It’s not every day you build first and ask permission later, and get away with it.

That’s exactly what happened for Michael Pimentel, a Cambridge homeowner who put up a massive two-storey addition without a building permit. Two years later, the city has agreed to let it stay.

Pimentel bought the old house at 205 Water St. S. in 2021.

“The house wasn’t livable at the time,” his architect, Sarah Lang, told the committee of adjustment Wednesday evening. “He was going through a separation and went through a divorce with his wife and needed a place for his son and himself.”

So he hired a builder. Plans were drawn up, but, Lang said, the paperwork never made it to city hall. The addition — 338 square metres, plus an attached garage — went up anyway in 2022.

“Eventually they (the builder) ha

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