<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I got a buddy who claims he was the first Owner-Builder on Camano Island.\u00a0 The year was 1977, the same year I bought my shack.\u00a0 I met him 13 years later and we ended up building 3 sailboats together, one for each of us and one for his pal the building inspector who became my friend too.\u00a0 Ironically, I may be one of the last Owner-Builders in Island County.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think my permit was ever signed off on so I may well be the last official O-B.<\/p>\n
I guess maybe they figured the codes got too complex for us amateur housebuilders, all those R-factors for insulation and E-glass in fenestrations and X-factors for our marriages.\u00a0 Or maybe it was this:\u00a0 a permit for an Owner-Builder was next to nothing, something like $50 when I got ours.\u00a0 The county might\u2019ve done the taX-factor and realized us hippies were costing them revenue.\u00a0 Maybe some of us built our own palaces to save the permit expense, but I would\u2019ve paid full freight just for the right to build my own place the way I wanted.\u00a0 A few hundred bucks wasn\u2019t gonna stop me.<\/p>\n
I spoze we can still build our own Xanadu, nothing to stop us.\u00a0 Just have to disclose that a rank amateur threw the hammer and ran the saw, flashed the windows, shingled the roof, installed the electric and plumbing and if you\u2019re the prospective buyer, best beware!!!\u00a0 The people at the county sheds told me I\u2019d be a Total Idiot to apply for an Owner-Builder status.\u00a0 Boy, he read me like a book.\u00a0 A comic book, I\u2019d bet.<\/p>\n
By the time I got our permit, us Owner-Builders had to meet the same codes as any fly-by-night contractor, go through the same inspections, all the rigamarole as the Big Boyz.\u00a0 In other words, the government here doesn\u2019t allow for hippie shacks or slam-bang cabins.\u00a0 We got to build our parents\u2019 suburban homes.\u00a0 Might explain why kids just stay with their folks now — why bother building the same damn place twice?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got a buddy who claims he was the first Owner-Builder on Camano Island.\u00a0 The year was 1977, the same year I bought my shack.\u00a0 I met him 13 years later and we ended up building 3 sailboats together, one for each of us and one for his pal the building inspector who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[4972,4973,4971],"class_list":["post-15865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-build-yer-own-house","tag-have-hammer-will-build","tag-owner-builder"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15865"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15866,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15865\/revisions\/15866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}