This morning, work started early on digging holes to sink the posts for the pergola, while our contractor, Tom, was at the City Code office trying to sort out a permit snafu. When Tom arrived here, he brought bad news. We are not going to be allowed to build our deck until the Board of Adjustment approves a variance and issues us a permit for our garage. Now, mind you, this garage came with the house when we bought it, but had never been permitted — a fact we had never been made aware of throughout the entire house-buying process.

Great!  So, our old deck has been demolished, and our new deck has been framed, but there is no surface on which to walk, and it will remain that way until mid-January or February!  Plus, we now have some huge holes and some nice big piles of mud and a backyard that is a disaster area.  And, with all the extra permit fees, we probably can’t afford to cut back the front of the garage, and make a space to allow for gardening equipment to be moved into the backyard, so that we can finally grow our own veggies, as we’ve been wanting to do for a couple of years. Actually, starting a veggie garden was the initial impetus for rebuilding the deck in the first place.

To top it all off, in order to be in compliance with the impervious cover allowance of no more than 45%, we have to have all our sidewalks removed.  Then, have a gravel path with some stones installed, so at least folks can walk between the driveway and the front door without having to trample through mud or grass or garden.  Cha-ching!  And the city has a plan to put sidewalks in many people’s front yards (would have been ALL our front yards, were it not for our fabulous neighborhood folks on the planning committee who were able to talk them down).

I am thankful, however, that at least the City Code office isn’t making us remove the deck framing, ‘cuz then we’d just be out of money with a big mud-hole in the backyard. I hated our old mostly useless, poorly designed, and poorly built deck, but even that piece of crap was better than stepping out into a mudhole. Sigh!

Wonder what the postman’s gonna think when his nice little sidewalks in our yard all disappear?

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