White Christmas!

The weather is perfect to settle in with a cup of hot cocoa and cuddly blankets. We hope everyone has been enjoying their first week of winter.

Long Drive Today

Today we did the long drive to Mt. Shasta, California. Strangely, the "Welcome to California" sign seemed to be missing. I guess they don't want visitors anymore. LOL

Maybe they drink too much water, because California was looking more like Africa to me. Everything dead but for stunted bushes.

OMG, it was so much tile. Really, until we saw it all together we didn't realize just how much tile I had bought. Luckily, we had the good sense to drive down there with a trailer even though we didn't want to. (The trailer added at least an hour to the trip each way.) We had a good solid layer in both the bed of the truck and in the trailer, plus a few boxes behind the seats in the cab.

Rain Garden Resources

In Multnomah County, rate payers pay quite a lot for stormwater management (our last bill was more than $20/month). Our goal has been to disconnect from the storm drain in an attempt to save money through Portland's Clean River Rewards Program.

There are quite a few useful online resources for how to build rain gardens in your own yard. The one we are primarily relying on is published by SeaGrant Oregon titled The Oregon Rain Garden Guide. It has a really useful list of plants in the back of the booklet. Portland also has a good video summary on "How to Build a Rain Garden."

If you live in the Portland, Oregon area you can also take Rain Gardens 101, a free workshop, through the East Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District. Jeff and Sharon took it last year and they give you a nice printed booklet and teach you how to calculate the water basin size requirements.

In addition, here are some useful online resources:
Building a Rain Garden booklet (pdf).
How to Manage Stormwater: Soakage Trenches booklet (pdf).
How to Manage Stormwater: Rain Gardens booklet (pdf).

Beautiful Morning

We woke up to a nice layer of snow on the ground and it is beautiful! Jeff was lucky—his class was cancelled this morning.

Update at 3PM: It's snowing again!!

Rain Gardens 101

Earlier this week, Jeff and I attended a free class in Portland offered by the East Multnomah Soil & Conservation District: Rain Gardens 101. A rain garden is a garden of native shrubs, perennials, and flowers planted in a small depression, which is generally formed on a natural slope. It is designed to temporarily hold and soak in rain water runoff that flows from roofs, driveways, patios or lawns. Rain gardens are effective in removing up to 90% of nutrients and chemicals and up to 80% of sediments from the rainwater runoff.




We are definitely planning to add a rain garden or two as soon as we can figure out where we want to put them. We quite enjoyed the class and it was worth every penny! If anyone else lives in Portland, you might want to check it out.

Though, one thing we learned is that we shouldn't use copper rain chains because the copper leaches into the water supply and harms salmon. Oh no, we already bought some. Bummer. So now we have to decide if we're going to hang them or abandon that earlier plan. =(

For folks not lucky enough to live in Portland, but who want to build their own Rain Garden, I found a great website that had links to tons of resources for DIYers. Check it out. They look pretty easy to build; mostly just digging holes and planting particular varieties of plants.

We Bought a House!

I just got an email from our realtor: "Your purchase of the house is final. Congratulations!" It's a relief to finally have this house-buying experience come to a conclusion. Over the last four years, we looked at countless houses both in California and Oregon. We had nearly a dozen house-hunting weekends/trips with realtors. This house was our sixth written offer.

So, our long California adventure is nearing an end. During the last four years, it has been nice to be near family and get to know our nieces and nephews better. I hope we'll have the resources to come back and visit more often than we did last time we lived up in Oregon.

Packing Has Started

I spent a couple hours today starting to pack for our first trip up to Oregon in a couple of weeks. Since we're going to be so tight on space, I'm trying to figure out what we most need for that first trip. Today, I packed up bedding, towels and toiletries. And also started packing dog supplies. We'll probably start packing kitchen gear this weekend. Luckily, since our SCA gear is already up there, we'll mostly be able to pull out that cooking gear to use temporarily.

I still spend too much time during the day cruising around the internet looking for design ideas, paint stripping advice and for furniture. I found this dragon fireplace tool set recently, and wish I could justify the expense, but the price is just too high! But, wow! Want!

