Category: House

Posted on

progress and purpose

We’ve been busy at the Green House these days, painting with my Freecycled paint, or paint I purchased at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, which sells rescued building materials. I look forward to painting our living room walls some interesting shades of green/sage, but they’re still working on the ceiling. Here’s what the living room ceiling looks like ( <--) after repairing the damaged roof, removing a desperately leaking skylight, and adding beams and trusses where there were none. (That’s right — none.) But now there are many, just the right number, in fact, to keep this roof up and over our heads for another 50 years or so. Falling trees notwithstanding (heh heh).

The light bulb in the middle is actually going to be a ceiling fan, repurposed from the dining room where it had no business being, as there are windows and a nice door already. You can see a window and part of the door below in the dining area.

While I was waiting for the plumber to show up the other day, I primed the wooden panel and trim, aka wainscoting, in the dining area. I didn’t think I had time to do it. But the plumber was late, then actually did not show up at all. So I got the priming done, and am going to call a different plumber. I used an old sheet (Thrift Town, bought for a bed, but full of cigarette holes, yuk!) instead of plastic for a drop cloth, and have been taking good care of my paintbrush. In the past, I would use it, forget it, find it all dried out and ruined, throw it away, buy a new one, repeat, repeat…. Funny how taking care of one’s stuff actually works for the good of one’s wallet and one’s planet. Simply amazing, in fact.

When the guys are inside, hammering, sawing and making noise and mess, I tend to stay outside and work on the garden-that-will-be. The garden area is a rocky hillside, to wit:

Challenge: to create a terraced garden out of a desert-like patch of sloping, infertile ground. I started with a compost corner (at right) to make some good dirt. Food scraps, green weeds and grass, dead leaves, and the addition of some wormy compost from my big garden in Alameda will help. I have harvested rocks from under the deck and around the house to make the rock-lined flower beds in front. I planted sunflowers in front of the deck, not sure if they’ll come up this year or not. I will be planting lavender in the next week or so, because they are very hardy, don’t need a lot of water or TLC, and they’ll attract bees and hummingbirds and add a nice scent to our cottage garden-to-be.
That cement slab is just a boring cement slab, not the top of the cesspool, but very big and heavy, so we won’t demolish it (yet). We started to make a mosaic out of random pieces of marble that are lying around the neighborhood (someone’s leftovers from a remodel, or an art project, perhaps?). When we get the top covered in marble, we’ll affix it with some grout and call it art. I have a potted dwarf lemon tree in a tub that will be lovely in that spot, as soon as I can get it into the car (it needs 2 people to life it, ugh.)

Here’s the kitchen door from the deck. I plan to paint it bright red or perhaps green — something cheery and colorful that will really say “cottage!”

The deck is quickly becoming our favorite place in the world — lovely in the morning and gorgeous in the late afternoon. The Stellar’s jays come for peanuts, the tiki torches burn with citronella at night, and it’s a perfect place for morning coffee or evening glass of wine. The only time it’s unbearable in summer is about 2-5 pm, when the sun beats down without mercy. You just sit there and melt into sweaty goo. That’s when its time to go inside for a siesta or run some errands. Or go jump in the river.

Meanwhile, back on the Isle of Style, my garden is going crazy with green beans that are purple and tomatoes that won’t turn red yet. There are tons of them, so I feel like there’s a ticking tomato bomb about to go off back there. Tick. Tick. Boom. Then it will be salsa, bolognese sauce and Caprese salad time. Looking forward to it. Big time.

I have laundry on the line right now and it smells so sweet. Cats are loving the heat, and prove this by staying indoors. Chickens prove it by refusing to lay ANY eggs for several weeks, yet continuing to eat their stupid heads off. They also continue to poo everywhere. Is there justice here? I think not. However, we are eating baby beets and turnips for dinner tonight, and when the sun goes down I will bake some banana muffins with the black bananas that died on the counter while I was painting wainscoting 60 miles away. The fridge turned out a pack of frozen spinach and a packet of tortellini, so I think we’re set for dinner this evening.

