…but you can grapple with them in endless, passive aggressive futility. Hey, this is Seattle after all. 🙂

Today, I spent a not entirely frustrating, and not entirely satisfactory, half hour with a city building department permitting “coach”. She very patiently and diligently explained why I couldn’t do that I wanted, and what I would need to do to pursue my ideals in the future; thereby ensuring that I would make yet another (my third) visit to the 20th floor of the Seattle Municipal Building to curry the favor of the lords of the landscape.

This is all because I’m tired of putting up those damned pop-up tents for our biennial pig roast, and because an outdoor workspace for building small boats has been a long standing pipe dream of mine. My plan is to build a pole pavilion/picnic shelter on the south side of my lot, next to the shop.

Should be easy, right? Yeah, sure. Actually, the building itself should be pretty straight forward, but my first foray into the byzantine ant colony of downtown Seattle was pretty discouraging. It seems that my free plans, downloaded from the internet, didn’t include the required engineering calculations for sheer loads on embedded posts, snow loads on trusses… etc. You get the idea.

So although I was looking forward to building it myself, I contacted a couple of contractors that specialize in pole buildings. Let’s just say that sticker shock is not exclusive to automobile purchases. 😮

Eventually, I found a fellow who does material kits, and custom drawn (and engineered) plans for pole buildings. The materials are all sourced locally, so the shipping costs are reasonable. Thus, today’s trip to building plan purgatory.

The process continues, and will likely for some time to come. Just one more project on the stove. Stay tuned.

Cheers,
Tom