This evening I began looking into our moving options. We're looking at either a DIY move with a UHaul truck, or maybe a move where they bring containers out to your house and you fill them and then they drive them up to the destination. We're looking for an economical solution that won't make us too crazy. But, we can't really justify the expense of a full-service move. Oh well. Though, probably the best cost saving option for us is to continue to downsize. The less we have to move, the less we'll have to pay.

Almost Over

We received our bid for foundation and pest repair work on the Multnomah house today. It totaled $13,160; combine that with the roof repair and we're talking close to $15,000. In an earlier addendum, we asked the sellers to reduce the price $15K and they informally came back with $5K. Today, based on the bid, we decided to instead ask for $10K off the price.

We figure we have good grounds, as the quote is from their own realtor's recommendation. We are tired of this house-buying process and it's just not worth digging in our heels and losing this house over a few thousand dollars.

It's up to the sellers now. If they accept, we're supposed to close on May 13. Unfortunately, I didn't have my school schedule with me when we picked the original close date (nor did we really expect to get this far) and we won't be going to Oregon for close. If this deal closes, I don't think we'll be heading up until I'm done with finals on May 26.

Final Extension

Last night we received another extension form from the sellers of Multnomah extending our inspection deadline until Wednesday. Since they granted the extension, on Monday our realtor will be meeting a builder at the property to get a "real" quote for the necessary repairs. Since the builder was suggested by their realtor, our hope is we'll be able to come up with a mutually-agreeable price for this purchase.

So, more than likely, nothing further will happen on this until late-Monday. This is surely the last extension and we should know by Wednesday if we're buying this house.

Another Extension

We have been back and forth with the sellers and it seems somewhat likely this house purchase is going to fall through. Today is the current deadline for Jeff and I to back out without losing our deposit, or to extend the inspection deadline. We're trying to extend the inspection deadline so we have time to adequately respond to their counter we received last night at 8:30PM.

Last week we asked the sellers to reduce the price another $15K. We had a eco-cool builder out there and he gave us a no-doubt high guesstimate of $60K for the needed repairs on the house. He couldn't see what was in the finished areas and so surely allowed for some unseen damage repair. He was also accounting for the fact that we wanted real, structural repairs, not cosmetic touchups.

This week, the sellers had their person out and he said he could make all the requested repairs for $6K! Really??! They can't be serious. Based on the shoddy roof installation, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

So, today we are trying to find another builder satisfactory to all parties who can go out and give a "real" estimate to repair the foundation damage and the pest damage. But if the sellers won't extend the deadline for us to do this, then we'll just sign a document backing out of the purchase tonight.

This is very disappointing for us. We've been seeing a light at the end of a tunnel, but it turns out it was a train (again).

You would think it would be easier to buy a house... I guess my expectations are just too high. Unfortunately, I have an affinity for historic fixers because then I'm not paying for the previous owners remodeling, but then I expect the price to reflect the unimproved condition. We're not finding that to be the case.

Update at 8PM:

The sellers extended this transaction until Wednesday. So, this transaction marches on. Our realtor is going to go out on Monday to meet their realtor's recommended contractor to hopefully get a firm estimate for what the foundation and pest repair would cost. We don't trust the seller's guy.

Still Waiting

We're still waiting to hear from the sellers about whether they'll accept our revised price. If they don't get back to us by tomorrow afternoon we'll have to terminate the transaction or risk losing our $5,000 deposit. Clint, our realtor, has high hopes we'll hear this evening, as he says the sellers met this afternoon. I'll post later tonight if we hear either way.

This week, I've been working on the tough tasks on my list this week; those tasks I've been putting off for too long. I've been collecting estimates to redo the plumbing in this house here in Redwood City. And I've scheduled a bunch of Kaiser appointments. I figure we'd better take advantage of our medical insurance while we still have it. I've also started pricing storage spaces in Oregon. It will be time soon enough to rent one and start shuttling stuff up there. There's just so many things to do before we move.

