Coming Unmoored — Life in a Small Floating Home

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!  I have new siding. I am very excited! (Note all the exclamation points!!!!)

Kenny emailed me yesterday with a bunch of photos of the new siding on the house along with the skeleton of the new staircase to the rooftop deck. I haven’t had a staircase since last roughly last April. I’m not sure if anyone other than myself can relate, but this feels like major progress. I was so excited by the new round of photos that I woke up around 3:30 AM and had to check my email to confirm I hadn’t dreamed it.

Now Kenny has safe access to the roof so he can get the new roofing on. (You can see the new metal roofing sitting in piles on the deck.) After that, he needs to add the new stairway and deck railing and the outside is done.

My friends who know my decorating tastes will probably be highly amused by the generous use of beige. In my defense, I would like to point out that the roof will be green, the railing white, and I plan to bury the deck in colorful plants come spring. (Lots of purples, pinks, and greens.) Have faith.

In the most recent chapter of the Floating Folly renovation saga, we left our poor heroine (i.e. me) chewing her nails to the quick because: 1) her contractor had a seriously broken leg; 2) her house was currently without siding or a roof; and 3) the rainy season was about that start…

Well, since then, Portland has received an unprecedented amount of rain–yes, even for Portland–with some snow thrown in for good measure. I’m talking forecasts with 100% chance of precipitation for weeks at a time. And on the rare days it hasn’t been raining, it’s been too cold to cut lengths of siding outside.

Kenny has been receiving biweekly messages from me asking for assurances that he’s worked some sort of magic to keep the place water-tight. I didn’t care if he shrink-wrapped the whole damn house. I just didn’t want water getting into the new insulation or mold ending up growing in my walls.

Needless to say, I breathed a small sigh of relief this morning when I received word that the last of the siding is going on today. The new stairway to the rooftop deck gets built tomorrow. And then, once Kenny gets the siding on around the deck wall, the new roof can go on. Glory be.

I’m hoping they can get the stairway and deck siding on before the next onslaught of weather, which looks to be arriving Thursday. Then I just have to pray for one more break in the weather long enough for the new roof to go on.

Much Lamaze breathing (and two generous tumblers of Charlie’s Scotch) later, I finally felt capable of trying to formulate an emergency plan.

Kenny assures me that the remaining exposed wall of my house has been sealed against the elements and Gene has been enlisted to reattach the roof panels until Kenny is well enough to work on the roof again.

In the meantime, while Kenny is doing R&R, Gene is being assigned to do the remaining framing work inside so I can get the house to the point where I can draft other people to work on it. The main work Gene will be doing is shifting the center wall of the house back 2-3 feet so it falls almost directly under the ridgeline. This will significantly open up both the kitchen and bathroom. The only thing I lose is ratty cupboards in both rooms, which I wasn’t keen on in the first place.

Once that is done, I can get the electrician in to finish installing the two new heaters, a few additional outlets, and the recessed ceiling lights in the new back room.

After that, it’s time to tackle updates to the bathroom. Oh, and pray that Kenny is right about my place, in fact, being water-proof.

As bad news has followed bad news, and delay followed delay, Charlie has grown increasingly, quietly gleeful. From the very beginning, he wasn’t happy with the news that I had bought a home in Oregon when he lives in New Mexico. He’s grown increasingly un-enamored with the idea since I arrived in NM.

I suppose in some ways that’s good news for me. Considering I was only supposed to be staying at his place for a month or possibly two while the work on my house was completed, I could easily understand if I had overstayed my welcome. As it is, I’ve been feeling pretty guilty at how over-schedule things are running. Fortunately, Charlie not only doesn’t mind but finds my predicament humorous.

At this point, I’m starting to tease him that he has hired a small crew of covert operatives to sabotage the project, including, possibly, my contractor in the conspiracy.

(I swear, being able to see the humor in the situation is the only thing keeping me going at this point.)

Color me foolish but, in this whole adventure of downscaling, it never occurred to me to enroll my contractor in an accidental death and/or dismemberment policy. Which is another way of saying that a few days ago I received an email from Kenny… from a hospital bed somewhere in Oregon where he was scheduled to have surgery the next morning.

Apparently, Kenny had spent the weekend enjoying a ski-trip. Enjoying, anyway, until a major wipe-out in which he ended up breaking his leg. And Kenny, ever the over-achiever, didn’t just acquire any sort of run-of-the-mill break. Oh no. We’re talking a massive spiral fracture of the femur requiring surgery to bolt him back together.