I wonder if a glass of wine on the Island patio is as nice as a glass of wine on a country cottage deck? Luckily, we don’t have to choose. Amen, amen.

Posted on

judge not, and hot water

I’m back at my post after five days in the redwoods, where our little green house sits. This is the house we just bought, using bubble gum, baling wire, rolls of pennies and our winsome smiles. I’ve been masterminding its renovation, getting inspections and starting to paint, buying things like beams and plaster-patching mesh and oddments from the hardware department.

I had to buy a Simpson Strong Tie item with no name, just a number, to hold a large truss and joist in place. I had to buy four of them, in fact, and the one place was out of them and I had to go elsewhere and ask for it by holding out this odd-shaped piece of metal and say, “Gimme two more o’ dese tings.” Want to feel like a dummy? Walk around with unknown pieces of metal in your hand at hardware stores and ask for help from smug salesfolk. The metal-thingies have no name. But they are indispensable. And they cost about $4.50 each, by the way. (I’m not kidding about the no-name. No one knows what they are called. But they all know what to do with it. “Oh, yeah, we have those — wait here…”)

So — cha-ching! I’ve had guys digging into the septic tank and measuring our sludge. I had a creepasaurus with long fingernails inspect our house for termites. Finding none, he ardently tried to persuade me to inject poison into the soil up to 10 feet deep to keep termites out. Prevention, he says. For a problem that doesn’t exist. For only $2,000. Umm. No, thanks. A nice fellow came and changed all the locks. Another nice fellow walked on our roof and we made a deal. Two more took crowbars to our living room ceiling. The roofer came back and addressed his crew to the roof. They left behind a lightweight, yet solidly sheathed house with sparkling new rain-gutters. The little green house (which isn’t green in color, just in spirit) is so pretty now, I could bust.
We’re going to have a new ceiling, new baseboards, new floors, new paint, new light fixtures and a new garden… all underway as we speak, and much of it re-using what we have or what I found on Freecycle. I feel good about the green-ness of it all.
Which leads me to two topics. Judgement, and hot water. One might lead to the other, you’d think. Not necessarily. So there I am in the new house over the weekend, washing dishes by hand, conserving water carefully, using my soap swisher, biodegradable organic soap, second-hand dishes, handmade dish-scrubber and organic cotton knitted dishcloth. My new neighbor (the ones with the trash and hoarding problem) drives up in her minivan and proceeds to unload bushels of groceries in plastic bags: sweet cereal, lots of ramen noodles, Capri Sun drinks, tons of junk food, individually-wrapped snack items. I didn’t see a fresh vegetable in the load, except a large sack of potatoes. I didn’t see any milk.
I just washed my dishes and watched and counted the number of plastic bags and my mind sped along and I —- had to stop. Because who am I to judge her and her choices? Some kind of green goddess? Is it my job to tell a struggling single mother with myriad domestic challenges, not least of which is a husband who she’s just ditched who abused her and the kids and made all their lives hell? Without going into further details, the woman has enough on her plate. It is not my job to change her, to improve her, to show her my golden way. It is my job to love her. It is all our jobs to love her, and the other people around us who frustrate and challenge us. Isn’t it? It is. Go read your (insert holy book of choice here). Then tell me I’m wrong.
We made friends with our new neighbor and offered to help her clean up her yard when we get a Dumpster and she was so excited. We exchanged hellos a number of times over the weekend and it turns out she’s sweet as pie and really making great strides in her own journey. But even if she wasn’t a sweet Cinderella — even if she was boorish and loud and stupid and repulsive — it’s still my job to love her, not to judge her by whatever class, environmental or other status I live by/in.
And so, to hot water.
We are closer to the cycle of water in our new home than in the city, because the source of the water is the river, and the end result of where it goes it the river. Our septic tank percolates into the dirt, runs downhill to the creek that leads to the river. So what we put in, stays in it and will eventually, at the molecular level, get to the river and the ocean. This is a bit daunting. The responsibility is palpable. It would be so easy to slip and send something toxic down the drain — which is why we’ve made the house totally green. So I’m doing my dishes, per above, and I realized how often I reach for the hot water, versus just water, or cold water. Like — so much. I realized that we — I personally and we as an industrialized nation — are addicted to hot water. Must have it for baths! Must have it for cleaning! Must have it for everything! When I rinse off a dish or a vegetable or my hands, I always turn on the hot water. Why? Because it is easy and thoughtless. It’s always there. I tried to notice how much I reach for hot water over the past few days — because it maybe easy and available, but it isn’t free. And I admit, I’m a glutton for hot water.
Try thinking about hauling your water from a well in the yard. Think about walking 10 minutes to the river, then back with a full pail of water. Think about walking five or ten miles daily with one large jar on your head. Think about gathering the wood to heat the water, and when you would use the hot water in that case. And also think about the oil that is pumped x-many thousand miles from here and how far it is shipped, and what it does to the atmosphere to transport and burn fuel on a grand scale so we can use hot water whenever we want to.
When I put it into that context, I started paying more attention to when I really needed hot water. It turns out that cold water does just as much good in most cases as hot. You really only need hot water when you need to disinfect — such as washing diapers, or dishes, or washing your hands after going to the bathroom. But rinsing your hands after cutting vegetables doesn’t require hot water. Rinsing out a glass before refilling it — cold water is just fine. Rinsing dishes before the dishwasher, if you do that — cold water, because the machine will use hot to kill whatever germs are there.

