Oh my!
We have been considering building a garage with a flex space above for quite some time. We live in a very old house with hardly any storage, but we do have a double lot and plenty of space outside for a building (or 2 or 3).
After weighing the pros and cons we decided to wade into an area that we have limited experience with, building from scratch. We have renovated many homes but a new build is something quite different . I’m going to make this short and sweet……do your homework and get the right permits. Or hire someone qualified who is licensed, insured, and bonded to do the work for you.
Now here is where I give you fair warning. We have talked to 6 different contractors to give an estimate and have only gotten 1 written proposal back. In fairness, it has only been a couple months so we are still waiting on a few others (smh). I thought that finding the right contractor would make the permitting process much easier as my experience with permits in commercial builds in much larger cities has been, to say the least, problematic. As it turns out, I couldn’t be more wrong.
Now here’s the shoutout to the City of New Bern. (Let me qualify this by saying we have not started the build yet so no inspections have been done). They have been more than helpful to someone who asked a lot of questions, did not have the correct paperwork, needed help to adjust the plan, and was altogether a complete novice about this process.
As I said, we are just getting started and this will be a long process, much like the tiny home we renovated, but I will try to keep you up to date on the process and we can learn together. Make sure to check out my Instagram/Facebook pages for updates as that is where most of the posts will end up, and don’t be frightened by the scary hair.