I am fortunate to have a close friend who owns an excavation company. I should clarify by adding, “the best excavation company I’ve seen.” I made the call and the next morning a ten-wheeler was backing down our driveway with an excavator in tow.
There are very few projects that do not require a building permit in our local town. The permit fee for an attached/detached garage is a flat rate ($275.00 at the time of this writing, 2014) for structures up to 500 sqft.
Building projects in your driveway gets old fast. When our local meteorologist spoke of a 2% chance of rain, that 2% chance flipped to a 100% chance the moment I had taken all my tools out of our basement and set them up in the driveway.