I would like to make it clear that my first reaction upon hearing the news was, in fact: “What?! What happened? Are you okay??” I’m less proud to admit that this was closely followed on the heels with: “Where the hell is there skiing in October and who gave you permission to do anything life-threatening before you’re done with my house?!”

Somehow, I managed not to relay this second set of sentiments to Kenny. (Mainly, I think, by biting my lip bloody.) This was especially difficult at the point he broke the news to me that his doctor has told him it will be at least two months before he can return to work. Things like working on rooftop could be much more time and physical therapy later.

On the best of days I wouldn’t be thrilled by the news that scheduled work on my house was going to be delayed by two months or more. But Kenny’s news arrived when a quarter of the siding on my house still needs to be installed, the old metal roof has been stripped off, and the rainy season in Oregon is just about to begin.

(And now a brief break while the narrator of this story lapses into a half-hour of primal screaming…)

The last few months have taught me that remodeling projects tend to have a freakish ability to snowball. They start as charming, easy-to-grasp little things. But then they start to tumble downhill, gathering both size and momentum, until they reach monstrous proportions that are easily capable of knocking you on your ass.

But there’s also something immensely seductive about the process that makes you forget the fact you’re very likely treading dangerously close to calamity. Before you know it, you find yourself saying crazy things like: “Well, since we’re rebuilding the back half of the house, ripping off all the siding, and replacing the roof, I suppose we might as well do all the doors and windows while we’re in there, too.”

In my defense, Kenny had broke it to me a month or so back that the seals on all my windows and doors were shot. (That would go a long way in explaining the leak my first contractor, Randy, mentioned he’d found under the flooring near my front picture window.) Most of the windows were of roughly 1970’s vintage, and I figured it probably made sense to replace them with more energy-efficient versions. Moreover, I had wanted to add a few additional ones anyway to make the center of the house feel less like a shoebox an over-ambitious six-year-old had wrapped for Christmas.

It’s weird to get so excited over windows and doors but, so far, it’s been the most fun I’ve had as far as the remodeling. I love the two 4 x 5 foot windows Kenny added to the back wall of the former boatwell. I also had him add a teeny-tiny little frosted window over to the toilet in the bathroom and a much larger window across from the sleeping nook. I have no idea how many times I’ve gone back to the bathroom to check out the little window, grinning from ear to ear. It just makes me gleefully happy to see the little window and I have no idea why.

Perhaps it’s because, to my mind it makes such a huge difference to the cramped bathroom space and it was all MY idea. I’ve owned homes before and experienced the creative satisfaction of decorating them as my heart dictated. This is the first time, however, where I’ve had creative control all the way down to the bones of a structure. I suspect my frustrated inner-architect is finally getting a chance to let her hair down and she’ digging it.

The two large 4 x 5 windows in the back are designed to open about six inches. The advantage to that is there’s nothing to obstruct the view in the center of the frame. The downside is that, in order for my house to meet fire code, I was required to add a back door, which means I’ve lost some of the sidewall on which I’d originally been planning to have a wardrobe for storage. I decided to take the opportunity to select a door with a half-pane of glass in order to let some additional light into the room. (Hey, if you’re going to live on the water, I say you might as well enjoy as much light reflecting off it as possible.)

The other change I made was to the front door. When I bought the house it had a sliding glass door. Most of the external changes I’ve made my house make it look less modern and more cottage-y. (cottage-esque?) I really had my heart set on adding a pair of white French doors in the front with internal venetian blinds for the times I want privacy. Kenny convinced me, however, that that would be a Very Bad Idea, considering my front door faces to the east. He is one of several locals now who’s mentioned the Dreaded East Wind of Winter.

Apparently, in the summer, the wind along the Columbia River blows from west to east. It’s a balmy, friendly wind coming off the Pacific. In the winter, however, it’s a whole ‘nother story. Then the wind comes from the east and, for anyone not familiar with Portland geography, that means it’s coming off the snow-clad peaks of Mt. Hood. We’re talking a cold, wet, unfriendly wind that drops the temperature more than 15 degrees lower than a half-mile inland. It finds its way into any gap or crevice in a structure you haven’t successfully managed to seal and it’s perfectly happy to soak everything it can reach to the bone.

The East Wind has a lot to do with why my marina is more than half-empty come winter. It’s only the strong and the stubbornly die-hard who choose to remain.

