Our architect has been great and has moved the house design forward quite quickly, but this week we were reminded that we are not our architect’s only clients. So after a burst of activity (see Designing a House from the Inside Out), things have slowed down a little.

Right now the bottleneck is working on the “massing”. This was a new term for me, so I looked it up: Massing is a term in architecture which refers to the perception of the general shape and form as well as size of a building. And our architect is struggling a little with the massing, especially as it pertains to the roof over the master bedroom suite. Daphne should find out more on Friday, when she has a Zoom call with the architect.

Part of the problem is that we have imposed a lot of requirements, especially for that part of the house. High ceilings, no living space over the master bedroom suite, and a roof design that will not tend towards problems with ice dams. Nothing is ever easy, and we have not even gotten to the hard parts yet.

Good news. You can ignore my last post. Yes, the new house will be more than 50% larger than the existing house if you ignore the basement level of the old house. But it will not matter. According to the Concord building inspector, as long as the house is conforming (does not violate setback requirements, which is 40′ from the road and 15′ from the sides of property), and as long as the house is at least 10′ away from the existing garage, it will not matter that the existing garage is non-conforming. We will not need a special permit.

Based on the recommendations of friends, we had planned on a breezeway (not enclosed) between the planned kitchen door and the new garage side door. This breezeway was to protect us from rain or snow when we went between the detached garage and the house. However, based on this new information, we will not be allowed to build a breezeway since it would connect the house to the garage and make the whole thing non-conforming (and then we run into that no more than 50% larger issue). The planned deck does not count as connecting the two structures.

So, we move ahead, optimistically, that we will not need a special permit. But we will need some umbrella stands. Then, after 5 years, we should be able to add a breezeway if we want.

Here is a diagram showing the plans. Dotted red lines are the required setbacks. Solid red line is the wetlands setback (different town committee). The breezeway in green will have to be removed from the design. (The green main entrance is still fine). The proposed shed (garage addition in blue) will be allowed.

There is a house (see photograph below) on our recently purchased property which we want to tear down and replace. We are trying very hard to design a replacement house that would not require any special permits. Our initial problem was staying with in the lines, something that I will make clearer once I start to post details of the whole process.

But now we have hit another snag. We are allowed to replace the existing house and replace it as long as the replacement is no more than 50% larger. If the new house is larger than that, we have to get a special permit and it is not clear how hard or how long the permitting process will be.

The real estate listing for the current house says that it is 3009 sq ft. That is based on three floors, the main floor, the second floor and the finished basement, which includes 2 bedrooms. However, the way we are reading the law, the town may not count the finished basement in the house size. If that turns out to be the case, the existing size is 2586 sq ft including the garage. And right now, our proposals for the new house comes out at more than 3879 sq ft (the 50% larger threshold).

So our architect is trying to get some feedback from the town on this problem. And we wait. Its not clear that removing a room from the main floor to reduce the size will be acceptable to us (getting rid of our proposed shed would be OK).

This is the existing house and garage (from the real estate listing). We will be keeping the garage.

Update: according to Daphne, the 50% is only an issue if we connect the new house to the existing garage with a breezeway. That’s because the existing garage is non-conforming (its too close to the road). If we do not add a breezeway, then there may be no problem with exceeding the 50% larger size limit.