It's Been 10 Years!

Today is the 10-year anniversary of when we bought this house. I cannot believe how fast the time has flown by. In that time, we transformed the house by stripping all the paint and staining the wood which was more to our liking.

We totally replaced the kitchen and bathrooms.

There are more before and afters here.

After a way-too-long computer game break, we turned our attention to the yard. It's a little chaotic as we tend toward the style of cottage garden, but I'm pretty happy with our efforts, so far. It will likely take a couple of years for the plants to establish themselves. I'll have to try and refrain buying more plants as I'm sure we've already overplanted the yard.

I 💜 Our Public Library

I moan about the City of Portland quite a lot. The city has many problems, the primary one being way too many homeless people. There are too frequent thefts of anything we leave outside. A few weeks ago one of them stole the cushion off the wicker loveseat on our front porch. I guess (s)he decided it would be more comfortable to sleep on a cushion than on the ground. We had a cement elephant statue on our front porch that used to belong to my grandmother, that was stolen too.

But despite the problems, I will happily admit they have a stellar library system. My reading list right now:

My attempt to start seeds has been less than successful. I haven't had a problem getting the seeds to sprout, my problem is getting them to grow beyond that point. I am clearly missing something. So I hit the library website and ordered some books. I was able to go pick them up yesterday.

Pre-internet, I was a voracious reader but since wireless computers and streaming TV, I just never got around to reading anything, despite owning thousands of books.

Last fall, Jeff and I decided to try an experiment. We turned off all the streaming TV channels; no more Hulu, no more Netflix. If we needed a movie fix, we could watch one of our DVDs. It was the first time in a few years we were able to focus on reading and writing without feeling the pull of TV.  And even though we turned on Disney+ in November and immediately watched through the Star Wars and Avengers saga, we have already turned it off. It's been satisfying for us to focus on something else.

Combining our extensive task lists in Habitica and the ability to download audiobooks directly on to our iPhones, Jeff and I have been listening to a TON of audiobooks. We listen to them when we're cleaning, exercising, gardening, sewing, whenever we don't have something too complicated to focus on.

Since the beginning of January, I have finished reading or listening to 49 books! 49 books. I am really enjoying this amazing service the library provides and it has cost us nothing additional beyond what we're already paying in taxes. I would encourage all of you to explore your library's audiobook offerings.

Irritated

Sigh. Another ugly Portland installation. The city doesn't even notify you it's going to happen; they just show up and put it in.

I'm definitely going to plant a vine on it next spring.

I also wanted to remove the massive black walnut tree between the houses in the side yard. It is way too big for the location and tends to drop branches on the roof, but apparently, Portland won't let owners remove trees on their private property once they are more than 20" across. So we are stuck dealing with his huge tree and paying $1500 pruning bills every five years or so.

AHC Library Visit

Because our kitchen was on their Kitchen Tour last April, we were gifted with a free membership to the Architectural Heritage Center (AHC), so I was determined to take advantage of my ability to research through their records before our membership expired. We made an appointment for last Thursday and got to take a look at their collection.

While, they did have three sales brochures I had never seen before, and a large map, their collection on the Laurelhurst neighborhood was—disappointing. They didn't have any pictures of individual houses (other than those in the sales brochures) and nothing resembling architectural plans.

Because of my recent efforts digging through the Oregonian archives, I have better information. So, I've sort of taken on the challenge of improving their records for Laurelhurst. Over the next couple of years I am going to put together my Oregonian articles into a transcribed document with whatever photos I have been able to glean and put them all together in binders. (I've already started—I've put together 1908 through 1910.)

Although, the one high point of the visit was getting some more information on our house's builders; Spencer & McCain were listed in "Architects of Oregon" by Richard Ellison Ritz. The partnership included Arthur W. McCain, Ida F. McCain and Charles Spencer. And once I had their full names, I was able to find more information . . . at least for Ida.

I found an article published by the San Francisco Chronicle on Ida McCain, "Renegade Ida McCain brought character to hundreds of homes for the Bay Area's middle class." The wide columns on the basic bungalow pictured looks just like our house's. Apparently the McCain family breezed up to Portland in 1909, designed a bunch of homes, then breezed back down to Los Angeles by 1914. Then a year later, Ida was in San Francisco where she had a successful career for a number of years, until the mid-1920s . . . then she establishes herself as an independent architect and builder. It's not clear how successful she was after that. She moved around a number of cities, but I don't see much information about many houses being built.