Anyway, I digress. Long story short, Kenny made it bluntly clear to me that he’d put a French door in my house if I insisted but I wasn’t to come whining to him when enterprising penguins started up an ice rink in my front room come December. I was just about to relent and stick with the glass Arcadia door when he mentioned this was another option. Apparently there is an Arcadia-style door that looks like a French door but the doors are on tracks and are able to slide sideways as well as one side can swing inward. Don’t ask me exactly how this all works, but the advantage is there’s a solid center seal between the two side of the door that prevents water from blasting in. So I get my faux French door and Kenny can stop worrying about my welfare my first winter on the river.

My front door actually was delivered the morning I was scheduled to head back to New Mexico, which was neat. I didn’t get to stay for the full install. But I arrived in the early morning mist of rain to discover my old door gone and a good third of the front wall of my house open to the river while Gene worked on the new framing. It was pretty surreal. I’ll certainly not ever have that exact view from the kitchen again any time soon.

I’m eagerly awaiting pictures from Kenny on the finished front of the house including my spiffy new door. (Editor’s note: actually, you can see a shot of the new front door that arrived yesterday via email included in the entry on siding below.)

Well, so much for my good intentions to at least have an entry every Friday. My work-life got insanely crazy–working with banks right now will do that to you–and I am more than a little behind on updates on the house. Please bear with me while I try to catch back up…

Three weeks ago I spent the week up in Oregon so that I could meet with Kenny and discuss siding,windows, roofing, and colors. Kenny very wisely insisted that I come up and eyeball what he thought I’d probably want in the way of colors for the new roof and siding.

I had picked out a color scheme a few months back and sent Kenny the make/model numbers for the siding and roof colors I’d selected. Naturally, since nothing about my remodel can go as simply as initially planned, I had picked out a different brand of siding than what Kenny actually wanted to use.

Kenny did his best to match the colors, but they didn’t exactly sync up. And then I exercised my womanly prerogative and changed my mind which complicated matters further. (Hey, at least I changed my mind before we bought materials or started putting them on the house.)

I’m using vinyl siding that is meant to look like cedar shake in a color called “cedar sunset”. The shake-style siding is considerably more expensive than regular siding. However, one of the advantages of having a tiny place is the impact of using higher-end materials in not nearly as dramatic to the total costs as it would be in a larger home.

One can argue that vinyl isn’t all that “high end”, but there’s no way I’m going with traditional shakes when wood rots as quickly as it does on the water. I’ve taken a good look at some of my neighbors’ places that are covered with actual cedar shake and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion I know where my former flying squatters may have relocated to.

Since I was already ripping the siding and walls off the house, I got into the spirit of things and decided to replace the battered metal roof as well. The roof will remain green, but is going to be a slightly darker shade than what is on there now. The manufacturer has very creatively named the color “forest green”.

Trim along the edge of the roof and the new railing on the rooftop deck will be done in white. We’ll have to see how it turns out, but I’m thinking it should be nice.

I have to say I was excited when I received photos from Kenny of the siding in progress. The place is starting to actually look and feel somewhat house-like again.

Early on after the purchase of my floating home, I posted an accounting of the estimated total costs of the purchase and renovations. Of course, that was written during the cheerful afterglow period of new home ownership before reality whacked me over the head with a 2 x 4. In other words, before the discovery of minor items like the fact that everything in the house was below code and that I had a colony of bats living beneath my siding.

So that no one goes into renovating an older floating home blindly bouyed on optimism by anything I’ve written, I plan on posting a series of updated accountings as the renovations progress.

Please don’t be too discouraged by my renovations costs, however. I’d like to point out that the same time my place was on the market, there was another house in the marina of about the same size, that had recently been restored, and was for sale for $65,000.

My home simply had what I felt was a much better view along the river, a rooftop deck, and a floor plan that I preferred. I fell in love with my little place, warts and all. If I’d chosen to operate from my head rather than my heart, I’d have been in a place several months ago for about half of what my place will eventually cost me.

Anyway, below is an updated accounting. As you will probably notice, there are several items on the list for which I have not yet gathered estimates. But here’s where things stand as of today.

Well, with my latest trip to check on the progress of the house, I think I’ve finally grasped the full enormity of the task I’ve bitten off for myself. I just kept thinking it was going to be “just a few more weeks” until I could move in. But, the reality is, I suspect I won’t be looking at a habitable house until probably spring-time. Thankfully, Charlie seems less that heartbroken that I may have to keep crashing at his place through winter.

Now that I’m through my denial, I’ve stopped thinking of the improvements to the house as a “remodel” and started to call it what it is–pretty much a full-scale restoration of the existing structure.

Once we got done discussing all the work that still needs to be done, my contractor, Kenny, fixed me with the eerie, falcon-stare that seems common amongst water-folk and said, “You know, you probably should have just had me build you a house from scratch. It would have been cheaper and very likely quicker.”

