I'm fortunate, I lived in a house for 17 years in an area where you didn't get permits for anything. Now, I've got this man who *thinks* he has to have a permit for everything. I keep tellin' him if you don't ask and they don't see you doing it then you don't need a permit.
We never had a big problem with permits until this last house. The city folk are moving in and want everything like the things they moved to get away from. LOL Living a quarter of a mile in on a private road, we tend to do what we want without permits, but this house was a big project and didn’t want to be required to tear it down. Had a friend that built a garage too close to his neighbors line, went unnoticed for several years, then some nosy official discovered it and even though the neighbor didn’t care, the town made them tear the garage down. Ridiculous!!! We have several small out buildings that were built with no permit and we are now finishing part of our basement-no permit, just holding our brearh.
Really wish I knew how to build rock walls and had the strength to do it. I, too love rock walls and think of our forefathers building miles of them with no tractors or loaders or as hubby says “my bucket”. He thinks he can move mountains with his ancient loader and bucket.