Where everything ain’t satisFACTual
Well there’s always a snafu somewhere and it appears that ours came at the very outset, when we called the building department to get setbacks for our property. Seems that somehow, instead of getting the setback information for a HOUSE we were given the setback information for an ACCESSORY BUILDING. The difference? 10 feet. Decks and detached buildings have a setback of 10 feet. Houses have a setback of 20 feet. (For those of you wondering what a setback is, it’s the distance any structure on your property is required to be set back from your property line.) We designed the entire house around the 10 foot setback. Soooo… we have a little ‘splainin’ to do. Or more specifically, we need to have a little face to face with the Zoning Board of Appeals.
I am pleased to say that our experience with the Building Department, bit of misinformation notwithstanding, has been rather pleasant. Instead of the runaround, which is what most people come to expect when spending any time at the mercy of a city bureaucracy, we’ve had a perfectly pleasant experience. The building inspector has returned our calls in a timely fashion and, in most cases, he’s called us proactively to make us aware of problems (like the setback) and to let us know that he needs more information. So kudos to the Beacon building department!
ZBA meeting date? Third week in November. (We just missed the cutoff date for tomorrow’s meeting by a couple of days.) But realistically speaking, the final financing details won’t be in place until then anyway. (And we weren’t going to knock down the house without the financing and building permit in our hot little hands. Smart aren’t we?)