The Garage...or Home Improvement Projects revisited.

As many of you know, we bought a major fixer upper a little over a year ago. We have done several things to the house, including adding new windows and remodeling part of the basement.

The only thing really against this house was it's lack of a garage. In fact, my father kept asking me before we moved how will you live in a house without a garage. "You'll need a place for all my tools someday after I am gone," he said. I just said we'd build one some day. Famous last words, sort of...

Our latest project, this garage, has been a bit more tricky than anyone imagined. Although it should have been simple...just a slightly over sized 2 car garage replacing a small carport. In fact, we have been trying to build this 22' X 22' garage for the past seven months. We developed the plans last May, and started work in June. First we had to have the existing tiny ( 18 X18) carport demolished.

Being the practical and motivated people we are, we rushed to have that done in June. This was because we were going to be away, so it seemed an ideal time to do major demolition when no pets or kids were around.

When we returned from our trip, we were greeted with a call from our contractor and our architect saying that they had been told we would have to get a special variance to continue because even the existing carport, although over 40 years old, was in violation of city ordinances and was too close to the street and property lines. This call came the day our contractor took a bulldozer to our carport ( can you say "extreme home makeover?") and loaded the remains into a dumpster to be hauled away.

The carport, however, was demolished by then, so we had no sheltered space to park the cars for the entire summer, and no place to keep the trash out of sight from the bears which occasionally roam our foothills neighborhood. Of course, we thought we would be done with the project by the end of summer, right?

After many meetings between city planning officials , our architect, and us, we were finally told how we could apply for a variance ( for an extra $800 besides the regular permit fees) we had to post an official city planning sign in our yard for 10 days, notify the neighbors, get a soil study done, provide examples and pictures of other people's homes who had garages that were built closer to the street than the 35' setback, and have the entire lot resurveyed. After all that, and gathering signatures from our five closest neighbors saying they approved and wanted us to build this garage, we went to our third meeting with city planners in August. When we were showing them pictures and our architects justification for why we should be allowed to build a simple 2 car garage where the carport used to be, I happened to comment that ours was the only house on the block that didn't have a garage. "Oh, why didn't you say so?" was the reply. The planner said that based on that fact alone, besides all the evidence and reasoning we had brought, the pictures of other houses, and the letters from five neighbors, they would immediately recommend to the city council that we get the variance. In fact they said it could be basically rubber stamped through and we would have in a week or so.

So we got our contractor back on board. He lined up a terrific excavator to tear out the old concrete foundation and driveway and prepare things for the new garage footings. The day before that work was to begin, and after telling our contractor that our paperwork was in the "finished box" and he could pick it up anytime, the city decided that they were suddenly concerned about the garage being too close to the property line (10 feet) again! So the permits are held up once again, and now we are into October!

Our hopes of having a garage before the snow flies have been dashed! Whoever has been praying for us to have patience, please stop! Just pray for our sanity, and that we can do this project before we simply can't afford it any more...