Here’s something I’m willing to wager you won’t run across on any of the other small home/sustainable architecture blogs…  Polly the Inflatible Ho’.

I’m not kidding when I tell you that I never know what I’m going to see when I look outside my front window.  Sunset, in particular, tends to be a time for interesting sights.  Admittedly, Polly is perhaps even a bit more unusual than most.

Two doors down from me is The Snack Shack, inhabited by Paul and Brenda, two of the main culprits in why “E-Walk” has the reputation as party-central in the marina.

Anyway, when I glanced up from my work this evening, Paul was peddling by with Polly the Inflatible Ho’ as his boat-mate. Paul and Polly have been busy paddling around derailing evening traffic in the marina for the last half hour or so.

Apparently this was her maiden voyage in preparation for July 4th weekend when the marina will be flooded with vistors.  (Although, as I’ve informed Paul, I’m not sure there’s anything about Polly that qualifies as “maiden”.)

Female inhabitants of “E-Walk” are currently conspiring to track down a platinum blond wig for her.  I’ve suggested a beer bottle for the mouth.  Although, I can’t really decide if that would make Polly more or less child friendly.

I want to thank a couple of you who took the time to forward the following story to me and also to those of you who’ve sent quick notes just to confirm I’m still alive.  For those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter, I have been working a series of 80 work-weeks the past few weeks.  I apologize for new posts being scarce.  I’m just having difficulty finding time to sleep let alone do anything like write for something other than work.  If things don’t get better by the middle of July when the projects I’m in charge of shepherding through 2010 budgeting season should be wrapped up, I swear I’m going to run off and become a barrista.  Just you wait and see.

Anyway, the most recent issue of ReadyMade features a story by Adam Fisher.  Adam purchased a run-down houseboat in Sausalito’s floating home community.  Like me, it sounds like Adam has had his fair share of adventures in the process of making his house truly habitable after a stint with less-than-responsible renters:

“I ripped up the pee-soaked carpets and hired a cut-rate plumber to replace the septic tank festering in the boat’s engine room. It was a disaster. The man was a crook, and worse, he turned on the bilge pump after demolishing the waste lines, flooding the back of my boat with raw sewage. The first half of the worst day in my life was spent in a blind rage, screaming bloody murder and chasing him off the dock. The second half was spent putting an ax through the floorboards, in order to get to the filth—human filth—which pooled at the bottom of the hull below.

I moved on to undertake a top-to-bottom renovation. The houseboat was made largely from used materials: scrap and salvage. The wiring, my electrician commented, showed evidence of having been stolen from the Navy. My carpenter took the paneling off the one structural wall in the house and gasped: There was not a 2×4 in sight. Even the hull—which holds the house together—was once just trash. The sash windows likely came from a Victorian house in a neighborhood pulled down in the 1960s as part of a slum clearance program. The boat itself was a lifeboat, made obsolete by newer technologies and likely sold as scrap steel.”

For those of you who’ve followed my own restoration saga, some of Adam’s tale should sound eerily familiar.  I have to admit that while reading his article, I had to stop more than once having been over come with fits of giggles.  Not only was I delighted to discover another soul who could understand some of the pain I’ve been through, but I have to admit to taking some small amount of delight in Adam’s suffering.  Apparently misery really does sometimes like company.

Thankfully, though, it appears from the photos that Adam has steadfastly endured the trials of his descent into renovation hell and that he now has a lovely home to show fo it.

If you haven’t already seen it, definitely go check out the story on ReadyMade.

Photos by Philip Harvey

Some days home renovations are easier than others. For example, I was just getting ready to get rid of the extra kitchen cabinet I removed when Rumi decided it was the new official Cat Cave.

In spite of him bonding with the cabinet, I did finally get rid of it after stubbing my toe on it one too many times during the night.  I’m still getting a major guilt trip and sulks from the cat, though…

I have a feeling if feline-human relations continue to devolve, I may end up smothered in my sleep some night not too far off.  (Especially if he can figure out how to use the bottle opener by himself.)

Time for some major sucking-up to the kitten methinks.

As I get more comfortable with my video camera I’m hoping to do more of these quick updates…

By the end of the weekend I managed to get the wall put back together and sanded down in preparation for the new low-VOC stain and sealant.  I decided to hold off on the stain, however, until after my houseguests this week are gone.  The front two windows are framed.  I just need to re-hang the venetian blinds until I get the new window coverings in.

