Home Stretch : Magic of ‘Charmer’ Wore Thin : City’s Strict Garage Rules Led to Redoing House

It all started when we decided to buy a “fixer-upper” house after seeing an ad for a “Beach Charmer” in the real estate pages. At $150,000, it was perhaps the cheapest house in Manhattan Beach.

The charmer was a wreck, from its droopy chain-link fence in front to the broken doggie door in the rear.

It was a typically derelict tenant house, with overgrown bushes, a back yard filled with pet-stained concrete, a one-car garage marooned in an expanse of concrete, an illegal carport, interior paint the colors of a cave. The bedroom light fixture looked as if it had been built by a junior high school boy in wood shop. It dangled from a classic fire hazard: an extension cord that emerged from somewhere above the ceiling.

But we saw potential in the little ‘40s tract house on a corner lot that was plenty roomy, and so we bought it in the summer of 1985.

We blasted out the concrete, got a city permit to install a hot tub, repainted the interior, removed the front fence and soaked the yard in a little elbow grease--a chemical most tenants apparently can’t afford.

The hot-tub installation, prophetically, taught us about dealing with City Hall and its intricate building codes.

The permit regulations specified the distance between the tub and electrical fixtures, the height and nature of the required fencing, the fact that pipes entering and leaving the heater had to be copper, and even the allowable decibel level of the motor. And there were many others.

However, neither the city nor we had fully considered that the tub was in the way of the virtually inaccessible garage. An engineer’s report revealed that our plan to move the driveway wouldn’t work.

It was becoming evident that we had a little problem with this garage, and we might have made a significant mistake in not checking the pertinent city codes before we bought the house.

I went to the Manhattan Beach Building Department in a good mood, certain that if you approach things with a positive attitude, they will work out.

Whoever said that hadn’t tried to remodel an old house in Manhattan Beach. And Will Rogers evidently never dealt with small-time bureaucrats.

I smiled bravely at one of the women and asked, “Are you the guidance counselor?” (A little humor to soften her up, start things off on the right foot.)

“Maybe,” she said, with only the faintest of smiles.

Trying to Explain

I spread my scale drawing on the counter and explained the situation.

How about using the old, illegal carport instead of the inaccessible garage? Could I just let it go at that? She shook her head. “The city does not recognize carports as being covered parking.”

“Well,” I said after a deep breath, “what would be my chances of getting a variance on the side-yard setback to build an encroaching garage?”

She yawned, and said that the city can’t grant a variance if there is a county or state regulation. “Besides, from the looks of your drawing, I don’t think there’s room for a two-car garage.”

“I just want a one-car garage.”

She shook her head. “Has to be two.”

“Well, then we’ll just restore the original one-car garage (long ago converted to a bedroom) and be back to go.”

Need 2-Car Garage

“Huh-uh,” she said, still not interested. “Even if you’re just remodeling, if you build a garage, it must have space for two cars.”

“I don’t want that big a garage!”

“Doesn’t matter what you want. The next people might.”

“So . . . I can’t get there from here? Is that right?”

“I don’t know . . . “ (I swear she stifled a fake yawn) “I’m just the guidance counselor. . . .”

She turned away with a shrug. I skulked, face burning, from City Hall.

There had to be a way out of this. But what?

We stood in front of the house and pondered, and then the little light bulb went on. The idea: tear down most of the house and build an attractive, high-tech-style house with high ceilings, trapezoidal windows, glass blocks and all kinds of “techy” touches.

Then we would have a good, marketable investment . . . and a two-car garage. The garage would go in front with two massive bedrooms over it. Neat.

It was also going to cost a neat price. After we calculated the square footage and multiplied by $50, we got nervous.

But we took our sketches to Gary, a young designer we’d heard about who would do an architect’s work without attaching “A.I.A.” to his title and another zero or two to his price.

He looked over our sketches and figured roughly: His plans would cost $1,300, and we would have to have the lot surveyed for another $400, and an engineer would have to go over the plan’s structural requirements. That would cost another $400 or so.

Accurate Estimate

The city would need about $1,500 for plan checking and permits, and Gary said he was afraid the school district was about to add a new-footage fee for home construction. They did: $1,400. That totaled $5,000 before driving a single nail!

The good news was that Gary was “pretty sure” that, based on his other jobs, our cost would be “right about $70,000.” (It turned out that he was very close to the final figure.)

If we could sell the house for $350,000 and subtracted the loans and costs of the sale, we could carry away nearly $100,000 in equity and meanwhile, we would have a lot of fun, learn some things, and, for a while, have an interesting new house to live in.

If the whole thing collapsed around our ears, we could, like Zorba the Greek, have a barbecue and dance.

We took a deep breath and called a loan agent.

Next: Demolition, concrete, framing and “watching the contractor.”