Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
^ I'll give LVDW credit that he can actually do construction work with his own hands (unlike me, I've done some serious rehabs yet never lifted a finger--my hands are still soft and sexy as ever), but c'mon, you can't tell me what you did was legal. You just got away with it because you never got caught.
I have 1 piece of advice: if you plan to do what LVDW does, make sure the building you purchase doesn't have a bunch of outstanding violations. If it does, the city and the courts will be on your ass like a dog in heat, and you'll never be able to accomplish anything. Do some research before buying and make sure that a property has no active violations, or if it does have them they should be very minor and easy to remedy (no ownership sign posted, a broken window, etc) easy to fix and not requiring that inspectors have to come in and walk through your entire property.
Once you establish that, whack away and do whatever you are capable of doing. Doing your own construction (if you're good at it) is the best way to save money, IMO. That was never an option for me.
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Yeah of course my earliest experiments in renovations were relatively minor (started off just gutting the bathrooms and kitchens and doing bare minimum repairs to electric and plumbing), I quickly moved on to more and more legit renovations as my knowledge and finances improved. The thing is the city will never mess with an owner occupant unless they are doing something blatantly and obviously unsafe. If you are just running an extra breaker to your attic they will never bother you, they get quite pissy if you rip apart the entire interior of a building all at once. That's why my first building was a gradual upgrading of spaces as I lived there, they aren't going to come shaft me for ripping all the tile out of an old bathroom and adding a GFCI outlet while the walls are open. My second project I used repair and replace permits on and my third project I hired a GC and used full new construction permits and haven't varied from that since.
Unfortunately this is how I know exactly how out of whack Chicago's building code is. Used to be no PVC, no BX, no vinyl wiring, etc. First few wiring projects I used some BX or vinyl, then I learned how to bend conduit and have used that since. I still do improvement projects on my first building/home probably once a quarter. I leveled all the floors and stairs in my entire enclosed porch a few years ago and just got around to upgrading that plywood to solid oak with a solid oak Bannister this spring. I'm going to add oak trim and AC to the porch once the weather cools down this fall. No matter how much bigger my business gets, I'll never be able to resist the sheer pleasure of seeing something from nothing with my own hands.