Brian Maloy

Friends, I know many of you are wondering. Lately when we run into folks, it’s the first question (naturally), so I thought it may be helpful to provide a brief update. 

When we were in Colorado, nearly 2 months ago, things were being held up by the county for building permits. The house was demo’d in mid-May (even before demo, we were navigating permit delays…), and we’d expected that framing and foundation work could begin in early June. Then the summer went on, and on, and we learned of some really odd and old issues with the setback on the back part of our yard. These odd things have slowed this process more than any of us expected.

Probably 50 years ago, Highway 21 was re-routed behind our house. Before I was born, our house sat on well over an acre and a half, now just whittled down to a half acre. The road sits up an embankment, through some trees, and most of the time we prefer it to having a neighbor right behind us. That said, somehow when they did this back in the 70’s, they changed the setback on the back yard property line to essentially give us two front yards. Now we do not, and have never had access to the road behind us through the trees… but nevertheless, we have a front yard setback in our back yard, strange. Further oddness, the house we had before may have slightly exceeded the setback on the corner where our bedroom was, and our back porches crossed into the setback too. It sounds like 50 years ago, there was an error in the survey and setback — that was never caught until now. 

If you’re tracking, this means that to rebuild even the house we had — isn’t allowed. And we’d planned on bumping out our bedroom wall to accommodate a full bathroom, a small 5 feet. This crosses even further into the setback. Mind you, our architect and construction team worked hard to understand the survey data, initially there was concern we had a 45’ setback on the front yard, and we would NOT be able to add a front porch as planned. They went through all the hoops to ensure and check with the county for clarification. In the end, after 3 previous reviews and edits requested from the county (reviewing mostly right around the add-on 5’ to our bedroom), they decided on the 4th round of permit applications, that the addition was impossible because of the setback… not once before had the county realized there was an improper setback in the backyard. 

After much work by our construction team and architect to try and get some grace and understanding (after all, we aren’t adding something crazy onto a home we live in, we’re just trying to rebuild our old house, but add a second full bathroom versus the 1.5 we had before), it fell on deaf ears and we were told the only further option was to apply for a variance. A variance gives us “one-off permission” to build in the setback. That variance meeting, is tomorrow (August 6th, 4pm). We have a good feeling, but we’d really appreciate prayer for favor — we really want to move home. 

In awesome news, we’ve talked to our councilman, our very wonderful neighbors sent letters in with the variance application in favor of bringing us home, another beloved neighbor and her daughter even went around with a petition to send in. So our community has REALLY loved us well (which makes us even more eager to get home). But tomorrow we’ll see. 

If all goes well, and we get approval on the variance, and then approval on the building permits, our construction team is ON it, ready to get working on foundation as soon as possible. It’s likely that we will not be home by Christmas, it will be after the new year which will be weird that we spent all of 2025 in The Tower House, but that’s okay. 

In all sincerity — we do NOT always “feel it”, but we know God is good, and somehow He is using this season to mold and shape us. There have been many silver linings we’ve found, and no doubt, the waiting will make it all the sweeter. We are grateful for the prayers, the encouragement, the checking in — we have amazing neighbors, friends, and family. We are blessed. 

p.s. We have popcorn growing in our yard, yes real stalks of popcorn. It’s a really good story. More on that later. Pray for our neighbors’ patience, they’ve had to look at a pit for nearly 4 months, and now popcorn is growing…