On Wednesday 10/5 I sat around in the office at the Anne Arundel County Maryland Department of Licenses and Permits down in Annapolis. The permit process was pretty painless, but the wait was three hours.

I needed a building permit for the following changes

• Changing the size of the opening in the non-bearing partition wall
• Adding new windows to an end wall
• Adding new windows to an exterior load-bearing wall

To support that, I put together a 1/4" = 1' scale plan that showed the new windows, the old and new wall locations, and included call outs that indicated minimum header and approximate window sizes. I also showed an elevation of the new wall opening (not strictly necessary), and some information that showed how the roof trusses were oriented in relation to the windows. That last piece was necessary so the plan reviewer could calculate loading.

Calculating minimum header sizes, for a wall with only a roof above it, is easy enough to do if you have a book on windows or access to that information on the internet.

The permit was all of $65, and now allows me to do the work, have it inspected, and not worry about code violations or stop-work orders.

It was well worth the effort.