I find that no matter what size of lot you own, at least in an urban environment, designing a home comes down to problem solving within the City Code.  There were so many parameters that were already in place from the get-go that our house basically designed itself. Admittedly, there were times at the start when we felt cornered, and that there weren’t a lot of creative layout options.  Especially when we penciled our needs down.

List of Absolute Needs:

• 3 Bedrooms minimum
• at least 2 full bathrooms
• open layout kitchen/dining/living space
• largest roof deck we could legally design

Of course our wish list looked quite different.

• 4 Bedrooms
• 3.5 bathrooms
• Mud Room
• Laundry Room
• Walk-in Pantry
• Powder off Mezzanine deck
• A/C
• Radiant Heated Floors

The original “dream” list went on and on and on…

Our budget and the land we are sitting on just didn’t make many items off our original list feasible.  We plan on having A/C and radiant heat (on the 1st floor only), but the space issues just could not be resolved.  During the initial stages of design, it’s important to get all your wants out on the table.  It’s a good exercise to know exactly what you desire for your dream home. How you want it to perform so that you can live comfortably and move rhythmically through its spaces.  You may be surprised at what your spouse feels is important versus what you feel is necessary.  A man-cave?  What?!?!?  Refining the list of spaces that will become your family’s actual future home is the next step of home design.

Next, you can tackle the City requirements.  I say, let your architect/designer work out the details, but just keep in mind that there is a lot of pushing and pulling before the final layout and its dimensions passes through.  We knew we wanted to max out on the height of our building as well as the width.  Not that we wanted a big ugly box, but in the end, if we are being honest here, kind of.  Just not the ugly part.  Most people will want to maximize on their lot if it’s tight.  If you have a sprawling plot of land, your built-space vs. open-space possibilities expand, but knowing that we were sandwiched between two existing neighbors, we knew we would have zero backyard and not all the “rooms” we dreamed of.  So “compromise” became our motto.  Practically no back yard meant placing high priority on a roof deck so our kids had some semblance of outdoor space to play.  And be assured, the City Code told us exactly how big we could make our darn roof deck.

I’m also not fully in love with the idea of the bedrooms being on two different floors, but after a few iterations we knew that it was an inevitability.  We are going to have to make the best of it.  Kids zone on the 1st floor and Master Suite + Public Spaces on the 2nd floor. Again, “compromise” and move on.  (I’ll let you know what a pain in the ass it is to carry groceries up to the 2nd floor once I’m living in the house a few months…)

My point is, architecture is about smart problem solving.  Knowing exactly what your family needs to function gracefully within your home is the first step to tackling the problems that will arise.  And they will arise!  But have no fear.  Pencil out a day in the life of your family. Don’t let go of the things that are important. (For example: kids spaces must be together, kitchen/dining/living spaces must feel airy.)  But be open-minded and compromise on the rest.  (For example: our backyard vs. deck situation, our bedroom locations, and garage must be 2-car and at the front of the house off the street…)  The Code will dictate a lot, so breathe through the inevitabilities and I wish you the best of luck designing a home that still resolves the issues with innovation and style.  A good designer can and will make the spaces flow to make them special, and come alive.

Don’t stop Dreaming!

-K

Ahhhh, architectural typology and vernacular.  Unless you live in a City like Palos Verdes where there is a very stringent Art Jury or a Homes Association which regulates the exact look of your home, you can pretty much build whatever kind of house you want to.  (Within reason…)

So when the fluorescent yellow notice was staked into our lawn and the vicinity letters went out to all our neighbors within a one mile radius letting them know that we were wanting to build a new house, (which was going up in front of the planning commission for variance approvals) we were taken aback, literally, by a letter which was submitted to the City from one of our neighbors opposing our project.  What?!?!?

I almost feel guilty writing about this, but I need to share!  Their complaints included the following:

1. the reduced side yard setback we requested will bring our proposed building too close to their house, creating insufficient light and air on the West side of their property.
2. The proximity of our proposed home would create noise issues.
3. the height of our proposed building will block their view of the ocean.
4. the typology (contemporary) will ruin the look of our current neighborhood.