I know he’s right. But, for starters, I had no idea just how much I was taking on with this project. And, more importantly, I fell in love with my little house. And I like the idea of saving a small piece of floating homes history rather than letting it get scrapped like so many others.

What’s been really neat about working on the house is that once the locals realize that I’ve really invested in the project and willing to do what needs to be done to do it right if I intend to save the place, they start getting excited about it, too. The marina manager, Brian, was excited for me to see all the changes since my last visit. My contractor has been leaving the front door open for his workers and I suspect that several of the marina residents are taking regular peeks at the progress.

Anyway, the float and deck are done. As is the basic framing of my new home office where the boatwell used to be, and the new, rooftop deck on the house.

The next phase of work will be a new roof, windows, doors, and siding. At that point, all the external work on the house should be done and it will (hopefully) be weather-tight for winter.

Here’s the latest round of pictures…

So, I was able to spend the last week working for Portland, which let me check in on the progress on my house. I spent the better part of two days planning the next two phases of renovations. More on that in another entry.

I just had to share that while I haven’t been able to enjoy set up housekeeping in my little place yet, I can take some small comfort in the fact that, apparently, some of my local “neighbors” have.

A seagull took advantage of the fact that my office-to-be (formerly the boat well) still doesn’t have windows to build a nest on the framing between the back room and bathroom, where cabinets had been ripped out.

I found that pretty amusing but one of my handymen, Gene, has an even better story…

Gene is a soft-spoken older Portlander who usually turns up garbed in what I’m starting to think of as the obligatory work ensemble of paint-stained jeans, ratty t-shirt, black belt, and baseball cap with fishing logo. Gene is a wizard with anything wood and frequently does framing for my current contractor, Kenny.

Anyway, last week Gene was busy working on the framing for the new rooftop deck. He goes to pry back a piece of siding and out fly 30-or-so, small, but very indignant, bats–straight at him. I don’t know who was more upset by the experience, Gene or the bats. Either way, poor Gene ended tottering backwards into the water.

That’s right. I apparently have a colony of bats living between the siding and walls of my house. I’d really like to know how my myopic home inspector overlooked THAT little item.

I’ve always thought bats were interesting creatures. When I lived in Tucson, I never begrudged their drunken little evening parties where they’d clean out my hummingbird feeders or careen across the surface of the swimming pool at sunset gorging on bugs. I have to admit, though, that I’m a little less enamored with the thought of sharing the walls of my house with them.

I had already planned on replacing the siding, which is in lousy shape. Discovering the presence of my furry little flying squatters, however, has just moved that project to the top of the priority list.

The guys are under instructions not to hurt the bats but to ask them, very politely but firmly, to find new diggs. The bats are welcome back next summer for evening drinks on the porch, of course. They’re just not allowed to stay the night.

So I guess you could say that while some people have bats in their belfry, I, apparently, keep mine in my boathouse.

So, it’s been a little while since I posted an entry. This has been a combination of being focused on getting up-to-speed with my new job and, frankly, because I’ve kind of been stuck in construction limbo-land.

The float rebuild is done on my house, which is good news. I still have to finish sealing in the boatwell before I can move in, however. And I’ve just exhausted my readily-available cash for the project. Having to completely re-do the electrical and plumbing set me back in my planned budget for renovations.

I’m trying hard to do everything with the house on a cash basis rather than using credit. I REALLY like owning my house outright. So, now, it’s a question of letting my shiny new paycheck catch up with the new round of contractor fees. My paycheck on the 15th covered the last of the boatwell. My paycheck at the end of the month should cover the money down to get the new contractor rolling on the boatwell.

I’m just a bit grumpy and more than a little down that things are taking longer than I would like. I had been hoping to be in my place by now. By the time all the construction is done, odds are good I’ll have missed the prettiest part of the summer.

Plus, since starting my new job, I’ve been pretty much handing 95% of my paycheck over to contractors. My income looks great on paper but, man, am I living frugally right now. I’ll be really glad when I’m through the Money Pit part of owning my new place. Charlie has been great about letting me crash at his place but I’d also really like to give him his space back as soon as I can.

On the more upbeat side, I really am enjoying my new job. It’s nice to be using my brain again and I feel well-suited for the position. I’m also profoundly grate that the position pays well and my boss is extremely flexible about where and when I work just so long as things get done. The universe cut me a real break with my new job.

All in all, life is okay. I’m just restless to get on with moving in to my new place and making it an actual home.