There is an existing garage on the property which we will be rebuilding. The garage is currently too close to the road, but because it already exists, we do not need to move the garage back, even if we rebuild it in place. However, because it is non-conforming there are a bunch of zoning laws that constrain what we can do.

Here is a picture of the existing garage, proposed garage extension, part of the deck and a corner of the planned first floor. The deck is in brown (this is actually a screen shot showing the two-tone pattern we will be using for the deck).

In an ideal world, we would connect the garage extension (shed) and the pantry door with a breeze way so we can go from the house to the garage without getting wet if it was raining. The breezeway would just be a roof over the western end of the deck (west is down in the picture).

Unfortunately, connecting the new house to the existing garage violates two different zoning laws. First, since the garage is non-conforming (it is too close to the road), the law says that we can not increase the garage footprint by more than 50% and connecting it to the house would count as increasing its footprint by a lot more. Second, there is another zoning law that says that out buildings (like the garage) can not be closer to the road than the main house.

Originally, when we were just going to refinish and not rebuild the garage, the town building department said that we could not have any breezeway and we had to keep the house at least 10′ from the garage. We then thought that we could connect the garage to the house with a breezeway after 5 years.

However, since we are now planning on completely rebuilding the garage, it seems like different conditions now apply. Based on our latest information, the town says that we need a 1″ gap between the garage and the deck. The two cannot be connected at all. So, it seems like the 10′ gap no longer applies, and we can actually have a breezeway between the house and the garage as long as it stops 1″ from the garage and does not actually connect.

The architect has reworked the foundation for the deck based on the fact that it cannot connect to the garage. We are still working out how we can put in a breezeway with a 1″ gap.

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