Back to DaVE & Noemi's Garage -- Project Details
Back to DaVE & Noemi's Garage

Dec, 2000
Reducible frontage? Setback? Vision triangle?? Dave and I start by going to the Sunnyvale Planning Dept, we talk to a planner, and come home with a stack of pamphlets describing the regulations for driveways, corner vision triangles, accessory buildings (aka detached garages or sheds), fences, lot coverage, and anything else you can think of. We're dazzled.

Before we build a garage, first we need a temporary place for our shelves, tools, camping gear, bicycles, and some motorcycles. We visit Tuff-Shed, and quickly realize that the sheds are intended to be permanent. We'd have a heck of a time getting it out after we build a permanent garage.

We visit Sunnyvale Planning again to ask about putting storage containers down as temporary garages. We'd need a building permit for anything larger than 120 sq.ft! OK, so we'll put down two containers that are each uner 120 sq.ft. We obtain a 1-year Planning permit for two 120 sq.ft. "buildings". Our first permit! Dave arranges to rent two metal storage containers, and they're delivered a few weeks later.

Jan, 2000
We ask the guy who did the foundation work on our house about building garages. Get permits and plans, he says. So we start looking for an architect.

Dave makes a bunch of calls to designers and architects, and discovers the concept of "draftsman" -- they draw plans as architects do, but do less design work. He gets two recommendations for Dorothy Shattuck.

Meantime, Dave and I both make several visits to the Sunnyvale Planning Division, talking to the planners and asking how to interpret the regulations. We're on a corner lot, and the "front" of our lot, which is the short side along the street, is on Kinglet Court, even though our address is on Parnell Place. We can encroach into 25% and up to 10' into our 20' rear setback. Since our lot is 90' wide, we can put 450 sq. ft. of our garage into that 20' x 90' zone. That's plenty.

Jan 10, 2000
We meet with Dorothy Shattuck, a draftsman and designer who charges only $22/hr, but does all her work by hand. Though we liked her, we were concerned about the lack of computerization, echoed by her best reference.

Dave makes some more calls, resulting in two more appointments with draftsman. One charges $75/hr, another charges $44/hr.

Jan 30, 2000
We meet with Bruce Ostrander of OCS Design Associates in Sunnyvale($75/hr), for initial consultation about our garage plans. We like him a great deal, and when the other guy ($44/hr) doesn't show up, we asked Bruce for references and an estimate. The estimate is about $3000, with $1200 up front. Bruce's reference confirms that he's efficient and responsible, and we hire him.

Feb, 2000
Bruce comes over to take site measurements, to present the footprint to the Sunnyvale Planning dep. We shop for garage design books.

Mar 4, 2000
Bruce meets with Dave (I'm out of town for the weekend), and delivers the news that we have a 10-foot public utility easement on the side of our lot along Parnell Place, which pushes our garage in by another foot. To make matters worse, the garage's roof overhang can't encroach into the P.U.E., which pushes the garage even closer to the house, or changes the design.

One of the garage design books has a drawing with an L roofline, Dave and I quibble about design changes.

Mar 14, 2000
I visit the Sunnyvale Planning Dept, and talk to someone in Public Works about our public utility easement. Good news -- we can put a roof overhang into the P.U.E.

The Public Works rep, a knowledgeable and helpful young woman, asked several times if our plan was to encroach into that easement, and seemed surprised when I said that we didn't have the plans yet, that we needed to know the restriction before drawing them. We thought you had to work with the city restrictions from the very beginning, but the reactions we keep getting from people suggest that our approach is not so common.

March 18, 2000
We meet with Bruce at his office, and make great progress on arranging the dimensions, doors, windows, rooflines, etc. Bruce confirms that the roof overhang will not be a problem, and we place our garage 10 feet from our property line along Parnell Place.

It will be a 2-car garage with a shallower 3rd section for a workshop. Bruce is very helpful in making suggestions about construction methods, and has a thorough knowledge of the legal dimensions for every feature (bathroom, roof pitch, wall shear, etc). We leave with a printout of the plans and proudly tape it to our walls.

March 20, 2000
We remember that we forgot to ask Bruce to add a shed roof to the workshop, and call him and ask him to add it.

April 1, 2000
We go to Bruce's to see how it looks with the shed roof, and say "go" for submitting it to Sunnyvale.
We have preliminary plans!

