Anyone have house in your neighborhood with front door NOT facing the street? (fit in, HOA)

[loves2read]

Our HOA ARC approved a house plan for house on our culdesac that has a front door that does not face the street--
the front door faces into the side-facing garage of the next-door neighbor...

the plans call for a covered entrance to face the street--and that does--but everything about the house that marks how it "runs" or "sets" on the lot telegraphs that the front door faces the side...
the front entrance only cloaks the fact that the door does not face the street...
the ARC allowed this house to be built in violation of the #1 CCR provision by requiring them to add this design element to hide the fact that the house has a variance

The center ridge line on the roof--if you follow that from end to end, you can see it does not go horizontally across the lot so it would be parallel to the street and the door would face it---but goes at an angle from front to back...because house is built on angle...
It is house for rectangular lot that was turned to fit on a pie-shaped lot...

If you stand in the street at the end of the sidewalk and look up the sidewalk at the porch entrance--you can't see the front door. It is too far to the right to be visible..If you stand at the front door and look forward--now all you can see is the brick wall of the entry porch and a sliver of the street up the culdesac--not what is right in front of the house...
before the wall was bricked, you of course saw the double garage doors of the neighbor...

Now this next-door neighbor wants to put a wrought iron fence down her drive and have a security gate go across it--
One of the current Board directors told her that was OK because it would be within the CCRs of the HOA...
she got bids from two companies and was planning to start but I think she found out that the HOA Board is not going to let her do that...

When she told her new neighbor who is moving in this weekend what she wanted to do, he threw a fit in her driveway and forbade her to put in a fence...a pretty heated fit too from what they said...

Why would he do that--because it would make his house look even more like crap...and demonstrate that it is crooked on the lot--which he is still trying to deny...
He claims that because he got the approval from the ARC there is nothing wrong with his house...yeah, sure...and Mike Tyson does not have a tattooed face...

I have been to every house in this HOA (taken photos of most of them) and ALL of them have a front door that faces the street. 2 of them have front doors that are set at an angle less than 90 degrees but they still face the street...Another has front porch entrance that sort of blocks the view to the street but the front door definitely FACES the street...In that case the sidewalk that comes to the porch is from the driveway at the side of the house--so the porch is oriented there vs the street in front of the house...

The ARC board has repeatedly said this house needed no variances which is why it was approved so quickly and their justification for not turning it down was that it NEEDED no variance..."they did not have a reason to deny the request" is what they told people who complained when they saw how the house sits on the lot...which is bogus...
the CCRs and the ARC language in the HOA documents state that the ARC does not need a reason to turn down a plan request...
but this decision was made in spite of all reasons available to deny the house...they WANTED to approve the plans..they just lied about why they did it...

Now I think if they are going to deny my neighbor across the street--the one next to the crooked house-- the right to put in a legitimate fence because they already have allowed an eyesore to be built..
I am going to have to point that out to them...
I have never seen a home in neighborhood on normal size lots whose front door did not face the street...
I would like to know if anyone has a house they can show me that does violate this basic rule of house design--
ARE there any homes out there where the front door faces the side yard or toward the back?
I know there might be homes like that on much larger lots like couple of acres where you can have more flexibility--but our lots in this HOA are usually .25 or smaller even...and because they are fairly close together , it makes somethis this out of the norm so much more noticeable...

[mami2emily]

While house hunting last winter I came across a few homes (definitely less than 5) like that here in the Park Cities. Homes that did not have a front door or entrance facing the street. There was one in particular on a French-sounding street that what you could see from the street was obviously the side of the house, and the front was a beautiful New Orleans-style double porch facing the side of the lot. Strange! If only I could remember the address so you could see it on google earth.

Where my parents live they saw a zero-lot line hiuse where the front door was down a verry narrow corridor down the side of the home. But the garage did face the front so it looked like a traditional home untik you went to visit and wondered how you would get in.

[galore]

I think this house's front door doesn't face the street:

[MckinneyOwnr]

There's a few houses like that in my neighborhood here in Mckinney, on approx. .25 acre lots. Not many, but there are some.

I think they look a little strange, but certainly not to the level of an eyesore or anything, they are still $300k+ houses.

