On Friday we received 5 (yes FIVE) pages of feedback from our friends at the City of North Vancouver. WOW, it was very overwhelming at first and felt that we needed to revisit EVERYTHING. There is particular scrutiny on Coach Houses, and every department had a page of items that they wanted to see changed or added. I jumped into action immediately, and have spent pretty much the entire weekend revisiting the coach house to address the items of concern. There were three items that required some major redesign, the first was that they require a front entrance that is accessible from the street, a laneway entrance on its own is not enough. Secondly, there are strict restrictions on the windows you can have adjacent to neighbouring properties, this meant we had to lose all the clearstory windows to the south. Finally, the city require generous private outdoor spaces, and consequently actually discouraged the 3rd parking bay in place of a courtyard. Kane and I debated this, but the reality is there is ample street parking, and hopefully we’ll end up as a one-car family any way. With all these changes it really felt like we were back to the drawing board. 

However, as with our previous feedback from the city, it often is a silver lining, and we’ve redesigned the coach house to be compliant (I hope) with all their feedback. Perhaps most notably is that the Coach House has taken on a different design to more closely match with the main house. This was not a requirement, but once we eliminated the clearstory windows there seemed little need to have a sloped roof. 

Above is a screen shot from our new submission package, and below you’ll see the new floor plan.

This is what 5 pages of feecback look like!