Hi folks,
I have been lurking here for a month or better in preparation for building a cabin this summer. My wife and I have closed on a 6 acre parcel in the northern Black Hills a few weeks ago. The property has a 1420' well that with no pump installed and electricity to the lot line. The covenants allow for a cabin with a minimum of 700 sq. ft. and unattached garage. My plan (for today) is to build a "garage" as inexpensive as will allow and use it as our cabin until we pay off the lot. The garage would be 12x24 with 10' studs, 12/12 pitch, and an 8' loft in the rear. One of the problems I am having is trying to come up with double doors that will not be drafty but will also have a rustic look to them ???
My reasoning on this plan is that I do not want to have to compromise on the main cabin due to funds. The cost of installing the well is probably going to force me to put it off until later. An outhouse will be in use until or if the main cabin is built. Another detail is that we live 50 minutes from the land so I do not have a lot of interest in building a home away from home. I prefer simple at this point.
I thought I might bounce this off all of you who have "been there dun that". Any opinions on anything would be considered and appreciated.
Welcome!
I would like to mention to check with the County before starting the garage. We are in Wisconsin and put up a permitted 12x16 shed, with electrical and added a beautiful deck and sunshade and the county would not allow us to stay in the shed to camp. $4000+ wasted on that little project.
Also, we were not allowed a large porch, the total square footage on an "accessory shed" deck can be only 40 sq ft with the width being a MAX of 5 ft so we finally gave up the fight and dismantled it. That was a very sad day for us.
So, we have an expensive accessory shed.... Handy for stuff so we don't have to haul it 3.5 hrs but disheartening to say the least.
We have given in and bought a nice used travel trailer for $2500 and will have to pay an additional $300 for a one time "conditional use of travel trailer" permit. They are also nailing us with an another $50 for rebuilding our deck next to it. By the time we end this process we will be legal and I hope to never hear from the County again (I sigh). Ha! I think I am on their list now!
IF we had done this in the first place we would have saved a lot of letter writing, phone calls and money. Seriously, there is not too much you can do if they find you are in violation. They were cool though and did not fine us at least.
I am not complaining, it was our fault. We figured it would take them awhile to catch us and we got away with it for the whole Summer but they caught up with us even though we're in the woods. We learned the hard (and very expensive) way.
Good luck on your project,
Jean
As was stated in the last post, whoever "they" are may not take kindly to your circumvention of their rules.
Where do these covenants originate? Home/property Owners Association? Government agency? Probably doesn't matter much because either one can be very inflexible on the order of building. The places I know of around here with covenants on building size are HOA's are very inflexible. On the other hand, back home I knew a family that received the county blessing on their plan to build the garage, live in it and build the house over the period of a couple years. You might have better luck getting an okay on temporary living quarters in an RV or travel trailer. Just a thought, something to ponder/ask on.
Read your covenants very carefully before you build your live-in garage. It's hard for me to imagine anyone bothering to write up covenants at all and leave such an enormous loophole in it. That's one of the things covenants are there to prevent, people living in garages and outbuildings and such.
Might have better luck with an RV. It's not unusual for them to be allowed during construction of the dwelling as living quarters.
The covenents originated with the platting of the development with some minor updates. One of the updates is that a camper trailer is allowed for up to one year after purchase to allow for building. I would not be ready to build the main cabin for at least a few years so it would not work for us.
After looking around the other lots I noticed that 4 of the 15 properties have cabins that are less than 700 sq. ft. and are not even pretending to be an outbuilding. My guess is that the covenants are not being enforced unless you have an angry neighbor with deep pockets. I'm thinking that my risk is minimal if my garage/cabin has no water/septic. Worse case scenario is that I'm told that this is not allowed and I still have my garage. There is nothing in the covenents that states that I cannot live in my garage.
I will check with the county and get as much info as I need prior to building.
Thanks for your input ;)...
I guess that is the key, stay away from neighbors with time & money! We have a local fellow, retired doctor, with 160 acres who didn't have enough to do but check out what we were up to! BTW, he is on the board as well. Uh, that did not help.
We are not in an HOA, or any other type of planned community. We have 11 acres zoned forest crop and some agriculture, this is mostly township zoning rules & regs, some county.
We're ok with them now but it sure took the wind out of our sails.