Permitting Is No Joke!

A surprising amount of my time over the last couple weeks has been spent on applying for permits. Actually, the application part wasn't time consuming... it was preparing for the applications.

At least that's something I'm pretty good at: documentation! Somehow in my previous life I've developed a kind of patience and affinity for tedious requirements documents. So that aspect of it was pretty easy. But the county and the city need detailed drawings of the building, the existing layout, the proposed layout, as well as details of plumbing, and electrical changes.

That is NOT something I'm good at.

So my first instinct was to have my contractor or designer create these... but that quickly went from a potential cost of $2,500 to $6k and then, all told, $10k. No thanks. So I broke open photoshop and painstakingly built an exacting recreation of the layout. I had some help on the layout of the actual bar being constructed from my design firm, but detailed layouts of kitchen, plumbing, and electrical diagrams were all me. And, finally, I got them to the point where they were acceptable.

At least I'll use the term "acceptable" for now because, as of this morning, both the San Mateo County health department and the San Carlos city building office accepted my submission for the permit application! We will see how "acceptable" they are in the coming days as they dig into them along the road to getting a building permit.

Still, this was a pretty big step and a massive weight off my shoulders. Assuming we don't have significant problems with the plans, we're on track to get construction started in a few weeks... which keeps us on track to open in August!

Now on to the next steps, which include (wait for it...) ADDITIONAL PLAN SUBMISSIONS! The city needs separate plans for both sign changes (we're redoing the awning outside) as well as a sidewalk seating permit. When I thought about opening a wine bar, this wasn't the part that excited me.

But that's coming soon. We should be setting up meetings with a couple wine vendors in the next two weeks. Tastings and menu creation soon to follow.

I promise, that will be a more exciting update!

#update #construction