plan check rejection

September 9th missive from City Hall:

"At the site visit yesterday, we determined the basement is actually the
first story of the house, reviewed ceiling heights, and have now
completed the zoning analysis. Please see the attached building review
notice for details.

Please also note the proposed playroom ceiling height is less than the
minimum 79 inches required for occupancy, and this room will have to be
relabeled as storage."

And there were more conditions:

*fan required for new bathroom in basement
*not permitted to enter sleeping room directly from parking garage
*lot coverage has been exceeded by approx. 1%. Reduce footprint to 25%.
*As lowest story [sic] is the first story [sic], the upper second story [sic] requires a 10 foot setback. Variance to the bylaw is required for the proposed second story [sic] seven foot setback.

What?? Are you ready for this? Have you read any Kafka? Maybe Catch-22? Any Pinter? Well, if you have then the next few posts will take you back to those mind-twisters. And if you haven't, then this is your crash course in"this is not a chair" post-modernism.

Let's start slowly. First, we got our Costco-sized bottle of whiteout and dealt with first few issues. Our basement is now a large, well-appointed, lit and heated storage room. Oh yes, it is floor space, but not living space. And certainly not living space next to a garage. The crawlspaces have been well and truly labelled as such (4' and under). We removed the wall (with whiteout) in the garage to better envisage a beautiful, completely pointless sealed garage for a car we don't own that we'll never park there.

As for lot coverage, we need to reduce our "footprint" by 1% or approximately 60 square feet. We measured and calculated and re-measured and we could not figure out how they calculated the one percent, so we assumed that the original plans did not include stairs as part of the footprint. So, we eliminated the door and stairs from outside down into the basement. Since we don't have living space in the basement any more, we don't need to escape said space in a disaster and therefore don't need an exit. Don't get me started on the safety implications of complying to these "safety" codes because my language devolves rather quickly. I guess we'll just put in windows that unlatch from inside easily. This change eliminated 44 square feet.

That leaves us with 3 other entrances to the house plus the garage. The deck MUST be removed, which leaves us with two. We designed stairs to the backyard from the small deck at the back of the small kitchen addition (have you noticed how NONE of the conditions have had ANYTHING to do with the ACTUAL reno? Sigh.). We also have stupid existing stairs at the front of the house. Why stupid? Look at the photo. Now look again and imagine trying to move any furniture in through that door. Any furniture not from Ikea. So what to do? Well, we took the whiteout to the planned back deck stairs to eliminate the full 1%. I suppose we can always take out a window and move our piano out with a pulley. Or rope ladders. Or a big inflatable slide, like on an airplane.

And of course, we now, on paper have no access to our back yard. We already have access to only one side of our house thanks to the ardent ex-Navy bylaw officer who made us move our tent trailer from our double driveway, on our own property, beside a 12 foot hedge. It is now beside our house, which necessitated taking down a fence, a gate, and ripping out gardens. Again, of course, the safety implications make me want to swear like an ex-navy sailor, but I know it's our own damned fault. You see, as he said, we could pay for trailer storage. Of course, we have a tent trailer because we can't afford fancy vacations, big trailers, or @!@#ing storage. Or we could move it into our garage. The darling man even measured the space, scratched his head, and suggested we should have bought a trailer that would fit into our garage. To which I responded that I might have done so should they have a trailer that sleeps five that would fit into our 1946 garage, but the last time I checked they still called those "tents."

I may have said a few more things too. Something about the bylaw being elitist as we were being punished for owning such a small lot in a swank neighbourhood. And I may have gently suggested that by advising we spend 10s of thousands of dollars on a separate garage for our tent trailer perhaps he had missed my earlier point. At least now, I have the satisfaction that by ripping out a fence and gardens to shove the trailer into such a tiny spot, it now looks like crap. Aesthetic bylaws be damned.

But I digress...

So, when is a basement not a basement? Stay tuned!