I’m afraid to say my first day in my floating home was a little less magical than my arrival.

To begin with, my “Open 24 Hours a Day! 7 Days a Week!” storeroom facility decided to be closed for Easter without sending any sort of notice to their tenants.  So, when I blithely showed up, keyed in my security code at the gate, and went inside, I ended up being greeted by a very flustered property manager who came barreling out of her RV, followed quickly by her husband/S.O. armed with a shotgun.

None of this was really disastrous other than the fact that all the bedding I planned to use for the night was behind lock and key and they weren’t about to let me in long enough to retrieve it.  I think what irked me the most is how nasty the manager was.  I just about got accused of breaking and entering.  She kept insisting that there was no way my security code should have been able to open the gate and that they told everyone when they signed up for a facility that they were closed on major holidays.  (Of which, Easter apparently qualifies in her world.)

I made my apologies and left.  I’ve got a bad feeling, though, that there’s going to be an ongoing series of issues between me and this women as I ended up getting the Death Look the whole time I was there yesterday to retrieve a few things.

It annoyed me that I was forced to go buy a cheapo comforter to get me through the night until I could retrieve my bedding.  Odds are I’ll end up donating it to one of the local shelters.

The real excitement on Sunday, however, involved my tiny house’s plumbing.  I was able to reach Kenny about midday and he showed me how to turn out the main water main to my house.  Kenny hung around for about fifteen minutes helping me make sure all the appropriate valves were opened and that everything appeared to be in working order.  I wished him a Happy Easter and he went off to spend the day with his parents and sister.

An hour later all hell began to break loose. My hot water heater made a noise that could only be described as a death rattle and then stubbornly refused to produce anything that could even be generously described as lukewarm water.  The hot water spigot produced water the same temperature as the river.

Next, the shower turned on by itself and no matter how I adjusted the handle, I couldn’t get it to less than a light, ongoing trickle.

This was followed by the kitchen sink sprouting a leak from the main pipe.  Having no pots or pans yet in the house, I resorted to putting my rice cooker under the drip to capture the water.  I then made a hasty trip to Wal-Mart to grab a few containers to catch water in until I could reach a plumber Monday morning who would charge less-than-extortionate rates because it was a holiday.

The coup de gras, however, was that, just as I was coming back through the front door from Wal-Mart, I heard a weird, cracking explosion from the bathroom, which made no sense whatsover.  I opened the bathroom door cautiously to discover that the lid of my toilet tank had shot off with enough force to hit the far wall and break into pieces. I kid you not.

Now, I’ve seen my handful of weird toilet malfunctions before.  I had also been warned by the contractor who had rebuilt my float that re-balancing the level of the house could result in some minor drips in the plumbing.  But there was no way an exploding toilet could be described as “minor” in anyone’s book as far as I was concerned.

The subsequent conversation with Kenny went roughly like this:

Me: “Uh, Kenny, there seems to be a problem with my toilet.”

Kenny: “What?  Is it not flushing?”

Me: “No.  It exploded.”

Kenny: “Exploded?  What do you mean by ‘exploded’?  Did you get backflow from the honeypot or something?”

Me, trying to keep my tone somewhere below the pitch of a mouse who’s just been sodomized: “No.  I mean, the lid just shot off, slammed into the far wall, and broke in half.  That kind of exploded.”

This pronouncement was greeted by a moment’s silence worthy of the news I’d just delivered.

Kenny: “I’ll be there first thing tomorrow morning with my plumber.”

Kenny was slightly more pragmatic on the subject of what I should use for a toilet until then, though.  He suggested I could probably still use it and just flush with a bucket until the cavalry arrived…  But I might want to be a little careful just to be safe.  Alternately, there was always the gym locker room down the street.  I’d mentioned I was planning to get a membership, hadn’t I?

I ended up making the minimal possible number of hasty trips to the bathroom during the night, keeping a watchful eye on the tank the entire time I was in the room.

Monday morning, Carey of Rhino Plumbing and his brother appeared as my salvation.  Apparently what happened is the squeegee-ma-bob–hey, I’m not a plumber and they just pointed at the thing–had shot up several inches with enough force to rip itself free of the tubing in the tank and send the lid flying.

