the spring.

Hoping all the permit hoops are easy to jump through!!