ITA. All you have to do is watch a few episodes of Holmes on Homes to see that cutting corners can blow up into big problems down the road. I think the biggest lesson is to NOT let your contractor talk you into doing work without a permit--sure the project will take longer and cost more, but you'll have some peace of mind that things are done in a safe way. Holmes is also a Kerdi true-believer!

One of my pet peeves as well. I'm active on a local real estate forum where, without fail, someone posts each week about the best way to get around the Department of Buildings regulations for filing work and getting permits. It's the overwhelming sense of entitlement that gets me - "but filing will add two whole days to my job! And I WANT XYZ in my house, even if the regulations say I can't have it! Wahwahwah!" We're in the middle of filing a big job and I won't say it's not a pain, but those regulations are there to protect me, the neighbors and the whole city. Grrrrr.

While I wholeheartedly agree that building codes serve a very important purpose and should be adhered to, I cannot give such a ringing endorsement for the permitting process. The building permit process varies greatly by locality and is not always fair or reasonable. Some building departments have gone overboard and seem more intent on generating revenue than on ensuring safe standards are met.

In the township I just moved from, pretty much any minor construction or repair to your house (save painting or wallpapering) over $500 in annual expense necessitated a permit. Therefore, simply replacing flooring or cabinets, adding a single faucet or window would require a permit. The process itself required multiple forms be completed including providing a detailed to scale floor plan. The average time for review was 3 weeks and the permit cost was assessed based on a percentage of the project cost as determined by the building dept (which may or may not have anything to do with your actual cost). These kind of unreasonable requirements are why some people legitimately complain about permitting or choose not to comply.

Or, in our case, we have a house that was built about 30 years ago by the main builder/developer in the area. He must have had the building inspectors in his back pocket because some of the things he did are definitely *not* to any building code.

linley, you sure you're not in CA?!

Bluekitobsessed, since I'm in CA, I am interested in these things. What is in the UBC that so protects us from the effects of earthquakes? I'm just curious because I spent about 20k in additional earthquake safety work last year, but no one prior to that told me my house wasn't up-to-date on codes in that respect. It just seemed like there was more we could do.

I can't give you much detail because I'm not a structural engineer, but here are some random things I've picked up from 15 years of working with SEs. The UBC gets revised every 3 years and after every EQ it gets stricter.
1. Bolt the house to the foundation! This is a relatively easy retrofit ($2K-5K?) but critically important. Try putting some cans of soup on a sheet of plywood, shake and tilt the board, and see how well they stay where you put them. Then imagine your family living in one of the cans. Any questions?
2. The UBC has lots of stuff on shear panels (aka "important walls"). Before the mid 1990s drywall was considered to have some small shear strength, but they learned after Northridge that it didn't. Don't cut a hole in it for a window or let your contractor notch the joists without a SE's blessing.
From what I saw of the Chengdu EQ devastation, no shear panels, just typical stick framing.
And for heaven's sake, don't put your heavy framed pictures right above your bed, try when possible to attach stuff going on walls to studs (not just drywall), and don't get me started on the subject of open shelves.

Pbris, I make my living suing developers just like yours. I'm probably considered a greedy vulture by contractors, but I'm sort of a last line of defense for homeowners whose houses are built wrong. Unfortunately there are lots of building officials who don't catch stuff as well as lots of petty tyrants who go in the other direction.

There were some very interesting pictures from hurricane Andrew, in '92. In a vast expanse of totally flattened houses, there were a cluster of houses that undamaged. What made them survive? They were built to code; the surrounding houses weren't. They were houses that Habitat for Humanity had built, and had to deal with inspectors that didn't want them, so they made them build to code. The surrounding houses, built by commercial contractors, were typical slovenly stuff, and got blown over.

(Trust me, nearly any house built by a contractor isn't up to code in some respect. They know what the inspectors let them get away with.)