Sand Torini - Building Our Retirement Home

Building restrictions on Fernandina Beach inside the Coastal Construction Control Line (CCCL) are just that... RESTRICTIVE!  No building can exceed a height of 35 feet.  Minimum side setbacks are 10% of the width of the lot.  With a 75 foot lot, that means we have to have at least a 7.5 foot setback on each side.  That means our house can be no wider than 60 feet, BUT if we go taller than 25 feet, the side setbacks are increased by 1 foot for each foot taller than 25 feet.  The front of the house can be no closer to the street than 25 feet and we cannot encroach on the dunes in the back of the house. The elevator shaft does not count against the height restriction.  SO, if we keep the house under 25 feet, our maximum house dimensions are 28 feet x 60 feet. Our first thought was to build a one level home on stilts so we started looking for sample house plans that would fit our dimensions.  What we discovered was 28 x 60 is the exact size of a double-w...

Finding our retirement home has been quite an adventure.  Tony announced his desire to retire to "a place where I can sit in my wheelchair and overlook big water."  I disagreed, stating that I hoped to never sit in a wheelchair! Our initial search started in 2006 - in  Ireland , shortly after Tony left Delta.  We made 4 trips to Ireland in 2006 and 2007, searching for a home or a nice lot where we could build.  We thought we had found the perfect lot, and made an offer, but as we did our diligence, we discovered that the cost to build was prohibitive.  It turned out to be a good thing we didn't settle there because Delta cut back on service so travel back and forth to see friends and family would have been difficult. To read more about our Ireland quest, you can click on these links: http://www.bjandtony.com/2006/200605Ireland.html http://www.bjandtony.com/2007/200701Ireland.html http://www.bjandtony.com/2007/200702Ireland.html Once we gave...