 April 17th, 2023 meeting of the Montpelier design review committee. I will let members and staff introduce themselves. Stephen Everett, member. Martha Smirsky, member. And Eric, is there? Eric's on his way. Oh, okay. He said he'll be here in about five minutes so we can do all the early stuff. Okay. Especially because he's familiar with the application. Good. At this point, we can let Meredith review the remote meeting procedures and process. Okay. So, Joe, you're going to be familiar with this, but I got to run through my spiel. So, for those viewing tonight's design review committee meeting via Orca Media, you can participate in, oh, sorry, hold on one second. There we go. That's a little bit better. You can participate in tonight's meeting via the Zoom platform through either video or telephone access options. If you want to log in via the full Zoom experience, you can type this link into your web browser. I'll get a notification that you want to be added to the meeting, and we'll let you in. And then you can see everything that's been on, see the shared screens, and ask questions. Alternatively, you can phone in using this phone number, and when prompted, plug in this meeting ID, and then you'll be able to hear everything that's said, as well as ask questions of your phones. If you have problems accessing the meeting, either of these options, please email me at mcrandle at Montpelier-vt.org. I will be monitoring the email throughout the meeting. If somebody does log on from Orca Media and logs into Zoom, please make sure that your Zoom name includes both your first and last name, so that we know who's logging on and who we're going to be speaking with. Note that turning on your video is optional, and we do ask that you keep your microphone on mute when you're not speaking. This will reduce background noise. A reminder that the Zoom chat function should only be used for troubleshooting or logistics questions. Right now we only have an applicant on remotely, so I'm going to now hand everything over to the chair. Unless anyone else has anything to offer, do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. And I'll second it. All in favor of the agenda speak your names. Ben. Martha. And Steve. Agenda is approved. We can move forward to the first application for 17 Bailey Avenue. Honor applicant Joseph Kiranen, demolition of a two-story solarium and construction of a new two-story addition. Is Joe here? Yes, I am. Hi. Your project for us. All right. Well, thank you for hearing the application. So I guess if I share my screen here, I can go through the stuff a little quicker. Yeah, thanks. It's a lot easier when the applicant can do it. I can do it sometimes, but you're used to the whole system. So thank you, Joe. Yeah. Let's see here. All right, there we go. Seems a little different than Teams. All right, is that working? You can see my application here, my pictures. Yep. Great. So this is my house, 17 Bailey Avenue. My wife and I have lived here for just about 10 years now. The house was constructed back in 1918, and we believe this structure, this two-story solarium is mostly original to the building. The only change we're pretty sure has happened is that this was an open porch, like the front porch at one time and was glassed in an unknown date. So our project is to remove this, essentially build it with a similar footprint will be coming out towards the rear of the house two feet, and this upper portion will be a little bit larger as well. But I can show you that when we get to the design drawings. These are just some existing pictures in the interior. You can see the columns here are tapered, and that's part of the reason why we think that this was originally just an open porch at one time. The nature of it being a porch means that it's completely uninsulated. There isn't a true foundation underneath. It's just supported by some kind of peers. And so it's marginally useful. It's useful for storage, certainly, especially in the slower area, but it's not really very pleasant to be out here. Not even when it's warm out because these windows act like a greenhouse and it gets really hot in here. Even with the windows open, it's usually pretty warm in there. And it's a similar story up here on a really, really nice day. It's pleasant to be out here. But most of the time the doors remain closed, which I think are some pictures here. Yeah, so these are the doors that lead into the bedroom from this porch. And they're beautiful, but they're equally poor at keeping out the cold. And so this bedroom really isn't even used during the entire winter. We turn off the radiator there and we keep the door closed because heating it would be a never-ending battle. We can still use it, but we usually have to put a small space heater in there for whoever's staying over. And this is just a picture of the roofing material on the exterior porch in the front of the house. It's the same stuff that's in the back. Another reason why we think it was a porch, they're built pretty much identically. So the plan is to remove that and rebuild it like this. It'll have a peaked roof, something I didn't mention before. It's a flat roof on there right now. And since water runs off here and then kind of slowly leaks down through this area, I'm getting some rot in the eaves here. It'll have to be addressed one way or the other, hopefully, as part of this project. So yeah, I don't know how much detail you need on the new structure, but we'll be adding, we'll be moving the existing bathroom from where it is in the former pantry in the kitchen to, it'll be this window right here. So right in this area, try to find a floor plan, I suppose. Here we go. So this is the new first floor. Everything in the main house is remaining essentially untouched. The only part of the project is this right now is inside the porch and is the main, can you see my mouse? Yep. Sorry, I think you're muted, Meredith. Oh, no, I'm not because I don't get muted really. It's a little x in the little top right corner. I can see it better on my screen. Do you see it? And there's a little square