Just something to think about on this (here) gloomy July day.

Posted on

a little insanity for Mother’s Day

Don’t have plans for Mother’s Day, except … whee! we are taking a drive in the a.m. to go see the house we just made an offer on. If we get it, what a great Mother’s Day gift that will be.

I have become totally house-obsessed lately. Like, sleepless, racing-mind, forget-where-I-am-obsessed. I seriously need to be locked in a little box until a purchase is complete. I will probably torture my husband to death by suddenly stating something (to him) incomprehensible like, “brown and white checks, don’t you think?” or “Isn’t it nice how the dishes match the kitchen?” He’s like, “huh?” <-- kitchen that we don't own (yet), not the rented kitchen in which we live now.
Insane, I know. As if he would know what dishes I was even talking about. I am speaking a kind of flea-market-shabby-chic gibberish that he does not comprehend. He said, “Honey, it’s going to be a long 10 years if you’re going to talk like that all the time.” Ten years being the time we planned to work on fixing up a house til it was livable and we could move in, etc. I dont think it will take that long, to fix the house or to drive him crazy.

Luckily, I don’t think he listens most of the time. Kind of like me with his baseball conversation (who did what on what base? huh?). It’s our version of “yes, dear.” All lovingly meant.

Our latest bid is on tiny house, 650 sq feet (I exaggerate — it’s just 648 sq feet). Eat-in kitchen, living room with wood stove, two small bedrooms, a big bathroom which is also the laundry room. Potential for gray water system is high, easily done, with a tall above-ground basement level. Needs a new roof but with a good price on the house itself, we can get a roof done on such a small house for not so much more. Some drywall repair and carpet-tear out (there was a leak that came through and wrecked the ceiling and carpet). I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do with a used funky (moldy?) carpet besides the dump, is there? Suggestions? Same with crappy once-waterlogged drywall. I hate to throw stuff away if it’s useful, but what can you do with torn-out drywall? I’m all ears.

I’ve already planned where the apple tree, the compost bin and the laundry line will be (as well as what color to paint the bedrooms…). There’s a neglected side yard that can be terraced for veggie and flower gardening, and I think I will have room for a bee yard behind the house. I can also probably have chickens there (loose, but with a coop for night), once we are there full time.

