From the beginning, I always feared permits. No one wants someone looking over their shoulder and scrutinizing their work - let alone forcing you to pay them to do it too. In the past, as I've done interior repairs, I've avoided them and generally speaking, for the types of repairs and light renovations that I was doing, permits might not have even been required. Many of the small rehabbers that I know, similarly, avoid permits at all costs and rarely have been caught despite some of their jobs being much more extensive. Generally I've heard that once you leave the city of Cincinnati limits that the demands that come with getting permits goes way down and it gets more relaxed in complying. Not sure if that's really true, but you should definitely ask around about your area before skipping. Certain areas of town also get much more heavily scrutinized for permitting than others (with OTR being towards the top of places where they are really watching) while other areas can have blatant construction activity and never get checked.
However, I think I should be clear from the start here, I knew that I didn't have that luxury of skipping permits on this project. The building at 201 E Clifton had been vacant at minimum; during the 6 years that I've lived next door and on the longer end; around 15 years since it last operated according to neighbors. On top of its long term vacant status (and the lack of utility service and the like that accompanied that), the city of Cincinnati had also gone after the previous owner hard as an absentee owner - as in took the guy to court for multiple properties that he owned to have them put into receivership and sold off. So my building was definitely fully on the city's radar - as evidenced by the quick issuing of my VBML within a month of purchase and lack of leniency. On top of all that, I'm also on the fringe of the largest intact urban historic district, so there is extra scrutiny from a historic preservation standpoint as well.
So as I've taken the path through doing my own architectural drawings, I've also started from a very green perspective on how to actually go about getting permits (which most people are paying their architect to do for them as well). I started literally by walking into the building department's offices and asking what to do. Besides being handed a bunch of antiquated forms that don't really make sense to someone off the street (even someone college educated like myself) they are very limited in the help that they can provide to get you through the volumes of red tape, rules, and standards that they've weaved together.
The best place to start is really the code itself (and having an old set of drawings from some other project to cheat off of helps a lot too). Some of it is obvious if you've been around buildings, but other parts require a deep dive into the standards for stair rise/run and handrail heights. You've got to start with building in a lot of time for changes and tweaks and revisions, but then also not be afraid to ask questions. I learned that if I came early enough in the morning (when the plan reviewer was less busy) that he'd give my drafts a light look over and tips to point me in the right direction. Many times that was "go read this section of the code" - btw reading the building code has officially topped lease abstracting as the most mind numbing thing ever - and other times it was a more direct problem solving for just the additional notes that I needed to include to comply.
So in my case, I ended up going in for early-morning help sessions 4 times before finally getting my drawings to a level where I should actually submit them. My goal was to get as much of the rust off my plans before submitting as possible. After submitting, my plans came back as needing 15 things addressed, which overall I felt good about as a beginner. However, there were a few that made me question my sanity - such as not being able to use color in my drawings (during 4 meetings with it everywhere and never being told it was a problem!) because they only have black/white scanners (this is 2019 btw). I got the number of items down to 5 and then 1 in subsequent revisions. Some kept coming back because the wording was being nitpicked, but others were making my plans better and clearer.
Eventually the last item (described in the next post) was going to need some extra appealing of the building department's opinions to move forward. But after that (a wasted month), I was able to revise and get approved. My timeline was roughly Oct-Feb to draw and draft my plans before submitting, then Feb-June to get through revisions and the appeal before approval on 6/27/19.
Now with permits in hand after all these months, I'm allowed to pick up a hammer and actually start....more to come on that process.
*I should also add that along with the permits, I also had anticipated difficulty in getting through the historic review of the changes to the building's exterior. Adding back the historic cornice in particular, kept me up at night on what I could/couldn't do and whether the historic preservationists in the area might start fighting any design that I came up with. I was pleasantly surprised with how smooth the process went by talking it through one on one with the Urban Conservator, which can approve some changes without full Historic Conservation Board hearings. She suggested a few changes that made my cornice simpler to build and fit in with surrounding building better and then that was it. I wasn't doing much else that was too crazy (especially given familiarity with historic preservation in the area) so she could give her blessing and it was done that easy.
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