there. I just want to make sure you guys know what I'm talking about. There's a little square, there's an x that's his mouse. I don't know if you can change what your mouse looks like. Not quickly, no, I don't think so. But hopefully you can kind of see it. So this used to be or is currently the entrance into the house. It's got enough space for some coats here, but there's two doors, which is nice for keeping out the cold. But getting in and out, it's pretty tight. And with like a car seat or anything large, like a stroller, you have to go through one thing at a time. Even groceries, that kind of thing will get hung up in here. So the idea is to not use that as the entrance anymore, use what you can't see here under this text in those scale is currently a bathroom. We're going to blow that out so that you just come in to the kitchen that way with no doors and move the bathroom over here. This will become like a mud room area. This is an existing closet that's going to remain. The second story, we're going to keep the existing bedroom essentially the way it is, but the new portion will have enough space for a primary bathroom. And this is I guess a closet area for my wife. With a little vanity there. It's called a dressing room, Joe. A dressing room. That's what it is. And I'm sure it will be used for that purpose. We got some window schedules through here and some other details, but that is pretty much the majority of the project in broad strokes. So you guys have any questions? Can you hear me? Yep. I can hear you now. Yeah. This is the back of the house, correct? Yes. This is all happening in the rear of the house. Here's a picture site plan, if you will. This is the house and you can see the two-story solarium off the back here is this little button. It does not involve any changes to the front? Nothing. I may improve this front stairwell a little bit so it matches the newer stairwell because right now it's kind of I built the railing and it's not really that great. But that would be the only thing. And that's not really part of the project right now. You'd need to come back for that one, Joe. Oh, okay. All right. Never mind then. This is Eric. I did a drive-by and you can barely see that from the street or the sidewalk. I did a drive-by also and you said, Joe, that you don't know exactly when the addition was put in. Is that correct? So we don't think it was an addition. I think it was original to the house. As a two-story solarium that's what all the available documentation seems to indicate. It's referred to as an addition once in some document about the historic nature of the house. But just looking at it, looking at the front porch is just clearly original. It's essentially identical on the lower half. The upper half I'm pretty sure is also like the entrance on there probably wasn't added in later. There's a lot of details that make me think it's original to the house. That being said, the glass on the first floor is definitely added in the later date. And I don't know when that, and the screen door, I don't know when that was added. Okay. Thank you. Can you show us the elevation of the new construction? Yeah. Somehow I'm having a hard time getting oriented to this. So this is directly facing the rear of the building? Yep. So the street would be on the opposite side of the building here. This is from the left-hand side, and this would be from the right-hand side. Joe, this is Meredith. I think one of the things that was helpful when we talked about this, when you talked about this at the Historic Preservation Commission, was to talk about how the orientation of the entrance is getting tweaked, that there's that little porch so that you're suddenly entering, you're changing and entering from the side versus right now the entrance is from the directly from the rear through the middle of the porch. Yep. Okay. So yeah, this is the current entrance obviously, and then if we go back to the drawing, that's this area right here on the first drawing. You can see my mouse. I can't. So right here, except that's a window. There's a little tiny like stoop there, so you enter this way now instead of this way. Okay. So this, you can see that red box. Yep. Yep. That's basically the original door. I got it. And so the room in here will actually be a little shorter because we're constructing this porch right here, which I guess is easier to see. This porch here. Okay. Right here. Yeah. So this window is a current doorway. Yeah. And so we're just going to shorten it up and make it a window because on the inside, we're going to remove the door and it's going to become part of the kitchen as kind of a walk-in pantry. Yep. You can see over here. It's just this small area right here. But the door will be removed and with the window there, you'll be able to see right from the kitchen if you're at the stove, if someone's at the door. Yep. Something we're preserving in the house, which I guess I don't have a picture of the inside, unfortunately. I could go get one right now. But this box right here, so this is the new porch. You come into the house. This is the current bathroom. This is what used to be the ice pass-through. So in the original house, and the original door is still there on both sides. It still almost works. Although the previous owners blocked it off here and turned the interior portion into a wine rack. But the bottom portion is completely the way it was and we still use it for storage, like potatoes and things like that. Unfortunately, we can't save the front door because of the way that the wall is. It would cut it off. You can see it sticks in this way a little bit farther than originally. However, the interior door, we did save that. We could have made the pantry much larger, obviously, but we like the detail so much that we wanted to keep it in the house because I think it's pretty cool, like you said, and it definitely adds a lot visually in the kitchen. We had a discussion about this, the Historic Preservation Commission, and I think you're going to look for a place to put the door. So the door has a space to it. And