Life Lesson: You Never Want to Make Your Building Inspector Angry!!!

Wow! This has been a roller coaster month around here! It all started with us deciding to enclose our covered deck and turn it into a sun room. We never dreamed for a million years that we'd be in a huge battle 27 days later!

The battle lines were drawn on the 19th when we were told yet again, that our permit was not ready to be picked up, because it hadn't even been looked at, and there were still 7 other permits ahead of it. My husband spoke to some officials at our local township hall, who recommended that he contact the elected official, who is the supervisor to the building inspector.

He visited her in person. While he was waiting for her to return to her office, another man came in who was there for the same reason! She promised Kevin that he would have his permit that day or the following Monday at the latest.

Shortly after that, we got a call from the inspector asking why we would contact his supervisor because we don't even know him...what does that have to do with anything?? If he was doing his job, we wouldn't have had to contact his supervisor!

As you can guess, the permit wasn't available that Monday at the latest, nor was it available today-because now we are being told a whole slew of things that do not make sense.

Initially, we hired someone to design and draw up the plans for the sun room to be submitted for the permit, rather than draw them ourselves. It was a minimal expense to have it done correctly and written to code. It was supposed to make the job of the inspector and our job a lot easier-instead the inspector is "interpreting" the plans through angry lenses and is trying to put us through the ringer.

The designer is at the end of his rope with this whole situation and has suggested we seek legal assistance.  I've typed up a response to the latest round of emails, and I'm letting it sit for a while, while I pray about my attitude-and for direction. Kevin has no patience and wants to call a local news reporter known for getting to the bottom of things to get him on our case. I don't want to bring that kind of publicity to the situation.


All of the other permits were granted the same day they were applied for. This department was three weeks behind. Can you believe there is a building boom in Michigan? In this economy? Ha! He was behind, and he didn't like us calling him on it, so now we pay.

We had heard horror stories from other people about not making the building inspector mad...but never dreamed it would actually be something we'd be dealing with!