Survey Says???

 

Over the last 100 years or so the Chesapeake Bay water quality has degraded to the point where the Bay is dying.  Its natural resource (crab, oyster, fish, etc) populations had all been reduced to the point of being unsustainable.  What had once been taken for granted is now disappearing at an alarming rate.  When I was a Maryland teenager in the 1970’s you could go into Towson for dinner at a local crab shack.  I can’t remember its name anymore but I do remember sitting down to a newspaper (what’s that?) covered picnic table with a bushel of crabs and a pitcher of beer for hours and it cost about $25 for enough people to fill up a picnic table.  That’s not $25 each.  That’s $25 for the bushel and first pitcher.  The machine shop where I worked had about 50 employees and would sponsor a crab feast every summer for everyone and their families.  All the crabs you could eat, all the beer you could drink.  Those days are now long gone.  The beer is still available but the crab population has dwindled and the price has skyrocketed.  The Bay oyster population is estimated at 1.5% of what it was 100 years ago.

In 1988 the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act went into affect “to protect and improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and its tributaries” by reducing storm water runoff.  This covers land from the Atlantic Ocean inland as far as West Virginia.  An important part of this is the establishment of resource protection areas (RPA) which are defined by a 100’ setback from all shorelines that drain into the Bay.  That 100’ setback prevents construction or any land disturbance or removal of existing trees and undergrowth.  Our lot has water on two sides but I was assured by our realtor that the county would allow deviations if the RPA was too restricting.

Before we closed on the lot I hired a surveyor to make sure there would be no legal surprises after we bought the lot.  It turned out that our 2.2 acre lot had 100’ setbacks on the north and west sides, a 25’ setback on the east side and a 75’ setback where the property meets the road on the south side.  That left us with a box we could build in that was only 55’ wide (east to west) and about 200’ long.  The view is out to the north and west so we would want to situate the house to take advantage of that.  We had chosen a 2500 sq ft floor plan, 4 bedrooms and 3 baths.  Not overly grand but there was no way it would fit without an RPA variance.  I went down to the Northampton County Zoning office and discussed this with the the chief zoning guy.  He explained to me about the history of the RPA setback and how there is a variance that can be applied for.  He said the variance only worked for landowners who were grandfathered in before 2003 and that if I went before the County Commissioners with a variance request he would make sure it was voted down.  Uhm, gee, just how do you become a member of that good ole boys club?  We hadn’t closed on the lot yet and I told our real estate agent what I had found out about the lot and the RPA lines.  Mentioned that I wasn’t too excited about laying down $100k for a lot if I could only build a chicken coop on it.

The lot is otherwise incredibly beautiful with 85 year old 90’ tall Loblolly Pines with trunks that are up to 30” in diameter.  Undergrowth is mostly 20’ tall Hollies and young Oaks trying to elbow their way in.  The floor is 5” deep pine needles.  Cheri and I re-thought our needs for a house and decided something smaller might be better and looked at floor plans less than 1800 sq ft, with 2 bedrooms, 2 baths.  We found a few that would fit but nothing that really excited us.  Our builder sat down with us and helped us draw up a preliminary floor-plan that we liked that would fit on the lot.  Cool!  We went ahead and closed on the lot.

We sat down with the new floor-plan idea and went over it again and again.  We have a handful of things we really, really want.  We both have our hobbies and these require space.  Cheri does water color painting, sewing and quilting and I play with trains.  We needed two rooms dedicated just to our hobbies.  We needed a guest room with a bath that would be used only as a guest room.  We didn’t need a dining room because we’ve had one in every previous home and it never got used.  Instead we needed a breakfast nook that would seat 4 and maybe expand for 6.  Cheri has a grand piano and that would take up the dining room area.  Cheri also wanted a conservatory at the back of the house where we could sit and enjoy the view of the woods and creek.  The master bedroom didn’t have to be huge and we thought 14’ x 15’ would do fine.  The bathroom had to have two sinks, a walk in shower, a walk in closet and a private water closet.  Oh yeah, all the above had to be on one floor and fit in that skinny build area on the lot.  We gave our list of must-haves to our builder and he sent them over to his architect.

In the meantime we continued to look at floor plans on-line.  There are so many “looks” for the exterior but we found that we always gravitated towards the “French Country” look.  We found one that really appealed to us and decided to try to incorporate that into our plan.

The layout wouldn’t work for our lot but we could borrow ideas from it.  The exterior would have brick and stucco, steep roof lines, heavy wood framing and wood shutters.  The windows would have multiple panes with mullions to reflect an earlier style.  Inside there would be wood flooring throughout with an aged look and overhead would be ancient looking heavy wood beams.

We found a gas fireplace that has the look of an old European one that used coal instead of wood.  That would go in a corner of the living room.

Cheri’s conservatory would make the most of the view out back and have room for comfortable seating and her potted plants that we smuggled up from Florida.  It would be located off the back of the living room and accessed through French doors.  The entire back wall of the house (which includes her studio, the conservatory and the breakfast nook) would be casement windows with no mullions that might block the view.

Our original plans had my studio inside but when we realized we had blown our budget it got moved out to one bay of the 3 car garage.  The price of the house is based on heated square footage so I plan to add heat/AC ducts to the studio after we move in.  That one garage bay will be 14’ x 22’ so my studio will take up the back 10’ and be walled off from the front 12’.  The front section will have the garage door and be used for my wood shop.  This bay will be the furthest from the main part of the house.  The bay closest to the house will be for Cheri’s car and storage, also 14’ x 22’.  The center bay will be a drive-through carport and be 12’ x 22’.  

The garage is the largest part of the structure when seen as you come down the driveway.  We wanted it to set the country look of our home so we went for a carriage house / barn look.  It’ll be faced in old brick done in a common bond pattern where every 6th row is all half bricks.  The three bay openings will be arched at the top and the roof will be 12/12 pitch.  We’d like to have a large dormer over the drive-through.  It will be faced with brick as an extension of the brick wall below it.  The dormer will have a 30” wide exterior door that opens inward (duh!).  A heavy beam extends out from the roof peak about 3’ and will support a block and tackle, used for bales of hay stored in the hay loft, er, attic.  The garage attic connects to the main house attic and will be floored with plywood.  The drawing below shows the original idea.  The two small dormers have been nixed and the single cupola will now be two, each centered on the garage door below.  We’re thinking of making one of them a Purple Martin birdhouse.

Here’s the floor plan as it stands after 8 revisions.  The “clouds” show areas of recent revision.  Note the width of the house on the left side: 46’- 5.5”.  The length shown at the bottom is 88’ - 3”. 

Now look at the shaded area on the survey below.  The setbacks are brown dashed lines and the shaded area is the usable space.  The footprint for the house is in the upper left corner of the shaded part.  Westerhouse Creek meets our lot at the turquoise line.