yeah, it would be pretty easy to use it as like a piece of art. And we could try to find somewhere to put it in here without the frame around it, which I guess you can see maybe one of these pictures. So yeah, there's the door right there, actually. Without this frame around it, and possibly a little bit of this, I think you could trim it up and keep the majority of what makes the door cool, the hinges and the handle and this panel in the front, and maybe fit it back into that space. It wouldn't be usable, it'd be kind of just like a piece of art, but it might be interesting to have in the house. And the exterior of the house is a gray, I'm sorry, a brown cedar shingle that's been painted? Yeah, stained technically. Some old brownish red stain. And you intend to replicate that on the addition? Yeah, so the new addition will be shingled and stained to match, and we'll even have, sorry to see even this picture, but this actually is like a skirt down here, it flares out. So we're going to copy that detail too with the new addition. The other thing the Historic Preservation Commission suggested, because that's all they do with this, is that the cornice around the addition be simplified rather than replicated to one of the house. So I think what we're going to do here is I've gone out and looked, it's hard to tell from here, it looks like this is a molding, but it's not really, it's almost kind of just one board lapped over the other. On here it's just a single board with no lap, and then there's just a tiny bit of crown molding at the very, very top of each one that's a separate piece. And so I think that the new addition will copy what's on the current solarium with just a single board, no lap, and some kind of small molding, simple molding detail, which should be pretty easy to replicate. It's only a single bulge. I don't think from a preservation standpoint, I don't think it needs to be an exact duplicate. It just should not replicate what's on the main house. Yeah, so it won't have that lap, so it'll look more like this, some kind of a cornice system that's just different. Joe, how much does this expand the footprint of the house? So this rear wall will move towards the car two feet, so it actually will stick out about as far as this stairwell sticks out now. Other than that, the footprint will, you know, the length of it is the same. So actually, I mean, we could look at the plan to figure out exactly this square footage that it's increasing the footprint. The second story has a bigger increase in the interior footprint than the first floor of it, but not a whole lot, if I read that correctly, right? Yeah, so it's two feet times 18.3 feet. So it's going to be an additional 36.6 square feet of house footprint. One quick question for you. When you're looking at the addition from the back, if you're standing at the garage looking at the back, you have a couple of stairs on the right-hand side entering, and then there's another door. Would you use one over the other during the winter? Oh, this door on the left-hand side, you mean? The existing house? The looking at the first floor plan, there's a door on both sides in the new addition. So this door here is going to remain easier to see here. This door behind the car is going to stay. That goes down to the basement. Oh, okay. I didn't know if there was another entry there into the house. I mean, technically, yes, but only if you're going down to the basement. Oh, okay. The other thing you may want to think about only in terms of not so much as appearances function is that two stairs are under the drip edge of the house, and that's going to be a winter project to keep the ice off of that. You may want to think about if there's a way to attractively address that using a couple of steel, great treads. You'll save yourself a lot of work with a hatchet getting the ice off of that. Yeah, I suppose if it's raining, we'll get some dripping from right here, but there's going to be a gutter up here that will direct water away from the roof, at least. Even when there's two feet of snow on your roof? Maybe not. I just have experience with that. I can definitely bring that up with Dan. Currently, there's a little roof over the stairs, which is, even though it's tiny, it's fairly effective. And it's totally, it's cantilevered out. There's no support. So it seems like a detail you could theoretically tack on right here. But I'd have to talk to my contractor about that. See what he thinks. And yeah, obviously great steps, cast iron steps would be, or steel steps would be. Just ask him what he would suggest as far as making those steps as safe as possible year-round. Yeah, no, that is a, that's a good point. I can bring it up. Anybody have any other comments, questions, suggestions of any kind? I think some kind of a little roof to protect the stairs for most snow and water is a good idea. I think that's fine, just a little gable roof. Anything just to make it safe so that you're not. Yeah. I've had a I've seen treads replaced every few years after ice has been bashed off of treads over and over again. I suspect, Joe, that that's going to be the door that's used the most in the house. Yeah, since we park in the back of the house and do a lot of driving, I think, with your own house. That and bringing stuff into the kitchen is always a great thing. Yes. Yeah. Especially with little ones. Oh, yeah. One, one, I just have an off-topic comment. I was talking to an old friend of mine. He's 90 years old. His family used to run a sort of newspaper store in that downtown, but his grandparents lived in this house probably in the 40s and 50s. Oh, really? And he remembers going there as a little kid. He's 90 now and he remembers going there as a little kid and going in the basement and being absolutely spick and span and his grandfather made grappa down there. I think he'd be happy to talk to you about his memories of the house and he remembers the addition out the back, not the details of it, but he remembers that. I think I'd have to clean the basement a little before he came over then. Although I'm actually in the