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.

While I was up in Portland I had the opportunity to check on how things were going with the float rebuild.

The new plumbing was complete. Most of the electrical work is done but they’re still sorting out the rat’s nest of wiring splices in one of the interior walls.

The day I was there, my contractor, Randy, was putting the new insulation into the floor. The next step is to put the flooring back down and finish the new outside decks.

Once the float rebuild is complete, the next major project is to do the rest of the work to finish off the boatwell. While not expensive compared to the float rebuild, it’s going to be dramatic during the demolition. The back wall of the house and roof are going to need to be torn out. (I don’t plan to visit much during the demolition phase unless someone writes me a script for some pretty good drugs.)

The garage door will be replaced with three large windows. There are leaks in the roof deck portion of the roof. At Randy’s recommendation, they’re going to tear out the whole roof deck and expand/rebuild it over the boat well.

It’s going to be pretty ugly looking during the work. But I’ll end up with a roof that doesn’t leak and a bigger roof deck when they’re done.

Randy also broke it to me that sometime soon I’m going to want to redo the siding and other four windows in the house. The siding and window seams are both shot. That’s not going to be a cheap project. Although, on the plus side, it means I can put in more energy efficient windows and pick the exterior colors for my house.

This last project is probably going to wait until I’m up there full-time, however. As long as it gets done before winter, I should be okay.

Just as one last side-note, I was amused to see that Randy and the other workers have switched from cheap beer to Mai Tais as the drink of choice while on the job. I haven’t figured out what the electrican drinks, yet.

I have to wonder whether it’s a bad sign or simply common sense to start hyperventilating in Lowe’s…

Charlie is in town for the weekend. After a lazy Saturday morning breakfast yesterday at Bobo’s, our favorite Tucson greasy spoon, I dragged him with me into Lowe’s. This was not terribly difficult in that Charlie has a Y chromosome and, as best as I can determine, Lowe’s is the Toys-R-Us for red-blooded American males over the age of about 25.

Having spent too many Sunday afternoons of my childhood inside a hardware store with my father, my general mode of operation inside any kind of home-improvement store is to get in, zero in on my target, and get out as quickly as possible like any good, high-powered, military retrieval operation or guy having to enter Victoria’s Secret for a birthday gift for his girlfriend.

My objective yesterday was to pick up a dolly to help with moving things into the floating home. (Even with floating things in, there’s going to be a lot of schlepping of boxes.) But, between all the upcoming remodeling projects I have and the ones Charlie has going on at his place in New Mexico, we ended up looking at: paint swatches, appliances, closet organizers, wood floors, bathrooms, and doors & windows.

Somewhere about the time of hitting the French door section, I hit overload. The enormity of everything I’m going to need to do eventually do with my little place hit me, and I started to hyperventilate.

I have to wonder if Lowe’s offers their employees training in how to handle panic attacks, because the very nice young man with asthma who’d been assigned to Garden in spite of his allergies calmly assessed the situation and offered me a hit off his inhaler.

After a couple of minutes I pulled things together, grabbed my dolly and Charlie, and got the heck out of the store. I then proceeded to spend the rest of my afternoon pretending that I’d bought a very new, fully-furnished condo with easy move-in access from the street. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

I should probably begin by confessing that this entry was half-written and originally titled “Bob Vila is The Devil” when Dave Greten, a writer for BobVila.com contacted me and asked if he could do a brief write-up of my place and link to my blog. Somehow, it just seemed like terribly bad manners on my part to have their readership click over to my little ol’ site for the first time and read a headline like that. Plus, I really don’t want to get Mr. Greten in trouble.

Besides, as much of an icon as Bob Vila is in my family, that would also make the next family get-together pretty uncomfortable for me. Which leads me back to my original entry…

When I was growing up, church on Sundays was discretionary. Bob Vila was sacrosanct.

My mother and younger brother, Chris, had a weekly bonding ritual of watching This Old House. They started watching with the first season back in 1979. They ordered all the books published for each season. If we went out of town for the weekend on a family trip, we HAD to be back by 7 PM Sunday night so they could get their weekly fix. (Once we had a VCR we did trying taping the show once. However, something went wrong with the tape and there was much loud wailing and gnashing of teeth like a scene out of Where the Wild Things Are. After that, we simply had to be home in time.) They had the Bob Vila addiction BAD.

Mom and Chris really got off on following the transformation of the latest pile of rotting–but deeply historically significant–pile of sticks someone was struggling valiantly to restore into a habitable home. They cheered appearances of Norm Abram and historically-accurate recreations of molding. They gasped in horror at the discovery of unsuspected termites and home owners who weren’t pulling their weight. They loved nothing better than when critical paths got messed up and contractors started tripping over one another and snarling. The more gory and miserable the growing pains of the remodel, the better, as far as they were concerned. They found it enthralling in a reality-TV-kind-of-way and knew that–like any good television drama–by the end of the season everything would turn out well.

I wish I could say I was as into the show as they were. While I thought the old homes were neat and I enjoyed seeing the finished product, I found all the interim steps tedious, uncomfortable, and sometimes outright painful to watch. There was just so much chaos and mess. The families being filmed had their lives turned upside-down for a television season. Workers on the set occasionally got cranky with one another. And, like many things in life, the remodels never went as easily as initially planned. I always thought the show should consist of the first and last episodes and spare the PBS viewership all the uncomfortable details in between.

I’m afraid remodeling just ain’t my thang, babe. I’ve always been an instant gratification creature. And there is very little, if anything, that is instant-gratification about rebuilding your house. I also have an abject horror of budget and scope-creep for any projects domestic.

