Home Additions in Haymarket, VA

It depends on which side of the town line the parcel sits, and inside the line three approvals stack in a fixed order. Haymarket is an incorporated town in Prince William County. For an in-town property, the Architectural Review Board approves a Certificate of Appropriateness first, because the whole town is a historic overlay district. Then the Town of Haymarket issues zoning approval, which the town states is required before you submit a building permit application to the county. Then Prince William County Department of Development Services issues the building permit and every trade permit, including mechanical, electrical and plumbing, and performs the inspections. That county role has been in place since January 15, 2018, when the town transferred building permitting and inspections to the county. If your Haymarket address is in Piedmont, Dominion Valley, Virginia Crossing, Woodborne Preserve or any of the other communities outside the corporate limits, the town has no role at all and Prince William County handles zoning and building permits both. We confirm the parcel's jurisdiction before any drawing is started.

Inside the town limits, yes, and this is the part that surprises people. In 1994 the Town Council placed the entire town under a Historic District Zoning Ordinance, so there is no non-historic corner of Haymarket to build in. The ordinance provides that no building, structure or sign shall be erected, reconstructed, altered or restored within the Old and Historic Town of Haymarket unless and until an application for a Certificate of Appropriateness has been approved by the Architectural Review Board or, on appeal, by the Town Council. The town's own list of covered work names rehabilitation of or additions to existing buildings, new construction, and razing or demolition. Review is confined to external architectural features subject to public view from a public street, way or place, so the committee will not review your floor plan. Interior remodeling is exempt outright, and so is routine maintenance that does not significantly alter the appearance, though the design guidelines treat replacement of more than ten percent of a feature such as a roof or siding elevation as material rather than routine. We prepare the drawings, elevations and material specifications for that review as part of the design phase.

It changes how the Architectural Review Board treats the existing building. Under the 2021 zoning text amendment, all buildings within the Old and Historic Town of Haymarket that were built before 1950 are designated historic buildings. On a designated historic building, no architectural feature subject to public view from a public street may be altered, and no razing or demolition may proceed, without going to the ARB first. In practice that means the connection between the old house and the new work gets more attention than the new work does: where the addition meets the original wall, whether an original window or door opening is being lost, roof form and ridge height, and whether the addition reads as subordinate to the original from the street. The Board meets the third Wednesday of each month at 7:00 PM, is required to meet within 45 days of the Town Clerk confirming a complete application, and endeavors to announce a decision within 14 days of the final hearing. Aggrieved parties have 14 days to appeal to Town Council. An approved Certificate of Appropriateness is good for one year. We build that calendar into the schedule from the start.

Inside town limits the front setback usually makes the decision for you. In R-1 the setback line is 35 feet or more from any street right-of-way 50 feet or greater in width, or 50 feet from the centerline where the right-of-way is narrower, which pushes the buildable envelope well back on a 10,000 square foot lot. Add a 25 foot rear yard, 10 foot side yards totaling 20, and a 30 percent maximum lot coverage figure, and a rear addition can run out of room quickly. Going up avoids the coverage limit entirely, since a second story adds none, and the district allows up to 35 feet and three stories. The trade is the Architectural Review Board, which will look harder at a change in roof line and overall massing than at a single-story addition set behind the house. On a pre-1950 house we usually test a rear ell that continues the existing roof line first, because it satisfies both the setbacks and the review. Outside town limits, on the larger lots, the structure and the household usually decide rather than the ordinance. We model both on your parcel.

For an in-town Haymarket project, plan the approvals as three sequential steps rather than one. The Architectural Review Board meets monthly and must meet within 45 days of a complete application, so a Certificate of Appropriateness realistically accounts for one to two months on its own, longer if the Board asks for changes and the item returns to a later meeting. Town zoning approval follows, then Prince William County building permit review. Two to four months from design start to permit in hand is a fair planning range, and it moves with how complete the drawings arrive. Outside town limits, subtract the ARB and add your community's architectural review committee, which typically runs two to six weeks and can be filed alongside the county application rather than before it. Construction is separate: about three to five months for a single-story rear addition, sunroom or screened porch, and five to nine months for a second story, a primary suite wing or an in-law suite with a full bath and mechanical work. You get a dated schedule once the jurisdiction and the scope are confirmed.

On an in-town house, you design for the Architectural Review Board's actual test, which is whether the external architectural features subject to public view are architecturally compatible with the historic buildings in the district. The town's design guidelines are organized around Colonial, Federal and Folk Victorian forms with Greek Revival and Italianate detail, so the questions are roof pitch and ridge height, window proportion and muntin pattern, porch depth and column proportion, cornice and trim depth, and siding exposure. Where an original material cannot be matched in current production, we place the transition at an inside corner or a set-back plane rather than mid wall, and we set the addition back from the primary facade so the original reads first. In the newer communities outside town the questions are different and more mechanical: siding profile and exposure, shingle color that has weathered fifteen or twenty years, window brand and grille pattern, and carrying the roof pitch and overhang through cleanly. Either way we document existing conditions with photographs and measurements at the start and specify to match rather than approximate.