The Saga of the Special Permit

I started writing this post about a month ago after being told by our architect that while the contractor was trying to pull the building permit, the town determined our remodel was going to require a special permit and public hearing to obtain. And far from fun, the most annoying part was the town wasn’t willing to “hear” the case until the first week in September. So in July this felt like an unnecessary time waster. As you can imagine, this wasn’t the friendliest or kindest post I had ever written. Thankfully I never hit publish and am rewriting it with the softness time brings. Gosh, definitely a reminder that sometimes we need to sit back, breathe and then give kindness.

Our town has many rules in place, as do other towns around the country, for maintaining the integrity of the town. The problem is some of them are unreasonable and frankly would be more effective when viewed through the lenses of commonsense. For this project, every speck of the proposed building plans fell within the rules and was designed to make the home safer and MORE conforming to the current set of town rules. Doesn’t that seem like a no brainer?  The town requires a 20 foot setback from the property line. And while we appreciate this rule because it means houses aren’t built on top of each other and there’s a certain curb appeal, there exists these old houses that are just inches too close to a set back created years after they were built. Improvements (not tear downs) should be automatically grandfathered in, saving time–both the home owners and town hall members. But such is life. We’ll chose to see the lovely even when we’d rather grumble.

On Thursday we had our town meeting. The town quickly and efficiently passed our special permit. Yay! We now have a demo date of the carriage house for the last week in September and the demo of the back side of the home starting the first week in October. The contractor is estimating a 6 month time frame…right through the heart of a New England winter. The good news–they’re hoping to have everything water tight and built by the first major snowstorm. Most of the work will then take place inside over the winter. Here we go friends! That much closer to a finished old home.