BiggerPockets

Hi! As far as the engineer goes, I would contact a local draftsman and have them do the drawings. Most have relationships with an engineer that can review and stamp the drawings and you will save a little money. I did this with a foundation for a modular home that I built a couple of years back and I think the whole thing cost me around $800 in Maryland. It would have been easily twice that if I had the engineer do the whole job. I can't imagine it would near that much for simply replacing a door.

What you will likely end up with is an as built detail drawing of the door and framing and the framing detail for replacing the hole. I can't imagine why they are requiring drawings to remove a door, but each municipality is different.

Another route you might take is to have an inspector come out for a courtesy inspection and look at the door and explain to him how you are going to frame to remove the door (make sure you are providing for a header in the framing). He'll likely offer you his opinion; agree with whatever he tells you. If he's ok with it, see if the permits board will waive the plans requirement. Most of the time, the inspectors will work with you, especially since you're trying to do the right thing and bring the structure back up to code. I was able to get permits to rebuild a 2 story addition once using this process in Baltimore county, I imagine you'll probably have success with it for just framing in a door.

As far as the assessors are concerned, I don't imagine you'll have any problem, but then again stranger things have happened so I wouldn't dare say for sure that it will be ok.

Jason, the house is concrete block, I guess what the county is concerned about is the plan to refill the door area once the door is removed.
If my offer is accepted, I'm planning to use builder's risk insurance temporarily while the work is done. But should I tell the insurance company what kind of work is being done? I'm concerned that the insurance co. will have some kind of issue with an unapproved garage, even though I'm converting it back.

Thanks, I'll do that. It sounds like it could be doable, My offer expires at EOD tomorrow. In the meantime I'm looking at other things, trying to take the advice on here not to fall in love with a single deal.

Why would you need an engineer to remove a door?

I recently converted a closed out garage back to a garage and it was very easy since it was just a drywall job.

I guess this can depend on your county regulations/permitting but then again the easiest thing would be to leave the door.

Good luck! Let us know how it turns out.

UMMM

Why does the city even need to know about you removing the door?

If the city doesn't know about it just go make the change and they will NEVER know.

As far as taking the garage conversion back to a garage I have done it before. It was pretty simple and painless. The people had even removed the garage door and put brick up. I just knocked it all out and installed the garage door.