It can be extremely maddening particularly if you are new to building projects. When my partner and I made up my mind to build a little cabin on a lake we had no idea what a headache it would become.
It didn’t help that we were living a three-hour drive away from the project. When we first acquired our lake lot we parked a recreational vehicle on it. We constructed a little shed to store water toys in.
This was fine for some years, but then we made a decision that we needed to have more space and nicer accommodations. We approached a general contractor and found a plan for a two-bedroom cabin with an opened apartment. We assumed this would be a way to have a pleasant space for adults and a place for children to collapse.
The 2 bedrooms on the lower level were tucked under the terrace and there had been a bog between them. We also put a 3 quarters bath upstairs. We selected the general contractor from the area near to the lake so that he would be ready to sub contract the work out to local craftsmen. When he started talking about different building and the electric safety code we assumed that he knew what they were.
We were extremely disappointed when the complete project had to come to a dead stop as the cabin failed to pass the electric safety code. The sub-contracted electrician failed to think about the vicinity of the lake. There’s a different electric safety code for lakeshore properties than there is for those found off the lake. All of the work had to stop till the electrician came back to make the required changes. He was on holiday for a week and then was prepared for a job out of the city that he wished to complete before he came back to ours. When we initially began the project in early spring we assumed everything would be done so we would be able to move things into the cabin by the end of the summer. With all of the delays we were not in a position to start the interior finishing work till the end of October. We were so grateful the last inspection of the electric and plumbing passed.