Another week slides by and we are a little closer to opening night. This was a moving week for remodeling. Old walls and equipment were moved out and new walls and equipment are moving in. Money was spent, boy was it spent but by weeks end I had a sense of accomplishment that I have only lightly felt since I started this remodel.

For the most part I am acting as my own contractor on this job. As a normal rule I would never recommend being your own contractor unless you really know what you are doing. Of course I could tell you that I really know what I’m doing but that would be a little white lie. I know just enough to be dangerous. And I have a contractor in Palm Desert that does know what he is doing and he has helped me on countless occasions to insure the flow of work.

Since I was a rookie to Palm Desert I decided to use local help to accomplish my project. My thinking was that since Palm Desert is a small community there was no need to piss off the locals by bringing in hired help from San Diego. That was a risky idea since I didn’t really know any good trades people in the Cochella Valley. Fortunately I meet my contractor through the landlords agent. Since he was experienced with the building and I did not need a permit for my remodel, he was able to steer me into different trades people to do the needed work on our project. I have always found that if you ask enough questions from enough different people you eventually find adequate solutions to most problems or at the very least you can make a better educated guess. The same is true in being your own contractor and designer. Now, before you run out and ask forty questions and decide to open your own place, be aware that I do have a pretty good knowledge of building codes, health codes and ADA codes.

Like I said, I know just enough to be very dangerous. You should see me with power tools in my hands.

To permit or not to permit, that is the question. When at all possible, stay as far away from a permit as you possibly can. Now before I decide to blast into the politics of your local building inspector I should point out that the permit process and building inspectors as a whole do serve a much needed function in assuring us that buildings are built the right way and that construction people do their job the right way. It’s just that some of the rules they enforce are arbitrary and depending on who your inspector is, can be interpreted differently on any given day. I can tell you some amazing stories of inspections and inspectors I have had on my restaurant remodels that would make a grown man cry. There was the time several years ago when I had to rip out new “waterless” urinals because my inspector didn’t like them and said that they where illegal for new construction. The fact that we live in a desert and are running out of water didn’t seem like a good argument to this person. When I reminded him that the building department had them in their very own building he almost came unglued and told me point blank that he would shut my restaurant down if I didn’t remove my “waterless” urinals. Such a picky guy….

And then there was the inspector who after being called the day before to delay his drywall inspection decides to show up anyway and decides to go through our entire project with a fine tooth comb and subsequently concludes that we don’t have the proper “van accessible” handicapped parking in our parking garage. After it is explained to him that we cannot raise a three story building two feet nor can we dig down the two feet because of the water table and the slope of the ramp to accommodate a oversized handicapped van, he tells us that we need to prove all of these things with proper engineering, in writing and that we will not pass final inspection until we find a solution to this problem. The fix for this uncorrectable problem will cost thousands of dollars and in the end we will all agree that there is no fix to this problem. It will delay the project almost a month and after repeated calls to our local councilman and a meeting with the big cheese “Head” of all inspectors it is deemed that raising the building 2′ at a cost of four millions dollars or lowering the parking 2′ which will actually cost more, it is decided that the city will grant us a hardship consideration and place a van accessible space in front of the restaurant on the street. The total cost of this little inspection was about 50K in lost time and work for something that was obvious and simple to resolve.

Simplicity and ease of solution is not always the mainstay of any building department. Our Palm Desert projects is being done with no permits because I have taken the simple road and done no work that could trigger the permit process. Part of my decision to choose this site was a by-product of the fact that I needed no permits to accomplish my remodel. My kitchen is whole and intact and my front of the house area is only needing a cosmetic facelift. Or so I tell myself….

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 11:02 am.
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