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.