basement right now, so it's not that bad. No, no bottles left are there. No, although there's all this wood paneling around. You never know. Something might have gotten stashed away. They used to get grapes for wine and and stuff in to bury by the carload of California. Well, old box carload of grapes. I'm sure the bulkhead stairs down to the basement came in handy. Even during prohibition. Have your own speakeasy down here. Maybe that's where some of that wood paneling comes from. Yeah, possible. Take a look behind the walls. Yeah. Time to start looking for some hollow panels, Joe. Yeah. Unless anybody has anything else to add, we can go through the set of criteria regarding the project. For all projects, exterior design and material materials of new construction or alterations of existing buildings shall be consistent and compatible with the characteristics of the existing building or other properties in the district. The removal of historic materials or alteration of features and spaces that characterize an historic property should be avoided. In this case, you're replacing an addition, which is acceptable character defining features finishes and construction techniques or examples of craftsmanship that characterize an historic building shall be preserved deteriorated character defining features shall be repaired rather than replaced where the severity of deterioration requires replacement of a character defining feature. The new feature shall be replaced and kind any treatments that cause damage to historic materials, including but not limited to chemical or physical treatments shall not be approved. This application is acceptable. Existing buildings shall be recognized as a physical record of their time, place and use. Any new development shall be differentiated from the old but shall respect and be compatible with the massing size scale architectural features detailing an overall character of the primary historic building and nearby historic properties acceptable alterations to buildings called for by public safety accessibility and fire codes shall be designed to maintain the character of the construction materials and features to the maximum extent feasible acceptable height height of building addition shall not overwhelm the primary facade and must consider varied heights of existing buildings and adjacent buildings acceptable proportion compatibility of relationship between width and height of facades as well as relationship of width to height of windows and doors acceptable rhythm visual patterns established by the alterations of solid walls and openings windows and doors and the facade of building shall be create a rhythm acceptable roof shape and equipment consider similarity or compatibility with the roof shapes and immediate area conceal roof type equipment and features on flat roofs from eye level view from adjacent public rights of way and from the ground level of any adjacent properties acceptable architectural features including but not limited to cornices windows shutters fan lights and tabulator trim and other forms of molding or character defining detailing prevailing on the existing building shall be considered in the alteration of a building acceptable it also says architectural features on an addition shall not duplicate but shall respect the original historic building's architectural features again acceptable roof drainage systems shall not hide or obscure architectural character defining features and shall run adjacent to building corners when possible acceptable windows and doors on historic structures character defining windows and door patterns placement sizes proportions and original features such as trims sash and molding shall be preserved to the extent possible when preservation is not possible such character defining windows and doors must be rehabilitated or replaced in kind windows and doors that are not character defining may be replaced but such replacement must be compatible with the historic building style materials and architectural features acceptable porches and stairs on historic structures location of porches ramps and stairs shall be placed in a manner that does not impact or undermine the original and significant ornamentation or detailing of the existing building stairs ramps and porches shall employ suitable detailing to connect and be compatible with the historic and important design features of existing buildings and new construction stairs and ramps shall be designed in a matter with details and materials that provide the most sensitive and compatible structure and that fits the building design and layout acceptable all in favor of the application is presented speak your names Eric says yes and Martha says yes and Steve says yes the vote is for in favor for nothing in favor we'll see a copy of the recommendation form I mean there's it's just a bunch of circles of acceptable that'll go into the DRB packet for the meeting two weeks from now before the development review board great and I will you'll see my staff report on that but feel free to reach out if you have any questions before then okay I'll see you in about an hour sounds good Joe thank you for coming thank you good luck with your project thank you for hearing it appreciate it take care thank you see you bye has everybody had a chance to look at the minutes from February 21st and March the 20th yes and I'll move to accept the minutes from February 21st as written I can second that all in favor speak your name Eric Ben Martha and Steve and actually Eric wasn't at that one on the 21st according to this yeah yeah but we have the three we need yep and how about the March the 20th minutes was I there yes you were there yeah I'll make a motion to accept them as written again I'll second that all in favor speak your names Ben Martha and Steve so the 20th was approved awesome good you got that off your to-do list thank you thank you does anyone have any other business at this point no if not do I hear a motion to adjourn so moved second all in favor of adjournment speak your names here Ben Martha and Steve meeting is adjourned