April 7, 2000
Bruce submits our project application to the Sunnyvale Planning Division! Bruce suggests we have builders contact him to look at the plans, which he'll now take to a structural engineer for review.

April 17, 2000
We breeze through the PRC meeting, the only question being exactly how the driveway cut will work. No problem on the roof overhang into the 10' P.U.E! Bruce will work on the structural drawings now. I was impressed with how efficiently the meeting ran, with a quick round-table with someone from each sector: Planning, Police & Fire, Building, Public Works,etc.

Time to start looking for bids from builders.

April 26, 2000
Our neighbors receive a Notice of Public Hearing letter from the city. They all seem pleased that we're building one and say, "you need one!". The City then posts two signs on our property with the notice of public hearing on it. One sign lasts about 5 minutes, the other about 5 hours, before being blown down. I hammer in one of the stakes, but the flimsy sign blows off a day later.

May 10, 2000
Administrative hearing! We meet Sunnyvale Planning Division to attend the Administrative Hearing. It's a breeze: the Planning Staff recommends approval of our project, no one objects, and our use permit is granted. Again, we're impressed with Sunnyvale's efficiency and thoroughness.

After a 15-day appeal period, we can apply for our building permit over-the-counter. At the moment, our plans are with the structural engineer, who is delayed by litigation (as a witness in a commercial construction case). Nevertheless, chances are good he'll get the plans to Bruce soon, so that we can apply for our building permit any day after May 26.

June 1, 2000
The plans are back from the structural engineer, complete with many pages of calculations. Dave and I meet with Bruce to review the final plans. Looks good! We arrange to meet next Tuesday morning at the Sunnyvale Planning Division to apply for our building permit.

June 6, 2000
Dave and I meet Bruce at the Sunnyvale Planning division at 7:50am, to be the first on line to apply for the building permit. We wait at the counter, while representatives from Planning, Public Works and Building review our blueprints. Planning wants a deed restriction that says the garage will never be converted to living space, and provides us with a letter that we have to sign and have notarized. Then Public Works requests a revision to show the sewer lines. So, one modification and we should be able to get the permit.

But, in the process, Dave notices that a major feature got dropped from the plans: the workshop window on the south side. We hadn't noticed that in the final review before submitting. Bruce explains that there's not enough shear force in the workshop part to support the roof with a window, but says he'll ask the engineer again. We're really concerned about it; the window will make a big difference in the enjoyability of being in the workshop.

Dave and I wait 15 minutes for a notary public to witness us each sign 2 copies of the deed restriction. For this, we get to pay $40!! Notarizing documents is a major scam.

June 8, 2000
Dave and I meet Bruce at the Sunnyvale Planning division before 8am again. Public Works glances at the modification, and approves it. Then come the final stamps, we write a check for $740 to the city, and we have our building permit! Our excitement is somewhat mitigated by concern about the missing window -- we're certain there's a way to put one in. Everything is "just" a matter of an engineering tradeoff!

June 16, 2000
Bruce comes back from the engineer with a modification to our plan -- we have our southern window! We're greatly relieved.

July, 2000
We meet with two contractors to review our plans and to get bids. One is recommended by Bruce, the other is recommended by one of my aerobics instructors! We like both of them, but wait until we get the bids back.

During the course of a few weeks, we hear nothing from one of them, but the other sends tradesmen down to investigate our site, and contacts Bruce to clarify something in the plans.

August, 2000
Being brief here -- we sign a contract with Tim Smith, a general contractor recommended by my aerobics instructor. Tim is fine with starting construction when we return from our honeymoon. Construction starts Oct. 9, 2000 and should take 3-4 months.

Time had suggested that we get our property surveyed, so we called Frank Underwood & Associates (might have that name wrong). They're actually civil engineers and don't do property surveys, but in describing our project, Mr. Frank became interested enough that he came out to look at it. Before that, he told me how to get a parcel map from the county office in San Jose. The parcel map shows that iron pipe monumentation already exists, as our property was surveyed when it was subdivided in 1978. This map should be all Tim needs to mark out our site.

September 16, 2000
Dave and I are married in beautiful Big Sur.

Oct 6, 2000
We return from our honeymoon and spend the weekend preparing the site for construction, starting with moving the rockpile.

Quick overview of the bureaucratic process