She also appears in a recent book: "Early women architects of the San Francisco Bay Area : the lives and work of fifty professionals, 1890-1951" by Inge S. Horton. I've ordered a copy through the interlibrary loan system.

I don't know why I get so obsessive about things like this; it sort of becomes like a game to see how much information I can find. Google is really invaluable to provide leads. And while I'll probably never find a good picture of our house from the 1910s or 1920s, it is fun to try. So my quest continues; next up, the Oregon Historic Society.

FAIL!

Jeff went to the City of Portland today to ask about building the new garage. The City's rules, in our opinion, are pretty irrational. Because the current garage is built one foot away from the property line, we have to request a variance to rebuild it in the same spot. But if we get that variance, it is to build a garage which is solely for parking cars. You can't tell them you're going to use it as a workshop, or the rules are different. It doesn't matter that every other person in Portland uses their garage for lots of purposes besides parking cars, those are the rules...period.

Also, according to the City, we have to pour a new slab or cut down the edges of the current slab and pour footings. And they won't let the eave extend out on the west side of the building. So, this is what it would look like.

Yuck! It looks really stupid with the roof detail chopped off. So, really not a good day.

Backyard Habitat Certification

In August 2010, Jeff signed us up for the Audubon Society of Portland's Backyard Habitat Certification Program. But once we got planning and remodeling the house, the landscape and habitat certification project got put on the back burner. It didn't make much sense to spend effort planting plants that were just going to get damaged or destroyed during the remodel.

But now that we're back on the landscaping projects, Sharon revisited Audubon's certification requirements yesterday to see what we had left to do to qualify. Here are the requirements, lifted from their website.
Since we plan to focus on food production as much as possible, we probably won't reach the Platinum Certification level of 50% of the property being planted in natives, but we are planning to do all the rest of the requirements for Platinum Certification. It actually looks like we just need to put in bird/bat/bee houses and a water source, and we're there. And we could use some more yard cleanup to make it pretty; the huge dirt piles are not attractive.

We still have a lot more work we want to do on the yard, but likely most of it will wait until spring.

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).

Yardley Forge

Jeff and Sharon drove over this morning to visit Steve, the blacksmith who owns Yardley Forge. (He's also on Etsy.)

Because he was local, we took the opportunity to see a pot rack in person before we ordered. Steve's quality seems excellent and we were delighted to order one from him this morning. Though, he'll be modifying his regular design a bit in order to have it hang closer to our ceiling.

Sharon also coveted a number of dragon sculptures he had around his place. We may need to buy a dragon for the yard once our remodel is finished.

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.

Met a Fellow Portland House Blogger

We dropped by Joe Ernst's neighborhood street party today and got to meet a fellow Portland House Blogger. We got a quick tour of the main floor of his bungalow and it's really nice. He had some great stained glass doors on his built-ins that I just loved. These look like something Jeff and I could make—and actually finish!

Shasta is more than interested in the new chickens, though she's being pretty well behaved for a dog! You can tell she desperately wants to chase them, but is acting fairly well behaved at our command.

Shopping Adventure

We celebrated getting so much done yesterday by spending several hours today shopping around Portland.

Now that the chicken tractor is in the backyard, we are finally prepared to round up chicken food and other needed supplies. So, one of the primary goals for today was to investigate chicken feed suppliers. We went to three of them: Concentrates Inc., Naomi's Organic Farm Supply, and Foster Feed & Garden Supply. My quick calculation shows that Concentrates is the least expensive supplier; luckily, it's also one of the closest.

We also dropped by Taste of Europe, Edelweiss Sausage Company & Deli and Bob's Red Mill. At Bob's Red Mill, we did a pretty major stock-up shopping trip. We have a big, empty freezer now and lots of space in our soon-to-be-finished root cellar and it's time to get our pantry replenished.

This evening, after the evening rush, we're planning to go off to the regular grocery store to finish our shopping. We'll probably slowly stock up on food, as we don't quite have our pantry storage area set up yet. I still need to find a good shelving system for the basement.

Jeff is also going off to Three Mountains Scribal Night tonight to visit with our SCA friends. I can't go; I have to stay home and finish my class. =(

We're Here in Portland

Just a quick note that we arrived safe and sound in Portland, Oregon. We already hired some help to unload the U-Haul trailer and that's done.

Jeff and I are exhausted, so we're thinking about going and setting up the bed (now relocated down in the basement for the summer) and crawling into it.

