This project is the first I’ve ever worked on where I set out to do everything the “right” way, instead of the easy or fastest or cheapest way. We’ve hired an engineer to make sure everything is built to code. We’re working with the city to get necessary permits, etc. Initially, there was a temptation not to do all of this extra work, after all, how likely were we to get caught?

There are a number of reasons not to take shortcuts, in our case at least.

This building will someday be spaces for rent to other people. We want to make sure that it is built safely so that nobody gets hurt by it. We also want to be able to have liability insurance and insurance on the building itself that values it properly.

I’ve never built something from the ground up, so involving professionals ensures that it’s built properly and doesn’t fall down.

But the main reason we did it the right way was so that we wouldn’t have to worry in the future. I didn’t want to be paranoid about city inspectors finding the project, or the utility companies discovering that we’d done something we shouldn’t. Taking a shortcut now might save a little time, a few thousand dollars, but the legacy of that shortcut would last for the lifetime of the building. We decided that it just wasn’t worth it.