Wednesday, June 06, 2007

RULES AND REGULATIONS!!

There are lots of different rules associated with owning and fixing a house in America! Judging from Achims frustrations with the rules, they must not have rules like this in Switzerland.

Our house needs new windows everywhere, and there are about 16 windows in this house. We figured out that we need a permit. First I call an office in a larger city near by, the woman tells me to come down to her office. I start thinking about it and think that is too far to drive. So I start searching through the phone book. There is a closer place to go.

We drive to the Satellite beach city hall, they give us all the rules that we have to follow. We go to Lowes, the home improvement store, find all the proper windows that fit the specs. The manager makes us copies of the papers we need.

We bring back the info. to the city hall and they say,"oh you live in that neighborhood, that is out of our jurisdiction."

We call Viera the place that governs our neighborhood, its 45 minutes away. They tell us that they have different rules and the windows have to be even stronger. (more expensive and more of a pain) Achim drives to Viera and they tell him that he needs a Deed for the house and the homeowner present (thats me).

I call Claire, the woman that closed with us on the house. She tells me she sent the Deed out 2 weeks ago. I said it never arrived, she said, Hmmmm....to bad. So she send me a copy via fax, but lets me know the original was the one she sent, so there is no longer an original copy.

Achim and I "stand up" at 6am so we can get the permit before I go to work. The woman takes our paperwork and says go eat Breakfast and come back in an hour.

We go have breakfast. Walk into the permiting office, and the woman looks at us and says"You are going to hate me." She then explains that the computer systems went down and we will have to come back again in 2 hours.

But I had to go to work. After I got off work we rushed back and now we finally have our permits!! Yipeee!!

Achim was installing a window by himself, and stepped on a large black snake. Thus causing a chain reaction and the window fell out and broke. Luckily the girl at Lowes took it back with a smile.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

there is plenty of fixer uppers over here... you guys should buy herenext...rules but no one listens to em...and it is in the middle ogf no where!!!

I miss you guys!!