[mSooner]

It's kind of hard to imagine--pictures?

[racehorse]

When we were looking at houses last year, we looked at a development that had the front doors on the corner of the house.

[BigDGeek]

Originally Posted by loves2read

Our HOA ARC approved a house plan for house on our culdesac that has a front door that does not face the street--
the front door faces into the side-facing garage of the next-door neighbor...

the plans call for a covered entrance to face the street--and that does--but everything about the house that marks how it "runs" or "sets" on the lot telegraphs that the front door faces the side...
the front entrance only cloaks the fact that the door does not face the street...
the ARC allowed this house to be built in violation of the #1 CCR provision by requiring them to add this design element to hide the fact that the house has a variance

The center ridge line on the roof--if you follow that from end to end, you can see it does not go horizontally across the lot so it would be parallel to the street and the door would face it---but goes at an angle from front to back...because house is built on angle...
It is house for rectangular lot that was turned to fit on a pie-shaped lot...

If you stand in the street at the end of the sidewalk and look up the sidewalk at the porch entrance--you can't see the front door. It is too far to the right to be visible..If you stand at the front door and look forward--now all you can see is the brick wall of the entry porch and a sliver of the street up the culdesac--not what is right in front of the house...
before the wall was bricked, you of course saw the double garage doors of the neighbor...

Now this next-door neighbor wants to put a wrought iron fence down her drive and have a security gate go across it--
One of the current Board directors told her that was OK because it would be within the CCRs of the HOA...
she got bids from two companies and was planning to start but I think she found out that the HOA Board is not going to let her do that...

When she told her new neighbor who is moving in this weekend what she wanted to do, he threw a fit in her driveway and forbade her to put in a fence...a pretty heated fit too from what they said...

Why would he do that--because it would make his house look even more like crap...and demonstrate that it is crooked on the lot--which he is still trying to deny...
He claims that because he got the approval from the ARC there is nothing wrong with his house...yeah, sure...and Mike Tyson does not have a tattooed face...

I have been to every house in this HOA (taken photos of most of them) and ALL of them have a front door that faces the street. 2 of them have front doors that are set at an angle less than 90 degrees but they still face the street...Another has front porch entrance that sort of blocks the view to the street but the front door definitely FACES the street...In that case the sidewalk that comes to the porch is from the driveway at the side of the house--so the porch is oriented there vs the street in front of the house...

The ARC board has repeatedly said this house needed no variances which is why it was approved so quickly and their justification for not turning it down was that it NEEDED no variance..."they did not have a reason to deny the request" is what they told people who complained when they saw how the house sits on the lot...which is bogus...
the CCRs and the ARC language in the HOA documents state that the ARC does not need a reason to turn down a plan request...
but this decision was made in spite of all reasons available to deny the house...they WANTED to approve the plans..they just lied about why they did it...

Now I think if they are going to deny my neighbor across the street--the one next to the crooked house-- the right to put in a legitimate fence because they already have allowed an eyesore to be built..
I am going to have to point that out to them...
I have never seen a home in neighborhood on normal size lots whose front door did not face the street...
I would like to know if anyone has a house they can show me that does violate this basic rule of house design--
ARE there any homes out there where the front door faces the side yard or toward the back?
I know there might be homes like that on much larger lots like couple of acres where you can have more flexibility--but our lots in this HOA are usually .25 or smaller even...and because they are fairly close together , it makes somethis this out of the norm so much more noticeable...

I think you need a hobby.

[Debsi]

I think there is one in my neighborhood.

I don't know why it would bother anybody.. but then again I'm one of those "crazy" would-never-buy-in-an-HOA-community people.

[BigDGeek]

Originally Posted by Debsi

I think there is one in my neighborhood.

I don't know why it would bother anybody.. but then again I'm one of those "crazy" would-never-buy-in-an-HOA-community people.

Also one of those would-never-write-a-page's-worth-of-diatribe-about-the-orientation-of-a-house's-front-door people.

[skids929]

Originally Posted by BigDGeek

Also one of those would-never-write-a-page's-worth-of-diatribe-about-the-orientation-of-a-house's-front-door people.

Doh!