Friday, January 3, 2014

The 1st Architectural Review Committee Meeting has Commmenced...

After last night I wish I could title this post: MISSION ABORTED! Like the whole entire thing, just done. Give back the house and let someone else deal with it...But, it is our house, and we knew this was going to be tough. We have to remind ourselves, and hope, that this is one of the tougher moments in this entire process...And that we will get through it, and it will all be great in the end...right?

So last night was the first of hopefully only 2, Architectural Review Committee (ARC) meetings that we must attend in order to make any changes to our home. Our home falls within the historic district of Barrington and is therefore required to have at least 2 meetings with the ARC: a preliminary meeting and a final public hearing, in which your plans and drawings are reviewed, discussed, and hopefully approved as a final acceptable design. Only upon final approval from the ARC are we able to move forward with building permits and the actual construction process. So, the board members and these meetings have a significant affect on our overall design concept, budget, and total project timeline. It is a definite added stress to an already stressful process.

This was obviously our first time attending anything like this, so we were anxious, excited, and a little nervous going into it, but mostly hopeful it was going to go smoothly since our architect was very familiar with the committee members and process. This is something we had been anticipating for 2 months, since we closed on the house in November, and the moment was finally here.

We were one of 3 projects being reviewed that night and we were third in line. So we were able to sit through 2 other reviews prior to ours. They seemed to go fairly well, but it was easy to see how the critiques and comments from the board members flared up some slightly defensive reactions from the architect and contractor who presented. As I sat and listened I thought to myself, "Ours is going to go much better than this."

Well, I was wrong. As the meeting began, the chairman of the committee spoke up immediately. (He had been out to our home to review the condition of our original windows, which is a whole other post in itself, and was familiar with our property). He immediately pointed out that we did not show any plans to make changes to our 2-car attached garage. He was semi-correct. We did not show any architectural changes, however, we planned to replace the existing garage door with a wood garage door, and paint the siding to match the new siding of the home. Well, apparently this was not what he had in mind. Obviously, he had been anticipating our meeting as much as we had. See, our home is one of very few houses in the historic district with an "attached" garage. The garage was built by the previous owners in the 60's, and it was simple and had ample space. If we did not have an attached garage and wanted to do so now, this would not be allowed. However, since we bought the home as it stood with an already attached garage, the ARC could not make us detach it, as long as we were not making changes to it. But, this chairman dislikes our garage, it seems with a passion. Our architect, who was speaking on our behalf, responded by saying that we did not plan on making architectural changes to the garage, as it was not needed, and not in our budget. She explained that we are a young family trying to gain the "living space" within the home for our growing family, and that budget was already tight as it is. The garage would stand as it is for it's purpose: to house 2 cars, and that was the end of it. Well, this did not satisfy the chairman. He responded that he would not be able to give our project a positive vote based on the fact that we would not make changes to the garage. Our architect asked him what kind of "changes" he had in mind. He responded that he did not know...he'd have to think about it...and hire an architect (he says to our architect). This was obviously a direct insult to her. He mentioned maybe turning the one door into 2 separate carriage-style doors. There was back and forth about building living space above the garage instead of back behind the original home (the way they usually prefer additions to be built to preserve the front view of the home). He made the "hire an architect" comment several more times and the back and forth continued for several more minutes. Our architect got defensive and even swore at one point. Jeff and I watched in disbelief.

Finally, the assistant director of the village spoke up, and said that the board really didn't have the right to tell us to make changes to the existing garage as it stood, and that we should move on to discuss the actual structure and addition that we were proposing for the home. And so they did. This part seemed to go extremely quickly seeing that they had just wasted about 20 minutes over the garage, and seeing that we were the last meeting of the night. Our plans were discussed quickly, changes were made before I could blink, and before I could muster up the courage to speak up over a few important items...it was over.

We left the room feeling defeated, worried, and powerless. It was clear that our architect was also taken aback, but insured us that everything was going to be fine. Our current plans, as we knew and had grown to love, were no longer, and we wondered how we would find a solution that they would love and we too would approve. After all this was our house right? We wrote the check for thousands of dollars, and our name was on the mortgage. This home held our hopes, our dreams, and our future memories for our children. Then why did it just feel like a room full of people, who had no financial or emotional responsibility, made decisions and arguments that would change the scope and cost of this project permanently? Because they did.

Sleep...Jeff and I were up together until 1:00 am, still buzzing from the meeting. He finally surrendered to exhaustion, but I couldn't. I grabbed a book, my computer, and turned on the TV downstairs. I don't think I actually read or watched anything, but I was up until 3:30 am when my body couldn't stay awake any longer. I had to just start the next day new, and hope that it would bring new beginnings.