Trouble Comes a Calling...

Our Permit is finally issued!

Well as I had briefly mentioned in the first post we had to separate from our original architect/builder due to his inability to progress the job, and not wanting to incur any liability on us I waited for the 180 days to expire (plus a few more weeks that we had agreed upon earlier to accommodate for weather delays) that was agreed to in the original contract for the term of the build. As a whole I believe we were very tactful in the manner in which we maneuvered this coup. You see we were certain from our investigations that this architect and representative for the firm was not being forthright with us for quite some time. Since I had a good sum of money tied up with him for the building of the house I wanted to extract everything I could from him to minimize our losses. Luckily our payment arrangement was incremental so we never got too far ahead of the progress though against my family’s urging I did probably extend one to many payments (I guess it’s my natural tendency to trust others). With continued urging and constant and somewhat forceful badgering we pushed him and the on-site Foreman to continue to progress the house which they did but only marginally, enough though for us to believe that we had gotten from them about as much as he was willing to do. With this in mind we approached him with a good faith arrangement, which was that as a condition of payment of our next installment (which we did not intend to pay but instead used it as an incentive) he would gather the materials he said he had purchased but were still not onsite (he claimed they were being held in one of his warehouses) and we would then have the chance to inspect/inventory them and if we were satisfied we would release the next installment. Well it worked out pretty good; he delivered practically all the interior fixtures; toilets, sinks, switches faucets, with the exception of some lighting and of course the windows. When we thought we had all we were going to get from him we kicked him and his crew off the premises and delivered a letter of dismissal along with a notice of filing with the PRC for his misconduct. Surprisingly he didn’t put up a fight; sure there was the email and phone call urging us to stay the course which we politely declined, having already given him ample time to resolve the main issue which was to obtain our building permit. You see once you file the initial paperwork you can begin in good faith the construction until the permit gets issued, and it was under this premise we began our project, not realizing of course that since our architect had been released from his firm he did not possess the requirements to obtain one. It was later conveyed to us that he had been trying to get one of his former co-workers to file and obtain it on his behalf, which never happened. Another issue which caused some confusion surrounding the issuance of the permit was when one of the city inspectors came to our job site and discovered we had changed the plans. You see originally the driveway was perpendicular with the street and cut into the living room effectively reducing it by about half. Recognizing we would rather have more living space we worked out with our architect to rearrange the driveway and make it parallel with the street thus preserving that big area where the driveway would have been as living space, something everyone was happy with. Well he had not submitted the updated blueprints to the municipal office even though he provided them to us, and he claimed he was having difficulty convincing them that the new design met code (must have one car off street parking). With our successful break from the original architect/builder completed we took the recommendation of one of the senior municipal inspectors and hired a well-known foreman and crew to complete the house. My brother-in-law would act as the general contractor so to speak and make all material purchases and pay out the agreed upon salaries weekly, something I wish we had done from the beginning. Though this arrangement did put a lot of burden on my family, which I was initially unwilling to place on them since I knew they we already busy. They did however preform flawlessly once all the agreements were made. My family did the leg work and resubmitted the (revised) plans and finally obtained the requisite building permit, this was a very happy occasion since it meant we would now only be hindered by the pace of the workers and the delivery of funds and supplies, something which had never been problematic. With our official filing with the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) specifically the National Board of Architects our former architect/builder was found by the PRC to have intentionally mislead us and was given the stiffest possible action under the law which permanently revoked his license, put him on a watch list and basically removed any legitimate claim to his profession so if he tried to do this again and the potential buyer made any inquiries at all they would find him to be illegitimate and unable to do business within this area. Of course it is buyer beware so the buyer must make inquiries of their potential architect/builder, we did and at the time of our investigation he was legit and working for a larger company (who let him go early in our project). When we queried them as to why we were not notified they told us that although he had used their letter head and name our project was not on their company list so they did not know he had entered into an agreement with us. He was apparently aware of his pending departure from the company and was working side jobs using the company name. Live and Learn! So as I have said although this did create plenty of turmoil and strife during the middle portion of the build we were able to get through it without too much expense beyond what we had budgeted and it definitely made us more careful going forward since our trust had been damaged. With a new crew and foreman came some new challenges which I will detail in a later post.