We did not have time to reply to our neighbors since the letter was submitted to the City just one day prior to our variance meeting before the Planning Commissioners and I admit that since our ‘unanimous’ approval of said variances, we have yet to address their issues personally, but all we really have to say is…

“Suck it.”

Kidding.  We are not that rude, but I would like to formally and publicly address their issue here.  I suppose when our plans make it through the Building Department and we are officially ready to build, we will write them a tasteful letter and let them know that, “We are very sorry for how you feel, but the house will be built exactly as we proposed it.”

So let’s talk about what they are so concerned about.

1. Believe me.  I did not want to design our house to be any closer to our neighbors than it had to be.  If our substandard lot was not so narrow, I would have put the required 5′ in between our homes.  Yes, there will be less air flow and natural light but that’s not just their issue.  We will have to suffer the consequences as well.  (Detailed explanation in this post.)
2. Noise.  With any construction project, there is bound to be construction noise for the duration of a build.  That is why every city has construction hours in place for the protection of the neighbors as well as other precautions a contractor must ensure to maintain the safety of the public.  We will obviously adhere to all rules and regulations.  But post construction…?  What can we say.  There is a certain amount of “noise” which accompanies child-rearing.  They will most likely hear our kids playing on the mezzanine roof deck from time to time.  But we purposefully did not design any “noisy” rooms on the East side of our property.  There are no windows (zero) on the first floor of their house.  There are two small bathroom windows and one bedroom window on their second floor.  As we see it, the reduced light and air will not negatively affect their side yard where they currently keep their trash bins.  If anything, we will be the suffering party as we actually designed windows into our house and that is the side of our front door.  But hey, it is what it is.  We took pains to make sure that none of our 2nd story windows looked directly into ANY of their (3) windows for our OWN privacy.  And finally on this issue of noise.  Might I mention that we have never complained because we are a family that loves animals, but they have a dog that barks on occasion…
3. Our lot is to the West of our neighbor’s property and as we all know, the ocean is… to the West.  This is not our fault.  If you want an unobstructed view of the Pacific, move to the Strand.  Nothing will come between you and the glorious deep blue except for the Strand itself and a lovely stretch of sand.  I know that sounds snooty, but even without our side-yard variances, we could still build to the height limit of 30′ (our proposal is under that at 29′-9″) so some of their “views” would still be blocked – variances or not.  There is nothing we can change about our geographic location and since there are no view corridor protection laws in the Building Code for Redondo Beach, their view argument is unfounded.
4. And last but not least, overall appearance.  The exact comment from their letter read as follows, “the traditional aesthetics of the immediate neighborhood will be negatively affected starting a possibly trend of Hermosa Beach like neighborhoods.”  …  …  …  Oka-y…  …  …  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and now we know there are people out there who don’t like the look of Hermosa Beach neighborhoods.  Yes, a hipped roof is a “traditional” design element, but just because a house has a hipped roof, it does not mean the rest of it is designed well nor does it mean it’s traditional in vernacular.  We are proposing an unabashedly contemporary design and though we respect that it is not a style that everyone prefers, it is also not trying to be something that it is not.  We refuse to build an ugly stucco box with a hipped roof just so we can fit into some preconceived or arbitrary aesthetic category.  I love all types of architecture.  I have nothing against the ‘Coastal Plantation’ homes that have been popping up like weeds all over town, nor do I have issue with ‘Coastal Modern’ homes with Ipé wood siding which trended before that, or Mediterranean, Spanish, Craftsman… anything really, if its done right.  What I do take issue with are individuals whom live in a stucco box with a hipped roof and of no particular vernacular other than ‘ugly’ telling me that my contemporary house does not fit the aesthetic of our neighborhood.

They should just be happy that they don’t have to live next to this.

