I have written and rewritten this post several times, but each time it was so riddled with expletives and crass analogies that I thought it best to calm down and wait until I could write with a little less... emotion.
Realizing it's doubtful that day will ever come, I'm challenging myself to provide an update on our house progress in the most neutral way I can. In other words, I'm objectifying myself for the sake of not offending anyone.
Here goes...
If you've been following this blog for awhile, you know that we've spent the better part of the past year and a half designing our house. That process has included hiring and managing all the extraneous tradesmen that are required by the County to provide reports in order to Pass Go and get even the most basic building permit required to do a remodel in Marin County. We dotted every i and crossed every t.
There are several levels of permits that are granted by the County Planning Dept based on a very specific list of requirements. The top tier permit, "Design Review" is the most lengthy and costly - and opens pandora's box of more tradespeople who are required to provide reports on your house before you can obtain the permit. Unfortunately, their fees often reflect that 'We've gotcha!' (uh oh, almost swore...) mentality.
Another big bummer about the bad permit is, the County encourages all surrounding neighbors (by posting huge yellow documents on telephone poles within a 3 block radius and mailing letters inviting neighbors to a meeting hosted by the town advisory board) to weigh in on your design and pretty much anything else they can think of. This is one of those (insert swear word) unique-to-Marin head scratchers. Wait, you're telling me that my neighbor has a say over whether or not I can cut down a tree on my property that they can't see??? Here's where I could go on and on and on with horror stories of ugliness I've heard over the years we've lived here. I just want to know this - why would anyone care what their neighbor does unless it's going to adversely impact them? Sometime remind me to tell you a story about someone explaining this viewpoint to me and why she believes her neighbor's tree on their own property is really partly hers...
Alright, so by now you see that AVOIDING the big ol nasty permit is the way to go. To do that, the county has some basic thresholds which as long as you don't exceed, can be easily avoided. The main thresholds are: roof height, percentage of square footage (including garages, decks and exterior stairs) to overall lot size (I think it's 30%), retaining walls not to exceed 6', and total square footage not to exceed 4,000 sq ft. (Refraining from crass analogy).
So that's the background, now fast forward to mid July when we were waiting to receive our stamp of approval and could start demo... To our utter shock as well as our architect's, we received a letter stating that we violated the square footage requirement and the project was being sent to Design Review. Oh, and please send a check for $20,000 (the first installment of many) right away. It turns out there was an error in our drawings and space that was assumed to not count towards square footage was in fact calculated into the total. We were over by 800 sq ft!
We of course obliged. Our architect whom we really like, and hey, mistakes do happen, took full (verbal) responsibility for the error. After about a month (and here's where my attempted posts sounded like a truck driver) of complete submission to whomever we were told we needed to pay and whatever they decided to charge (I so wish I could elaborate here and when this whole thing is over I will!).
Seeing our frustration, our architect offered to redesign the house to comply with the sq footage requirement (under 4,000 including garage), but thought we would be unhappy with the result since there would be many sacrifices made to the design we'd spent so long perfecting. We took him up on the offer. The design that came back a couple of hours later was very discouraging. All the additions and altered exterior walls were lopped off and we were left with just a new entry foyer and a one car garage. The floorplan was unchanged from the present configuration. My eyes welled up when I saw it.
The next morning, I found myself walking through the house, graph paper and tape measure in hand, like a demon possessed. Sometimes you need some adversity to test your metal! I started with our list of must have's:
1. A front door and entry (we currently don't have).
2. A two car garage (we currently don't have).
3. A powder room (we currently don't have).
4. A family room (we currently don't have).
And then went looking for wasted or seldom used space. Keep in mind our house is 2,800 sq ft now and a typical two-car garage is 500 sq ft, leaving 700 sq. ft for the rest of the items.
Well, to my amazement, it worked. Everything fit. I relayed my design to our architect and he looked it over, checked square footage, etc and I was within the limit.
Here's the evolution starting with the existing floorplan (click to enlarge).
Year-long design plan:
2 hour lopped-off plan (the blue is new space)
My new version:
So what are the biggest changes?
1. The area between the dining room and living room doesn't currently serve a purpose, so it made sense to relocate the foyer and entry there since it's in the center of the house.
2. I moved the powder room to take up part of the bar area. The only loss is that it is an interior room, thus no window. Who cares? Thinking of dark walls and stone sink...
3. I decided to enclose the remaining bar area since it didn't make sense to be open to the new foyer. So now it's a butler's pantry!
4. The family room is now in the "front door enclosure" and is more of a nook than a room. I'm fine with it being smaller and envision a cozy reading/tv space rather than a full-size family room.
5. Finally, I put the second car space for the garage in the current laundry room (no sketch yet). The loss is that the main rec room space is smaller, but the gain is that the laundry room is now in the middle of the house and much more convenient.
In sum, the footprint and foundation stay exactly the same as the existing floor plan except for the new staircase/front entry and a small sliver of the family room nook. The best part of the new plan is that it leaves more room in the budget for landscaping which we desperately need!
So, where are we now? We have a new landscape architect who is drafting a master plan for our entire property reflecting the new house plans. Hopefully, it will not require retaining walls that are higher than 6' so we can avoid design review!
At this point, nothing's set in stone and we are open to suggestions, so please feel free to be honest! As always, I will keep you posted.
