Coming Unmoored — Life in a Small Floating Home

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.

I’m beginning to wonder if my ongoing posts of renovation angst are beginning to grow a bit stale. Since that’s where a great deal of my time and energy have been going, I’ve had trouble motivating to write about anything else. But one thing that continues to fascinate me without fail is reading about the creative solutions other small-housers have come up with.

So, while I continue to slog away at making my own place habitable, I plan to post brief write-ups every Friday morning on a variety of other small home examples.

Perhaps one of the most unusual solutions I’ve read about recently is a gentleman who’s decided to live in a seriously modified interior of a garbage truck. I love how he’s cleverly incorporated a sleeping loft, storage cabinets, a kitchen, and a work area into a limited amount of space. Plus, the concept of recycling a garage truck, of all things, makes me grin from ear to ear.

For additional photo and details, you can take a look at the story on ApartmentTherapy.

At the risk of some snarky comments from my best friend Wes, I’ll say that I’ve slept in some pretty strange places over the course of my life.

I’ve napped in the lowered sails of a 70 foot sailboat in the Bahamas. I’ve shared my bed with a very unhappy brown recluse spider. I’ve been in hotel rooms with multiple bullet holes in the bathroom door and a suspicious stain on the tile. But this is definitely the first time I’ve been in a hotel room that looks like it came straight out of a centerfold shoot for Ranger Rick. I kid you not.

I’m up in Portland to check on the status of the renovations on my house and to pick out colors for the new siding and roofing. Through my multiple forays back and forth to Portland this summer, I found a Quality Inn that’s two miles from the marina. That’s where I usually stay during the times I’m working from Oregon and dealing with the house.

Anyway, a new owner took over the place about two months ago. They’ve been redoing the rooms, which really needed some TLC. I’ve been in a couple of the remodeled rooms and, while somewhat bland, they’ve been fairly nice in terms of amenities.

This trip I had a bit of a shock. Instead of being on the ground floor, where I usually am, the desk clerk put me in one of the corner suites upstairs. So far so good. But my entire room is decorated to appear as though I’m in the middle of a forest manufactured by Disney.

There are clouds painted on the ceiling, pine boughs and tree trunks in every corner of the room, a bird’s nest tucked jauntily in the corner next to my lodgepole bed, and a picture of cranky-looking grizzly bear next to the desk. But the true highlight of the room has got to be the menagerie of lawn-ornament animals scattered with decorative abandon about the room. So far I’ve counted two deer, a raccoon, and a mallard duck who, for some inexplicable reason, is nesting in a heart-shaped basket woven of twigs.

I keep glancing over my shoulder expecting some demented version of Snow White to pop out of the shrubbery and offer me a freshly baked, Quality Inn cookie.

I have no idea how I’m going to manage to sleep here tonight. The only reason I haven’t run screaming from the room is that it also hosts the most spectacular Jacuzzi bathtub I’ve ever seen. This isn’t just a you-and-your-boyfriend-have-a-romantic-weekend-alone kind of tub. This is an invite-everyone-in-your-graduating-class-and-host-a-three-day-orgy kind of tub. (Don’t worry, Mom. I don’t know anyone in the area code who isn’t one of my contractors.)

Anyway, I intend to have a bubble-bath to end all bubble-baths tonight. After that, I’ll take my chances with the menagerie of woodland creatures. If worse comes to worse, I guess I can always sleep in the bathtub, right?

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.

My contractor Kenny recently mentioned the fact that he could have built me a new home from scratch faster and cheaper than what my little place will require. There are several reasons why that wasn’t an appealing option to me…

To begin with, one of the things that initially drew me to floating homes is the diversity of quirky architecture you find in the Seattle, Portland, and Sausalito communities that sprung up in the 1960’s onward.

Many of the first floating housers were colorful, anti-mainstream characters and you saw this reflected in the homes they created for themselves. Unfortunately, many of these same people were working with extremely limited funds and cobbled together living spaces that were neither durable nor anywhere near land-based building codes. Forty years later, many of these early homes have been torn down for scrap or carted off to landfills.