Why exactly this happened, no one knows.  Not even the plumbers.  It could have been air or some sort of debris in the line.  But that’s pure speculation.  Upon further determined probing by me, both Kenny and Carey surrendered a few Man Points by admitting they’d never seen anything like it.  It was the damnedest thang.

The initial plan had been to simply replace the innards of the toilet and see if that fixed the issue.  However, then it was discovered that there was a crack running the length of the bowl on the far side.  Whether the crack happened as part of the explosion or sometime during the winter they don’t know.

Final verdict: my hot water heater could be saved with a new heating element.  Shower was magically shut off.  Leak under the kitchen was resolved.  The toilet, however, has been declared D.O.A.  Looks like I may be getting the spiffy new, dual-flush toilet I had been planning a little earlier than planned.  (And praying I don’t see similar canon-like activity from that.)

So that was my Sunday and Monday this week.

Now, can anyone recommend a good sacrificial offering to the local water gods to ensure there’s no more of this mischief?

Since I seem to have at least a small group of people who follow Coming Unmoored to hear about the updates on my house, I figured I’d share with you the outdoor light I finally settled on to hang over my front door.

It’s probably a difficult to picture yet, but I eventually want my little place to have the feel of a rather eccentric English cottage.  I’m hoping this choice of light fixture will help set the mood a bit.  In selecting a light for outside, I had the additional challenge that there’s not a lot of clearance where the light needs to hang.  That reduced my options of lighting substantially.

It’s not in-your-face noticeable, but I’m hoping the slightly erratic shape and frosted glass will help convey a degree of quirkiness.   The eventual look I’m aiming for could probably be described as  “Brothers Grimm on Water”.  (Somehow that sounds like an Icecapades show gone terribly wrong, but it’s the best I can come up with.)

After my recent  trip to Portland to check on my floating home, I decided there were a couple of things I wanted to take care of prior to my pending move-in–like, say, having a source of heat and doorknobs with locks installed in the place.

My mother is coming out to visit in Albuquerque the beginning of April, so I decided to postpone moving my car up to Portland until after her visit.  (It was either that, or we’d be using Charlie’s decrepit Chevy Blazer while she was in town, and the thing burns through gas.)  Plus I had a project at work pushed back to this week.  Taking three days off work right now is problematic.

When I purchased my tiny home, the wiring and heaters were both from the 1960′s.  I replaced the electric panel and ripped out the old heater and stove as part of the initial renovations, but the electrician I used went out of business before the new heaters were installed.

I am happy to report that as of this morning, two new Com-Pak Plus zonal electric heaters have been installed in the front half of my house.  I’ll eventually need to install heating in the new back room as well, but I figure that can be handled at the same time as the rest of the electrical work that needs to be done there.

My house is not currently plumbed for gas and I plan on installing a wind turbine and possibly solar panels at a later date, so electric heating was the better option for me, albeit a somewhat less efficient source of heat.

While not so much a creature-comfort, new gutters also went on the place this week.  Next up is the locksmith.

I certainly haven’t minded up until now having neighbors poke their heads into my place to check on the work being done, but I’d rather it not happen unexpectedly once I’ve moved in.  (Plus, I also don’t need the browbeating I’m sure I’d get from my mother once she discovered I was  living in a place with no locks.  Never mind that there’s two separate security gates and a long walk down rampways before you even reach my place in the marina.)

These should be the last of the new photos until I get up there in a few weeks.

Look, I know no one can possibly be as excited about this as I am, but here’s proof positive that the new roof exists and is, in fact, attached to my house.  There are also no signs of water damage on the inside.

So, with any luck, I’m okay.

I’m spending the weekend up in Portland. I wanted to check on the house and make sure I wasn’t out of my mind to be planning to stay in it as of the middle of this month. (The answer: there’s still a lot of work on the inside that remains to be done, but, no, I am not out of my mind.)

I also wanted to collect some updated photos of the place since a couple of people have been asking for them, including a writer who’s working on a magazine piece on small homes. More details on that when I have them myself.

Anyway, while it’s taken awhile to get there, the slow changes are starting to add up into a noticeable difference. Apparently several of my neighbors have commented favorably on the changes as well.