I did spend a few hours cruising around on the Portland MLS again in anticipation of the sellers rejecting our offer. I used to like cruising around the MLS more than I do now. I'm getting a little tired. And this time I cruised around the Salem MLS as well. There are a few promising prospects down there, but nothing I love. But the house prices are about $100K less, so it might be tempting. (Just for kicks, I also cruised around the MLS in Wisconsin; boy am I jealous of their house prices. There were some pretty nice houses for less than $100K!)

Maybe we'll just rent.... Really not a feature as I'm very sick of moving, but it may work out in the long run, especially if we find jobs in places outside Portland. But finding a rental with no jobs and two pets is gonna be a hassle.

Or maybe we'll just buy a very inexpensive house (less than $200K, which is cheap in Portland) and live in it until we find jobs and then buy another nicer house once we find jobs. Then we can keep the first small house as a rental property. It would be nice to have some passive income that isn't subject to Federal Reserve manipulation.

Update at 11PM:

So, the buyers want to extend our offer to Thursday. In other words, they don't know yet. I'm not sure what we'll do tomorrow. I have to talk to Clint about what their extension means for our deposit. I thought we already had until Thursday to figure this out.

Changing Schools Again

I have been working on a paralegal certificate for a couple years now. I started at DeAnza College in Cupertino then stopped going when we planned to travel for a year. Then when we moved to Redwood City, I transferred to Cañada College. I was hoping to finish my paralegal certificate at Cañada College this spring, but I think I may be just a bit short on units (3 units of a Word class). So, I have a choice. I can try and keep working on my certificate here in California during the summer or I can just transfer to Portland Community College. PCC requires more total units for the Paralegal certificate than the program here, but they also have a much better selection of classes.

I was impressed about how many classes PCC was offering, until I realized tuition there is about three times more expensive than I've been paying at community colleges here in California. (No wonder the California schools are going broke.)

I spent my morning first applying to go to PCC, and also plotting out my schedule to finish there. It looks like I could finish with six more classes, assuming some very conservative transfer estimates. If they transfer more of the California classes, then I would just need four or five classes in Portland. Of course, I may have to take more if they require a certain percentage of your paralegal classes be taken at PCC. Though, I couldn't find such a requirement anywhere at the website.

Summer quarter starts on June 21. I'm trying to figure out if I can get my act together and get up to Portland by that date. I'm currently considering 12 units in the summer quarter (4 classes). That would only leave a couple more in fall quarter.

Are the Sellers Motivated?

We're about to find out. =)

So, after having our builder and a mason out, we have much more information about what this house needs to be restored. We are torn about what to do about this house. There is the worry that the right thing to do would be to walk away from this money pit, but we've both fallen for the neighborhood. On Sunday we dropped back by the house and visited with the neighbors and they're really nice.The foundation isn't as bad as we feared, according to our builder. We should be able to reinforce the weak area and it should last a while longer. Though, the roof is much worse than we realized. The installation was so shoddy that we're actually going to have to remove it and install a new roof.

Anyway, we're planning to go back to the sellers and ask them to cut the price another $15K. In our estimate (actually our builder's ballpark estimate), it needs about $60K worth of structural work to fix the pest damage, weak foundation wall, crumbling masonry, and replace the roof. We think it only fair they should defray at least a portion of that expense. If they refuse, we'll just have to walk away—again! But we really don't want to.

Home Inspection Done

It took about 4 hours to have the home inspection done today. In addition to the many problems we already knew about, the inspection also found a number of problems we weren't aware of.

The 96-year-old foundation on the house has issues. The inspector showed us an exposed section on the back of the house where he could basically shove his pocket knife into the cement. While there aren't many visible cracks, the concrete is very soft. So, now we're trying to figure out what this means for the future. How soon does this foundation have to be replaced?

The inspector also found some pretty extensive termite and beetle damage. In fact, there is a large beam under the front of the house that is practically hollow. He was almost able to insert his finger into the soft wood. We were also unaware of this damage before this morning.

While we were walking along the side of the house looking at a sagging roof, I tripped over something sticking out of the ground and I fell backwards into the neighbor's fence. It was so rotten that the fence just came down. Unfortunately, I managed to fall on a nail which punctured my hand. Ouch.

