Worst case scenario: I have a friend who had an addition on the back of his house he felt was too small. He tore it off, and built all the way to the back property line, including incorporating the back alley easement behind the house. It was a really stupid thing to do, because not only did L & I make him tear down the new addition, but he couldn't even rebuild what he had torn down. To this day he has never rebuilt anything there, and now he has a nice, and sort of largish, backyard.

Good luck with trying to get ahold of anyone at L&I with permit questions.

I started the process for a roofdeck, went down, sat for a few hours, turned in my architectural plans. I got a letter in the mail about three weeks later saying my plans were being processed, that I would receive communication from them by a specific date (about 6 weeks out from the letter), and it gave a specific person's name and phone number.

Six weeks later, nothing. At about 8 weeks, we called. The guys voicemail was always full, no one else at L&I could tell us anything, and we never got a response to any of our several emails to him.

That was about 14 months ago. We never heard a word from L&I regarding our application...not in 14 months. Eventually we stopped calling and emailing and decided to just build it. (Then we lost our carpenter and the deck got scrapped...so we didn't exactly get away with it...but I bet we would have.

And that was a roof-deck...a break through the roof, 400 sq ft deck. If you are building off the side of your house at or about ground level, it is more hassle and delay than it is worth. Which is unfortunate b/c if they could run their system with any level of reliability we'd all be better off.

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-Jess.
jessmodica@gmail.com

Exactly!

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"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people".