More tomorrow! =)

Couch Potato Today

Jeff and I were both pretty tired today, and we didn't get any packing done. We mostly caught up on our sleep and hung out watching good movies. We needed a reprieve from the packing grind. And I had some school work I needed to get done as well.

I am planning to make a shower curtain and small curtains for the upstairs bathroom windows in our new house. I had planned to work on these last couple of sewing projects today, but when I calculated out the cuts of the fabric, I measured and realized I didn't have enough of the fabric I bought last year. Darnit. It's because I bought the fabric for a standard tub in this house and the house at Multnomah needs a 108" shower curtain. I just don't have enough to piece it together. Oh well.

Before I left Portland a couple of weeks ago, I received some of the rugs I ordered for the house. Here is the rug I got for the master bathroom. I'd like to make a shower curtain that goes well with the existing flooring and the rug, as we don't plan to remodel that room anytime soon.


So, while I was watching movies this afternoon, I cruised around on the internet looking for a fabric that would work out better than what I had.
I'm thinking about buying this one, but it doesn't have quite enough either.But it is a really good match on the style and colors, so I may get it anyway and add some solid borders. Or maybe I'll just wait until we get Portland and go shopping at Fabric Depot where I can drag the rug along with me.

Back in Portland, OR

I am feeling much better this morning, after getting a chance to catch up on some sleep. We spent our first night in the new house last night and it was nice to wake up in our own bed. Here is our new bed, as always with Shasta in the photo. (She loves getting her picture taken!)

We had a very long day yesterday! We actually left California on Thursday evening at around 5:15PM. We stayed with my stepmother's parents in Redding, CA for the night. And while the traffic was absolutely horrendous getting out of the bay area at commute time, it was a huge relief to get 250 miles out of the way.

Yesterday morning Jeff woke up at 4:30AM and we decided to go ahead and slip out before our hosts woke up. (I hope that wasn't too rude; I left a note thanking them. I need to send them a thank you card.) Anyway, we got to Oregon a few minutes after 7AM!! Woo hoo!

I had one expedition I wanted to do yesterday morning, in Grants Pass; I wanted to visit the Bentwood Furniture Outlet Center while we were driving through town. Unfortunately, they didn't open until 9AM and we got to Grants Pass at 8:20! So, we went out and had a leisurely breakfast at a local cafe and took a bit of time to walk the dog, and we arrived at the outlet center a few minutes after 9.

Anyway, we wandered around their showroom and found some really beautiful pieces. I learned they have the best sales in mid-November when they conclude their season of road shows and they sell all those display pieces! I also learned they hold road shows at Costco and I got upcoming dates through the rest of the season. I'm definitely going to have to check out one of those shows! While I didn't buy any actual furniture pieces yesterday, I did buy a stain touch up pen to touch up these furniture pieces we've been buying used. And I've now got my eye on a set of tables for the living room and a curio for my dragon collection!

We finally arrived in Portland at around 3:00PM. We hired one of our basement repair guys to help us unload the furniture, so all the furniture is already in the house. He also helped us switch out the mattress from the mattress showroom, so we could actually sleep on the good mattress last night (we had a loaner mattress from the store).

Unfortunately, while I was running water to clean a sponge I was using to wipe down the dining room table, I discovered water pouring out of the sink cabinet! OMG, the drain pipe had broken into two pieces. Ugh. I had a huge mess and had to go dig through our luggage to find towels. Now, many of our towels are soggy and I don't have laundry machines yet. I'm going to have to go hunt down a place to do a load of towels. (I'll probably go visit Wendy and Ross and pick up stuff we've had shipped to their house.)

Also, as we set up our bed, we discovered we had forgotten to load the slats! Luckily, the bed rails have a ridge down their length, so we went off to Home Depot and bought cheap pine 1x4s and had them cut them to length. We'll use them until we bring our next load.

Since starting this post, our basement contractor sent over his fix-it guy and he is repairing our broken kitchen sink. So, by this evening all should be well.

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.

Finally Have a Deal!

We finally have a deal! The sellers are going to sell us the house for our offered price. They have decided to close on May 18, but I have class on May 18, so I guess we won't be there! Not really sure how that will work. I'm guessing our realtor will have to collect the keys for us and we'll pick them up when we visit later in the month.

So, we now get to embark on our own Craftsman fixer house adventure! Yeah! I hope we like scraping woodwork (or at least don't hate it too much).

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.