On Monday we have two more appointments. It's possible we'll have enough information by then to make an informed decision.

Waiting to Go

I've got everything packed and I've finished everything on my list and I still have about an hour before I leave to pick up Jeff, so I figure I may as well do a quick blog entry.

I'm feeling much more stress this time; I'm not sure why. I'm not sure if I'm uneasy about the house purchase, or if I'm uneasy about Jeff quitting his job soon. It's pretty scary to cut our roots and just move, with no idea how it will turn out.

As far as the house, I've scheduled several appointments over the next 4 days. We have a full house inspection Saturday morning. On Monday we're meeting with Green Hammer Building Contractors to discuss the energy upgrades we'd like to do to the house. We want to seal it up tight with insulation and other energy saving upgrades. And we're hoping to redo the kitchen and add an attached bathroom upstairs.

Also on Monday, we have a Mason coming out to look at the crumbling brickwork to give us an estimate for repair. That one will help determine if we decide to call this house ours. On Tuesday, we are having someone come out and try and locate an old oil tank on the property. The sellers claim there never was one, but we want to be sure.

We still need to schedule a sewer scope, but I figure we can probably wait until after the inspection. If the inspection shows us some very serious problems, then we'll pass on this house. The price, frankly, isn't cheap enough if there are major problems. But we're not seeing them, so it may be fine.

I did go off galavanting to Monterey yesterday. On the way, I dropped Shasta off at boarding in Santa Cruz. It was a lovely drive and we had beautiful weather. It's probably just as well I went out and looked first, because I didn't end up buying the set. The furniture was exactly the brand and finish I was hoping, but the sellers only had a headboard for the queen size bed. They didn't have the footboard or rails. I was very disappointed; I like the finished furniture look of the footboard. The seller seemed pretty disappointed, too. While I was there, I even called the furniture company to get a price for the missing pieces and they said $700! Seriously? $700? In this economy? Anyway, it turned this good deal into not such a good deal, so I passed. At least I had a nice day with my Mother. =)

I finally had time this morning to take a long walk with my walking buddy, Heather. We actually walked 2 miles from her house to Hobee's for breakfast and then back again. It was a nice walk and I'm glad I got a chance to visit with Heather again. After breakfast, I spent the rest of the day working through my To Do list getting ready to go. I hope we're not forgetting anything!

During this trip in Portland, we're staying with our friend who doesn't have a wireless connection, so we'll be mostly offline until Tuesday night. We may sneak over to the Multnomah Library to use their connection, but we won't have it at the house. I'll let you all know how it goes as soon as I can.

The Inspections Begin!

The sellers have now verbally accepted our counter offer. Our realtor, Clint, told me they had wanted to counter back at a higher amount, but he warned them not to, so they just accepted our offer. (Good call!) The forms are still shuttling about collecting signatures, but this looks like it will probably move to the next step. We'll know for sure tomorrow.

Next step: Inspections! We have 12 business days to complete whatever inspections we want to do. So now I need to start calling around and making appointments. And I (or we) have to go back up to Oregon, obviously. Though, we could stay down here and try and do everything remotely, but I'm sure we won't be as satisfied with that situation. It's always nice to follow the inspector around and ask questions while he works.

I am cautiously optimistic our search will finally be over. Though, I still clearly recall the house purchase that fell apart last year when the inspection came back with so many unexpected repairs needed.

I've been cruising around PortlandMaps.com and it looks like the house has been in the same family since at least 1938. Interesting!

Counter Offer on Multnomah

Surprisingly, the sellers countered our offer, so I guess their original offer wasn't so much better than ours! We originally offered $380K firm. But they countered at $395K. We discussed rejecting it just on the principle of the thing, but we countered with $385K. We're ready to be done house shopping.

They officially have until tomorrow at 3PM to answer our counter, but based on their last answer, they don't worry about those time limits so much so it could be later in the week. I'm quite sure the sellers are trying to work the other buyers to get their price up, so who knows what will happen.

We're getting much better at not getting our hopes up when we make offers. We are already discussing for which house we should make the next offer, sad to say.

