one down, one to go

[ilanarama]

Last night we had our hearing in front of the city's Historic Preservation Board about the changes we want to make to our house. Since we're in the Historic District anything that has an impact on the exterior of the house needs approval.

Yay, they say we can tear down the little addition in the back and build the two-story addition we want!

Boo, they say we can't replace the front door and the big arched window, because they're important historic features. Even though they leak cold air really badly and are single-pane glass.

And somewhere in the middle is that they don't like propanel roofs because they're not historic, so even though we have propanel on the rest of the house they want us to research alternatives for the addition. But they might possibly let us get away with it, depending on what we find.

Next week, the meeting with the city appeals board so we can get variances, we hope, on not having two off-street parking spaces (heh) and on the lot-line requirements (the existing house violates the requirement - if we want to do something to the house, even if by itself it meets requirements, we need a variance). Woo.

Comments

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

Living in a historic district is dicey business sometimes. It sounds as though yours is semi-reasonable at least. In nearby Los Gatos (motto: "We're a town, dammit! Don't call us a city!"), a bunch of people who sustained massive earthquake damage couldn't rebuild the smashed portions because of codes set by the Historic Preservation Board. I think there was some kind of reform or uprising or something that happened later, but for a while it was pretty hairy. That said, it'd be nice to have had some kind of a Board here that might have exercised some quality control on houses such as the one that went up next door to us! (See icon pic; the white house is us.)

I commiserate with the single-paned, cold air leaky windows situation; we've got 'em throughout the house. (All except the arched front one, which doesn't leak because it's one of those "doesn't open" ones.)

Anyway, congratulations on getting your plans at least partially approved. Be sure to take some before-n-after pictures once you start the construction process!

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

Oops- it was supposed to be this icon picture.

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Hee, the little house looks like ours! Is yours stucco Mediterranean style?

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

Yes- ours is a 1928 model. Is that close to the age of your house?

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

1927! I was doing a little research to write up our letters to the Historic board and the city, and found that this style is called Spanish Eclectic (or Spanish Revival) and was popular in the southwest and California in 1910-1940. Do you have actual tile on your roof, or fake tile?

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

Spanish Eclectic (or Spanish Revival) and was popular in the southwest and California in 1910-1940

How interesting! I never heard the actual name of the style, even through the year of dating an urban-planner-in-training, which is where I learned about a lot of other house styles around here.

We've got a real (20-year-old!) tile roof. A full picture of the house is here (http://www.incoherentlywordy.com/gallery/) if you're inclined to take a peek. (It doesn't actually have "Dennis" scrawled on the wall, though, and the landscaping's grown up some.) I'm curious, since you mentioned an arched front window, how similar our two houses actually are. I seem to remember your kitchen looking a lot better laid out than mine.

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Here's mine. (http://wndm.net/house/house.jpg) The awning over that one window has been removed - we took this picture while in the process of buying the house last year.

[nothings.livejournal.com]

Hmm, so you're in that place for the long haul?

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Well, longish, anyway. We hope to be able to go back and forth to the boat, too. And Britt wants to move out of town, although I don't, really.

It's partly a remodel for us, and partly for Resale Value.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

A friend lives in a (not particularly historical, it's just old by local standards) historic district in town here. When he filed to replace the 1930s-vintage single-pane windows with modern insulated windows, he had to first document proof that he could not find newly-made duplicates.

As he said to me, "Who makes solid-lead sashweights any more?"

Still, they held up approval until he proved to their satisfaction he'd made a good-faith effort at replacing his windows with wooden-silled single-pane windows with lead sashweights. We figure that if the community association wasn't so exacting, they probably could have held him to install a whole new set of energy-wasting wooden-silled single-pane windows with, like, plastic-insulated lead sashweights.

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we've been instructed to install interior storm window panels if we want to insulate. Unless the existing stuff is actually falling apart, we're not even allowed to replace it with replicas - we need to preserve as much as possible.

It's not as bad for us as for some, though. We shared our hearing with a woman we know vaguely (small town) who with her husband recently bought a house that was built in 1880. Their house is also right on the Boulevard (we're half a block away) which is the central part of the historic district, so the HPB is being way stringent with them.