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It is always recommended that the construction work you plan on doing in your house is drawn by a professional such as a residential designer or an architect. There are no licenses required to prepare drawings for a home design project or any kind of project for that matter, specially if they are considered standard construction and the details for construction follow the general guidelines from the city or county. But sometimes depending on the job, even when the job seems simple, the city and county officials ask for the stamp and signature of a structural engineer. That is the only license anybody needs to officially submit plans at the city or county offices and to get them approved. If the designer follows the city standard details and notes, the project can be approved easily and sometimes even without a structural engineer’s stamp. It depends on the project.
Hiring someone who is not a residential designer or architect to prepare your plans is not advisable. There are construction companies called “design build” that offer design services along with their construction services and guess what? They do not emphasize on the design but the construction because that is where they make their money. So they really do not care about the look or the feel of the projects in terms of design. Do not hire contractors to prepare your home design layouts because contractors build and their specialty is not ‘design’. Get a residential design professional to design your addition or remodel and to prepare your home design plans and then hire a contractor to build the project. 
In the state of California, as well as in many other states, there is no license required to prepare plans, to submit them at the city/county or to even get them approved for construction when it comes to single family residential projects. Continue reading
Last year, while I was looking for properties to buy and repair (the so called “fixer uppers”), I visited a house in the College area in San Diego with a very strange configuration. The home had 5 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms which mathematically makes no sense to me. The original structure was built in the forties but it was obvious that the home had undergone a big remodel/addition obviously without a home design layout that worked. One of the bathrooms was located inside the biggest bedroom which made that room the master bedroom and the other bathroom was shared by the rest of the bedrooms, 4 bedrooms total. That 4/1 ratio makes no sense and here is why: If we were to have one person per bedroom in that house, four people would have to take turns to use the only bathroom in that house because the one inside the master bedroom is obviously private. 