We did our grueling 12.5 hour drive again today. It went fairly well. We were both tired from getting to bed much too late last night and we're both nursing mild colds. But luckily the trip was uneventful. Though the weather was odd. It was nice in Oregon, then started raining when we crossed over into California. Then it pretty much rained the whole rest of the trip. It's good to be back to our own bed where we can sleep with our dog child!

Tough Decisions

We've spent a couple of days now in Portland looking at houses and driving around looking at property on which to build. We're having a hard time deciding what we should do. We found a couple of once-grand houses that now need work, but they seem priced too high considering the work they need. We struggle with valuing them correctly. We're not so good at accurately guessing the cost of those repairs and I have a hard time being realistic about the work necessary because I'm so good at imagining them all fixed up and beautiful again.

We're also struggling with the trade-offs of living in town versus living in the forest areas that surround Portland. In the forest, we'll get a bigger lot loaded with trees, but it doesn't come cheap. And we'll always need to drive where we want to go. For a while now, we've been imagining a life where we can get down to one car and take advantage of Portland's legendary public transportation; that won't happen if we buy one of the out-of-town lots. It is unfortunate we have so many competing and incompatible desires.

Tomorrow we're going off with the realtor again to revisit about four houses from Tuesday. One of them, the fixer on Multnomah, is somewhat in the lead of the houses we visited yesterday. But we've been told there was an offer yesterday. We're debating whether we just move on and let the buyers negotiate uncontested, but we're also wondering if it would be worth at least writing up the offer with the dollar amount we're willing to pay. How do we know if it's more or less than the current offer; the only way to find out is to write the offer. Perhaps Multnomah will go pending tomorrow and then that decision will be taken out of our hands. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

It is possible we won't be making any offers on this trip, as I'm not really enthused about any of the current choices, except, of course, Rupert. And, about Rupert, there's still no definitive word. We are keeping the communication open with the sellers, but there has been no forward progress. We are no longer in contract and if they were to get a higher acceptable offer they would be free to accept it. Likewise, we are free to make offers on other properties. We continue to watch and see what happens. Perhaps it will eventually go into foreclosure, then maybe we'd have another shot at it.

Beautiful Drive to Portland

We set off this morning at 5:31AM from Redwood City, CA. We drove pretty much straight through to Portland, OR and we arrived at 5:29PM! We had to stop for gas twice and we grabbed a quick BBQ lunch in Roseburg.

Shasta was a perfect dog child. She mostly slept the whole way, except for once when she asked us to stop at the next rest stop.

The weather around Yreka, CA was absolutely beautiful! Mt. Shasta was hiding behind the clouds, unfortunately.

More Portland House Shopping

After 3 years of steadily looking at houses, I admit I'm getting tired of trying to find one. We've basically given up on Rupert. It sounds like even the sellers' realtor can't get ahold of the sellers. I guess they intend to let it go to foreclosure. Oh well. So, our search continues.

We have a busy weekend scheduled full of family activities. Tomorrow is my mother's 65th birthday and we're having a small family gathering in the afternoon. And there are two family meals on Easter Sunday.

Then, Monday we're driving back up to Oregon. Our house shopping list for this trip include these properties:
Multnomah Street--This is a fixer in Laurelhurst. Way at the edge of Laurelhurst which is not really a feature; I'd like to be close to the park. But it at least has the historic woodwork, painted, but it's there.
SE 67th Ave
NE Hazelfern


We're also going to look at a few pieces of land this trip. We're seriously considering just building a house. Then we could spend all our money building the new "old" house we envision and wouldn't have to spend money remodeling. Here are three pieces of property we're hoping to visit this week:
Germantown Road
Groveland Road
Ramsey Drive

I actually doubt we'll be making an offer this trip, except maybe on land. I think we've agreed we'll be better off if we wait until May, when the First Time Buyer Tax Kickback ends. We won't qualify for this credit due to selling a bunch of Apple stock to buy the house, so we'll probably be better off waiting until the house prices drop this summer (assuming the government doesn't again extend the credit).