The garage was converted to an office, which I now use as an art studio, sewing room, and workout room. But- the last owners did it without permits they took off the garage doors, and removed the driveway as mentioned in the last post. This gives us about 400 more sq. feet of living space, but it means we can't park a car in there- but we couldn't even get a car down the driveway because of the fence at the side make it too narrow for modern cars. Well, two months after we bought the house, and it had passed all the inspections, we got a note on the door that a city inspector had come by because even though the last owners had gotten permits for new windows, new electric wiring and circuit breakers, and a new water heater, they had never had them signed off by the city. The only problem was how do we have them inspected without having the garage seen? no garage doors, no driveway, what the hell? So, we bought pavers, laid out a fake driveway going from the edge off the concrete to where the garage doors would have been- making it all wide enough for a car to drive over the gravel pit of a side yard, Then, I covered the two sides of the garage with tarps, built a bunch of 8 foot by 6 foot canvases like the flats from a theater piece, painted a couple of them with some really bad paintings of eerie ghost like doors, and had Jamie outside painting one more of them while I took the inspector around the back and sides of the house to check out everything. Jamie was under strict orders not to say anything cause he can't lie, while I can claim to be very accomplished at this often necessary skill. The inspector didn't even blink, signed off on the improvements, and was gone in fewer than 10 minutes. WHEW!
