Renovation Drama

Everything is drama to me. Recently unemployed, I have been looking at renovating this little house on the prairie we are living in. I have been networking with contractors and picking everything I can from their brains. I have no interest in building new houses, only doing renovations, additions, whatever. Next week I will go look at a $50,000, 500sq foot house close to Laduc that I may buy, to renovate, add an addition, rent out, and flip in 2+ years when oil reaches a new 52 year high again. Just tonight I put together some disturbing facts in my head, as I lay in bed. Our house was 500sq feet, then it got a 300sq foot extension years ago, that was very poorly done. That included the bathroom, where I had to rebuild the floor when we moved in. Part of my information sapped out of contractors was about this sort of thing, if I put a further extension on with permits, are they going to make me fix the previous poor workmanship and under built structures. Which leads me to my favorite question, who needs a permit anyway, why can't we just build it and ask permission later, if it comes up. The answer is, 'your right, that's what everybody around here does, build stuff without permits.' Where is the consequence? Here I will give you the best example I heard. Buddy spends 2 years making this glorious 200sq foot mud room on his house. Instead of drywall he used hand cut cedar planks, so it looked like a sauna. The room was not only for boots but also a laundry room, so he had a 220v plug for the drier, and plugs all over for this and that. When he sells the place, the buyer gets a survey, and that finds the house to be 200sq feet bigger, so the town will not sign off on the survey, until there is a permit pulled and inspection done on this extension. A valid survey is required for the real estate transaction, from what I understand. So a permit is pulled, the inspector wants to see every wire run to every receptacle and so 12"x12" holes are cut in the cedar walls above every plug. Wiring is fine. He wants to see the floor joists, spanning, size ext. A hole is cut in the hard wood floor. 2x6's were used to run a span of 16', they should have been 2x8's, basically the whole extension has to come down, now the buyer is no longer interested, and walks. A man in town that had a similar house to us, built a deck, replaced his windows, and built a garage, sold his house for $200k, but it almost didn't happen. He had permits for the deck, but figured his garage was more like a garden shed, and shouldn't need a permit. The village wouldn't accept the survey until the garage was cleared. He had purchased the 'garage kit' from a hardware store. He had to draw up plans, then hire an engineer to approve them, and all sorts of drama, and expense. I was just thinking of my awesome 3 car 'lean to' addition on the barn/garage, with its 2x4 ceiling rafters, that sag considerably in the middle of their 12' span wile the snow piles high on the roof. But if one was to change them to 2x8's or eve 2x6's the height loss would only allow ATV's and sleds to fit in there. This all makes me think back to three years ago when I bought the place for next to nothing. I know I refused my right to get a building inspection, but I think I was given the option to save another $500 and use the previous owners survey for the transaction. This could mean that all this scabbiness has to come down and be redone, if I should want to take advantage and sell during the next big oil boom. As any buyer paying over $100k is probably going to want to get a new survey done. But in my case the cost of a survey and building inspection would have added more than 6% to the cost of the house. I will have to pull out my real estate paperwork and see if I can figure that stuff out, and/or get a survey done one of these days, wile I have the time to make things right. I will keep you updated as I figure things out.
Malcolm