That being said, I really wanted my little floating home. And I was aware, when I bought it, that it was going to require some significant work to bring it back up to snuff. I just didn’t want to see another little historic floating home trashed to make way for another modern McMansion. So I’m doing my best to draw on the enthusiasm for restorations I witnessed growing up.

Just the same, if there are many references to Lamaze breathing and Vicodin in entries in the upcoming weeks, please bear with me. I am seriously out of my element at present.

When I bought my place I knew the float was going to need to be significantly rebuilt. I was a little hazy, however, on the fact that this really ought to happen before I moved in. My realtor had prepped me that, depending on what had to be done, the contractor might need to go through the floor in places to pin the stringers correctly. (Stringers are the narrower crossbeams on a wood float. I’ll be posting something on float anatomy shortly.) Anyway, in the case of my house, the floor needed to be completely TORN OUT.

Apparently, the last person who’d done repairs to the float did a half-assed job and didn’t pin the stringers they’d replaced. That needed to be corrected. In addition, I requested to expand the float to add a front deck and also to seal the boat well in back. And thirty-year-old rotting wood needed to be replaced. All told, I’m adding six 50′ Douglas fir logs and more than fourteen new stringers.

I resigned myself to the float work and, in some ways, was even grateful it was going to happen before I moved in. But, as in the world of The Money Pit, no remodeling project ever proves as simple as you originally thought.

So let me walk you through with what’s up with my house right now…

When I arrived at the marina, the first indication that I might want to start practicing my breathing is when I located my house by the large pile of debris out front. On land when you do demolition the contractor normally brings a supersized trash container referred to as a “roll-offs”. Well, here’s a picture of my “raft-off”.

The first glimpse of my house wasn’t too bad. The stairway to my top deck had to be removed to do the float rebuild. The boards you see on the side of the house are the new “stringers”. These will eventually be covered with the new walkway and staircase.

Here’s what will be my expanded front porch. I lost one of my flower boxes to rot. Sniff. I’m just trying to close my eyes and visualize future barbeques with friends.

OK. This is where it starts getting a little more hairy. Take a look at my kitchen floor. Those holes on the left had to be drilled in order for my contractor to properly pin the stringers underneath the house. On the right side? Nothing but logs and the Columbia River right now. Trust me. I got reminded of that fact when I got distracted taking pictures and didn’t watch my step backing up.

Once upon a time, this was my family room floor. Right now it’s nothing but loose sheets of plywood over logs and stringers. And a whole lot of water underneath

More chaos in the family room area.

The sealed-in boatwell. Someday this will be my home office.

So, one piece of bad news my contractor gave me is that the person who installed the siding on my house was a moron. They didn’t put siding under where the staircase met the house. Worse still, there were two loose propane tanks on the right side of the house. There’s a gap there where they didn’t bother to move the bottles. I’m talking to someone now to find out if there’s a way to shift the pieces. Otherwise, I’m going to have to redo most of it.

Also, my house was seriously out of balance from the float work that needed to be done. The last owner didn’t address this issue before replastering sections of the house. Now that the house is, in fact, level, there’s a bunch of repairs to be made. Check out how out of alignment the door is, now.

One final one because if I don’t laugh I’ll cry… Clearly, I’m not paying my contractor enough if this is the beer he’s drinking.

A friend of mine who’s a contractor believes no one should be allowed to start a remodeling project before first being forced to sit down and watch the movie The Money Pit. At least six times. Back-to-back. Without restroom breaks.

I’ve seen the movie more than once because it’s one of my mother and brother’s favorites (more on that later). But, just the same, I discovered this past week that there’s a world of difference between understanding intellectually that your new place is going to need a lot of work and standing in the middle of the carnage after a contractor has had his way with your baby for a couple of weeks.

I think this is doubly true when you can see the Columbia River beneath your feet in 90% of the places that were covered with really nice carpeting the last time you were there.

But let me back up a bit and explain how I reached this moment of dismay…

I hired Randy Olson, a local contractor, to do the work on the float. Randy is the owner of Duck’s Moorage, a marina a few down from mine and he’s got a good reputation on the river for his work. Randy is an easy-going guy with graying temples and a twinkle in his eyes. He looks like he could be Tom Skerritt moonlighting.

Randy is a man of few words and not one to catastrophize. As a matter of fact, the first time I reached him on his cell phone and asked if it was a good time to talk, he told me he “had a few minutes”. I discovered only later through a conversation with my realtor that I had interrupted Randy on the middle of the freeway trying to rescue 6 x 6 foot pieces of foam one of his employees had just spilled all over the road.

So, when Randy called me to say there were “some problems” with the rebuild on the float, I knew it was time to sit down before asking for the details. (On top of watching The Money Pit, I also highly recommend a course in Lamaze breathing for anyone considering any sort of remodeling project.)

I’ve mentioned that my house started its life as a boathouse and that living quarters were added on over time. Well, when Randy went in to do the float rebuild he discovered that both the plumbing and electrical lines are a cobbled-together mess. As most of this is in the floors, I’m going to need to fix things before the floors get rebuilt and covered with Pergo. And there’s a whole host of other issues. (And, yes, I will post an update on the accounting once all the dust has settled, no pun intended.)

Anyway, I flew up to Portland last week so Randy could show me what had been done so far and we could formulate a game plan for the work going forward.

In my next entry, I’ll give you the photo tour of what I discovered when I got there. Just please remember–it looked like a house when I bought it.