Or this…

The land on which we are going to build is considered a “substandard, irregular lot” (both in overall size and dimension) for a single family residence (SFR) in our beloved city.  We sit on a 31′ wide, 80′ deep rectangular plot yielding approximately 2,486 square feet in total area. The typical minimum lot size for a new residential build is 5,000 square feet with a minimum of 50′ in width and 100′ in depth.  Lucky for us, (dripping sarcasm) our lot is also zoned R3-A, which means that it is not in a typical residential zone.  R3-A is defined as a Low Density Multi-Family Residential zone.  Not that this lot is anywhere big enough to create a multi-family unit of any type, but that’s what we have to work with.  I know what you are thinking.  “Bla, Bla-bidy, Bla…”  It’s a bunch of industry jargon.  But I need to set the stage for what I really want to discuss today.  And that is the painstaking process we went through to get variance approvals from the Planning Commission.

3 to be exact:

1. Reduced setbacks on the sides and rear of our property.
2. Reduced calculated outdoor space.
3. Reduced front driveway dimension.
4. Oh, and I’m sorry, two more things… how could I forget the ‘Consideration of a Coastal Development Permit’ AND an ‘Exemption Declaration’ to allow us to actually build our tiny little house in an R-3A zone if the variances were to be granted.  Huh?

I sound like a whiny complainer.  Well, I kind of am.  We knew from the get-go before the property was purchased that when we were ready to go through the city approval process, we would encounter a formidable list of hurdles.  We bought the place anyway, (knowing we would tear down someday) because of the location and quite frankly, our youthful arrogance/ignorance that since we were going to oversee everything ourselves and since between the two of us, being a designer and builder by profession, it would be… for a lack of a better word, easy?  We figured we’d both done a fair amount of variance related projects in the past so how bad could it be?  Right?

WRONG!

Since the time we purchased our current home on this “substandard” piece of land until today, it has been just shy of 10 years.  A DECADE people!  Needless to say, the economy as well as life happened in the span of 10 years which is why it has taken us this long to be where we are now.  We got married, experienced family loss, had two children, experienced the high of the good times as well as burned through our savings during the recessions.  Just to name a few…  And in this time, the City adopted new regulations and more stringent guidelines of what they wanted in terms of submittal materials.  Gone are the days of over-the-counter approvals where you could go into the City with a scribble on a cocktail napkin and they would stamp an approval for you to build your dream home.  (ok, so that never happened…) But seriously, the check-list they have now just to submit to the planning commission which comes before a single shred of paper is submitted to the building department, is 3 pages long.  No joke.

Therefore, if you have the need for variances, be prepared for a solid 4 to 6 months to go through the Planning Department.  Longer if like us, you find yourself in a Coastal Development Zone.  It took us approximately 8 months from the first submittal date until the day we received our letter of approval from the Planning Department giving us the green flag to submit to the Building Department, which I keep hearing will be another 5 to 7 month process from start to finish.  Ugh.

In the end, everything panned out positively for us.  I attribute our success to the fact that we worked very closely and created a very positive working relationship with the Planning Department from the very early stages of our design process.  There was also a house that paved the way and set a precedent for us because they asked for and were granted very similar variances to ours a few houses down on our street.  The Planning Department head and our Planner both pulled hard in our favor during our variance meeting in front the the Planning Commissioners.  The report that they wrote for us was overwhelmingly positive and supported all the reasons why we were asking for what we needed and how we met every other item on their checklist.

A few final notes on Variances:

• Filing for Variances is not cheap.  Our Variances costs added up to the following: Pre-application Fee – $636, Variance Submittal – $2,226, Coastal Development Permit Fee – $1,353.  That put us at a little over $4,200.00 just to see if the building could be built the way it was proposed.
• There is no guarantee that your variances will be granted.  Which is why it’s important to work closely with your Planner and take their advice on things you can tweak in your design.  You give some, you get some in return, or hopefully you get it all.  There is an appeal process in place but it’s expensive too…
• Variances are granted out of necessity.  If you don’t have a legit reasoning or can’t find a precedent that was set by a previous project supporting your design changes which deviate from the given Code in your jurisdiction, don’t go asking for them.  Chances are, you are wasting your time and money.
• Talk to your local Planning Commissioners before your meeting.  Get to know them by inviting them to grab a coffee.  Tell them about your project (bring a kid or 2 to show them how much you need this for your “growing family”) so that when you are standing up at the podium stating your case, you know they are on your side, or they are at least familiar with your issues.  It’s amazing what a little personal face time can yield in your favor.

Good Luck on filing those Variances!

-K