Well My Reader Buds Marilyn And Mike Were Right… It’s Probably The Architect’s Doing — And The Engineer’s

So on my previous post I lamented large and loud and long about that dang City of Los Angeles Department of Building & Safety requiring the back half of the house to be reinforced to a ridiulously heavy-duty level if we were to dare to consider widening the dormer and adding a bathtub to the second floor.

Turns out I was wrong.

We haven’t even gotten to what the city has to say yet.

What happened was the structural engineer — who must be from the firm of CYA&H (Cover Your Ass & How) — is the one that ordered up those 17 (maybe 18) 4″ x 4″ structural support posts and the double-sandwiching of the existing floor joists. Then instead of the architect giving us a call to say “Hey, you might wanna look at this just in case you doubling your budget is something you DON’T want to do,” he just rolled them plans over to the city and submitted them.

Without showing them to us first.

Is it me, or did the architect skip delivery on  what I would call a Crucial Bit of Information? I won’t jump to conclusions just yet, because after all I’m just a layman who kneejerked his blame at the wrong entity, but it seems to me that if I hypothetically I was an architect and the hypothetical engineering plans for a hypothetical home renovation plan I was hypothetically involved in just unexpectedly doubled in hypothetical scope and cost and time, I just MIGHT hypothetically wanna clue the homeowners in on it.

Because you know, hypothetically the homeowners might be all OMGWTF!?,  and to me it’s better to OMGWTF!? before — I say: BEFORE — a civic authority knows about something, rather than after.

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Will

Will Campbell arrived in town via the maternity ward at Good Sam Hospital way back in OneNineSixFour and has never stopped calling Los Angeles home. Presently he lives in Silver Lake with his wife Susan, their cat Rocky, dogs Terra and Hazel, and a red-eared slider turtle named Mater. Blogging since 2001, Will's web endeavors extend back to 1995 with laonstage.com, a comprehensive theater site that was well received but ever-short on capital (or a business model). The pinnacle of his online success (which speaks volumes) arrived in 1997, when much to his surprise, a hobby site he'd built called VisuaL.A. was named "best website" in Los Angeles magazine's annual "Best of L.A." issue. He enjoys experiencing (and writing about) pretty much anything creative, explorational and/or adventurous, loves his ebike, is a better tennis player than he is horr golfer, and a lover of all creatures great and small -- emphasis on "all."