I have a question for you all. After having a bunch of different contractors come in and give us quotesfi on nishing our basement, we have learned that we need to get a permit from the town to do this legally. What exactly needs to happen? Do we need an architect to come in and do the sketch? Or does the general contractor do it? How long does it take to get this permit? We want to finish this whole project by August. TIA!
Posted by MrsERod
r u kidding me?? you need a PERMIT to finish a basement??![]()
We never got permits and we added a bathroom...we did a lot of the work ourselves...when we move we will tell the owners and leave the choice up to them if they want us to rip the bathroom out or not......Check with your town for the rules...
most towns want you to get a permit for everything, even a finished basement. It is 'liveable space' they can tax you more!
We are getting ours done in july but Alure (the company helping with extreme makeover) and he said as long as we just call it 'finished storage' we wont need one. Hope he's right!
Yup, you need a permit and you need to have an architect draw up plan, then you bring the plans and your proprty details down to town hall and they will either pass or fail it. It is such a pain!!!! For each phase of the construction you will nedd to stop the work, request an inspection (which can take months depending on your area and the work load of the town) and them as long as it passes you can go on t the next phase. It's a big ordeal, it must meet many codes. Your town has the right to knock on your door if they see a construction van/truck and work taking place and can request to see your permit at any time (it is suppose to be posted in your front window visible to the street, so if a town inspector passes by they can see you are in compliance, and it;s a big red permit that is easily seen). I have a freind who last month was having her basement finished and an inspector knocked on the door and asked for her permit, she didn;t have one so they made all the workers leave and fined her a few thousand dollars and now she needs to start from phase one, alot of work had to be ripped down and re-done since te inspector had no way of knowing if it was done correctly. You;re better off getting a permit, if not, you can have a HUGE headache, it has cost my friend triple the amount since they had to literally re-do all of the work AGAIN to make sure it met town compliance.
