This same thing happened to me when I lived in Eastgate (Bellevue) in 1992, I was selling a house after living there for 8 years...the buyer's appraiser noticed that there was never a permit to enclose the one car garage to a family room. I checked with the building department and they said I would need to go through all the expensive hoops like you mentioned, including the possibility of returning it to orignal garage space. Then a friend said to update the house's square footage and number of rooms with the "Records and Elections" department. No problems once the county record matched the property. Crazy. - Tue May 19 2009, 21:01