I’ve been planning this addition to my house since the first meeting with the architect last June. Through a series of meetings, he created drawings to meet my requests for a two story addition to my house — nothing huge, really, but my house is so small that this addition will add 35% more finished space onto my house PLUS a three-season porch and deck, increasing the depth of my house by more than 50%. My lot is deep enough that my house will still occupy less than the 60% of the lot a house in the Capitol Hill Historic District is allowed to occupy.
As required, we submitted the plans for the historic preservation review process. The first step of that process is Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) Planning & Zoning Committee review. We prepared handouts and presentation boards. I talked to every neighbor who could see the addition to explain my plans and document, if possible, that they are not opposed to the addition. All but one were very positive from the beginning. That one had what I now call an “airing of the grievances” (to me), but a few days later emailed his support of the project. We made it through planning and zoning, and through the main ANC meeting, without much difficulty. The ANC advised the Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB) that they recommended approving my application. The HPRB did that at the end of September 2010. Their approval became the mandate for the design, which my architect refined into a full set of drawings.
We submitted the drawings to the city’s permits office on December 3, 2010. The permit process is supposed to take 30 business days. Mine took four months. A few of the approvers signed off quickly. Others had comments or questions. One approver posted questions and comments for someone else’s permit request on MY permit. The houses were obviously completely different because the square footage on that other project was about 7 times bigger than my house. A couple reviewers just flat-out took forever to act. So long, in fact, that a few weeks ago one of them was going to refuse to approve because our plat expired.
What, you say? Plats expire? Yes, they do. In DC, a plat expires after 6 months. We got ours in July, I think. So, if the city had approved the permit within the 30 business days after we submitted, the plat would not have expired. My architect used this argument and still had to request the reviewer’s boss get involved in order for them to agree that they should not force us to get another plat (which is of course also a city document that includes another fee). Had that wise manager not made that decision, we’d still be waiting for approvals. The head of the construction firm tells me they will complete my project in 82 working days, which includes quite a few Saturdays and some Sundays, and that I’ll be in my screened porch by July. My architect says August. My brother says September. I’m hoping for July…
So, after months of waiting and worrying that we might never get to start on this addition, we are now going to start in one week. We picked April 1st as our official start date.
No foolin’!
