Finally

Well, I finally got the paperwork back from the town. It only took two months! Oh, well. There is no way that I'm going to start building it now. This project will have to wait until the Spring.

Still Waiting.

I am still waiting for the town to send me my special permit and variance. They said it would be a month, but when I called a couple days ago they said it can take a bit longer.... I just hope that it comes soon so I am not building the porch in freezing weather.

Approved

I attended to Zoning Board meeting last night and I got to watch about five other "cases" go before me. By the time it got to me I thought it would be easy but I always get a bit nervous in front of people so my heart was beating pretty hard by the time I got up to the podium. It wasn't hard though.

I stated that I want to get a special permit because I was extending the foot print of my porch and I needed a variance because I wanted to work on a corner of my house that is "pre-existing, non-conforming." They quickly informed me that I had it backwards, and then asked why I was replacing my porch.... Have you ever seen the Sienfeld episode where Jerry is returning something and they ask him why he returning it and he asks, "why do you want to know?" and they tell him that its just for the record. So he says the reason he's returning it is, "Spite." ... That's how I felt for a moment - I felt like saying, "It's my property and I just want to do it. If you have a problem with what I'm doing let me know, but the reasons as to why I'm doing it should be inconsequential."

Well, I told them that the porch was unsafe because it is rotting and that I wanted to enclose it to make better use of the space. They did ask why I was increasing the size and I replied that it was for design reasons and I thought it would look better.

Then they finally talked about it for a bit and then approved it.... Yahoo. Now I just have to wait for the paperwork to go through... About a month.

Here are the plans I submitted to the town. I have no idea if this will be enough (along with a plot plan and a description of the reason that I want to replace the porch) to convince the ZBA to apporve the special permit and the variance.


The plans I submitted to the town.

Ready to go to the ZBA

I am now ready to go to the Zoning Board of appeals. I have my design "finished" at least from the outside and I finished a couple elevations. I will add pictures of them soon. I will be dropping off all this paperwork today so that I can go to the ZBA meeting on September 9. I Also wrote a check for $300 to cover the ZBA Fee and "advertising costs."

By the way, when I post the pictures of the design you may see that we chose to use the Combination Door Company for all of the windows! It's very cool actually, I will be using doors as panels to create the walls of the porch. There will be 10 door in all (6 in front and two on either side) that make up the walls of the porch. Only one of those 10 doors will have door hardware to act as the exterior door, the rest will be permanently fixed. Check out the Doors (we chose "traditional #11") if you like and an example of how to use the doors as stationary panels for 3 season rooms like our new porch will be.

Designs coming soon.

Total cost so far: $300

Special Permit and a Variance

Well, I went to the town offices yesterday and found out that my house sits too close to the property line on the North and West Sides. Since the porch sits on the North side I have to get a special permit from the town to be able to do ANYTHING to that side of my house. And then since I want to change (and in this case I am increasing) the foot print of the structure I need to ask for a variance.

So this means that I need to finish my designs, come up with some elevations (pictures of what it will look like from the side and front) and get the plot plan (I luckily had this done a couple months ago) and bring it all to the zoning board meeting which I found out is the first week each month. They said that it usually takes a month after the decision to get the paperwork through so that I can pull a permit. So we are looking at the September Zoning board meeting (since I missed the deadline for the August one by a couple days) and then getting the permit in October so that I can get started and hopefully have it finish sometime in November.

Oh and by the way it will cost me $300 to be able to find out if the zoning board will allow me to make this change. . .

Working on the design.

So here is a picture, because I guess I've got to start keeping a log of what this thing looks like, of my house with the current porch. I know the porch looks fine, but it is rotted and too small. So far we have just decided to replace it with an enclosed porch that would be about a foot deeper (1 foot further out from the house). While I work on some designs I am also trying to find out what i have to do to pull a permit in the town of Andover, MA. I remember the former owner of the house telling me when they bought the house that it is "pre-existing, non-conforming." I know that means that it doesn' conform to the current zoning laws but I don't know what that means in terms of what I have to do differently to rebuild my porch.

My House from the front with the old porch

The front porch is in bad condition

My front porch is a normal porch attached to a house built around 1921. It's an open porch that has had some work done on it in the last ten years to replace some of the decking and some of the framing and supports, but all in all it is rotting and is probably covered in lead pain. So my wife and I have decided to replace it.

We would like to make the porch a bit bigger in the process of replacing it and enclose it so that we add a bit more space to our house in the process. I think we are going to make it a three season (we live in Massachusetts) so we will not need to insulate it or add a full foundation.

Now that we have decided that we would like to do it I need to come up with a design.