While my little cottage isn’t likely to appear on a National Trust registry anytime soon, part of its appeal to me was that I could invest my housing dollars into resuscitating one of the increasingly scarce survivors from early American floating home history.

Purchasing my home also allowed me to give new life to existing resources. Not all of the materials that were in the home at the time I purchased it are salvageable, but I’m reusing whatever I can. For example, we were able to rotate most of the large logs in the float, buying another 20 years or so of use rather than chopping down more large trees. I’m trying to ensure that when I replace materials it’s with more energy-efficient and earth-friendly options. I’m also donating materials that might be reuseable by someone else such as the propane stove.

I also liked a lot of the space-saving ideas and lines that were in my little home. I doubt I would have been as creative if I’d had someone draft a place from scratch. Instead, I’m building upon a history of prior homeowners’ innovations and ideas. I like that my home comes with its own prior history. My relationship with my new home is sort of like a midlife marriage. We’re both having to figure out how to adapt to one another’s quirks.

Perhaps the most important factor in my decision to salvage this house, however, was the realization that if I decided to build a new place from scratch, very few of the marina owners or floating home communities with homeowner associations would allow me to build anything under around 2000 square feet. I’m serious about my desire to downsize and didn’t want anything even close to that.

Similar to what you see on land, charming, small floating homes are being torn down and replaced with floating McMansions everywhere you turn. These new houses use every last inch of their slip space and tower two, and even three, stories above the water. Some even go so far as to rent or buy two adjoining slip spaces so they can expand even further. I wouldn’t want anything that big as my regular home but many of these houses are vacation homes. (Who the hell needs a 3,000+ square foot vacation home they use only a few time a year??)

No doubt part of what is feeding in to this phenomenon is the fact that floating home communities are usually situated in highly desirable locations as far as real estate goes. (I mean, you can’t get anymore waterfront, can you?) In addition, because floating homes are viewed as a form of personal property rather than real estate, property taxes are considerably less per square foot than what it would be for the same house on dry land.

Also, floating home slip spaces are now a finite commodity with increasingly rising value. Most cities in the U.S. have passed laws restricting any further expansion on the water. And, as these communities become not only accepted but increasingly trendy with the mainstream (thank you Sleepless in Seattle), real estate developers have sniffed the potential of a profit and started to move into the picture.

A perfect example of this phenomena is the marina next to mine. A real estate developer (responsible for the Anthem community in AZ) and a real estate agent went in on buying the marina that was in need of some TLC. Over the course of a few years the small, older floating homes were all “relocated” (translation: evicted). They are now selling off the slip spaces for $130,000+ a pop—but only to people who have submitted blueprints for homes that are approved by the new owners of the marina. And, as one of the two owners made clear to me, nothing is going to pass that isn’t 3,000+ square feet in size and $300,000+ to build. Apartment Therapy and The Oregonian both recently did stories on this community, if you’re curious.

Don’t get me wrong. They’re beautiful homes with sweeping views of the Columbia River. They’re driving the value of any home within eyesight of their community, including mine, increasingly upwards, even in these rocky times for real estate. But the whole project just gives me the creepy crawlies. I would far rather see the eclectic mix of styles, colors, and sizes you find in historic floating home communities than these homogenized neighborhoods of floating McMansions. Moreover, I have to wonder if my developer neighbor next door looks over into my marina and views it as the next “decrepit shantytown” he’d like to take over. (As his marina was described in The Oregonian piece.) Milk jug planking on the ramps or not, I’m not thrilled at what they’re up to.

I had dreamed of escaping the housing nightmare you see on land but it has followed me to the water. It looks like I may have to settle for the hope that my little home, rebuilt and restored to last another 30+ years, can serve as one, small outpost against the rising tide American real estate rapacity.

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.