Since the house is tiny, we will have to be ruthless about what to take. That means no piano, for one thing, unless we chose a piano instead of a couch. I’m afraid the piano will lose. That also means the boxes and boxes of holiday decorations in the attic will have to get passed on at some point (I’m trying not to grin from ear to ear about this one). The little area was once a Boy Scout camp, made into a tiny development from the cabins. So it’s cute and small — with a tendency to get a little overgrown/funky in an organic-hippy kind of way. I’m pretty sure the neighbor across the street has a hoarding problem. Or needs to go to the dump. Or is planning to … I don’t know. I have no other guesses besides the hoarding one.

Best thing about this tiny house is the location, walking distance to a beach at the river inside a regional park, with fishing, hiking, etc. Far enough away that it’s not likely to flood, and all the cabin/houses are on stilts anyway for that reason. Many, many opportunities for green living and Compacty goodness. Cute little local grocery store about a quarter mile away, and a small town (2K population) a 5-minute drive away — it’s bikeable, but all uphill to get there, so I will need to work up to riding my bike to town. At least the ride home would be downhill. . .
I could go on but I won’t. I’ll save that for Mr. L. S.  (Long-Suffering) Husband … Happy Mother’s Day to all y’all, including dads and fur-parents.
Posted on

no go

Following up to the other day’s post about the suckhole that we hoped would be ours — poo. We didn’t get the house after all. As these things happen, just as we were getting our offer ready, someone else put in a bid (this was after we’d been assured that no one else on the planet, nay, the very universe was interested…). Their bid was lower than ours was going to be — but it was accepted. So clearly, the Big Kahuna has something else in mind for us. I can’t say I’m amused by the whole roller coaster of the real estate market, with its last-minute nasty surprises. But what the hay? You win some crack houses, you lose some. But I’m not bitter. Much.
So I took all my library books on restoration and recycled buildings and energy-efficient chicken coops, et cetera et ad infinitum, back to the drop-chute and took out more books on WWII and the Holocaust, a more cheerful prospect at the moment. Seriously. I was doing research on my new novel before we fell into the House Frenzy a few weeks ago. And writing a novel is always more fun than not writing one.

Another post soon: I’m back on the blog wagon as a local spotlight on Alameda Patch (a little pinkie finger of the AOL-Huffington Post media empire). My posts will be more frequent and certainly more sterling than of late. I think I’ve recorded only triumphs and tragedies, without basic stuff that shows how the great machine works. (Wow — labored metaphors are just my thing today. No. I’m not bitter.)

I spent yesterday and today helping a friend with his beehives. The bees were mad as hell yesterday and really aggressive — so much that I dashed for the house two or three times. I got too freaked out being swarmed over.  See photo above — that’s me at the back and neighbor at the front, loading an empty hive into his garage. Today the whole hive took off en masse — which explains why they were so pissed off yesterday. They stopped in a local tree, but that wasn’t far enough away, so they took to the wind. Inside, I helped my pal spin honey out of the comb and we bottled up almost 20 pints — at about a pound and a half per jar. It was slow, sticky work, but I came home with a pint jar of fresh early spring honey and a beeswax candle made from an earlier batch. And it was very good.

See? I’m not bitter. I’m sweet as honey.

Posted on

what’s new, pussycat?

Hi. It’s me. Been busy. Just wanted to poke my head in the back door and share what we’ve been doing. In a word, LOTS.

We are days away from making the offer on the pot house — the gutted, in-foreclosure dump in the West County (Sonoma) that was once a pot-growing house. We’ve been taking measurements, poking through floors and woodwork, calling the county, pacing off boundary lines, scraping together our cash (since it’s a cash-only deal), talking to neighbors, and thinking, thinking, thinking if we can really do it. We think we can.

We’ve been talking with family and friends who have the know-how. My dad has a barn full of stuff: 2 toilets, a bathtub, a sink (I’ll take those, thank you), a barn-sized pile of lumber that is solid redwood, including barn flooring (thank you, we’ll take that, too). My teen/YA daughters have boyfriends who need extra bucks and can swing a hammer. And we have a Boy (that’s free labor right there).
In short, we think it’s gonna be OK, and even though we’re buying a trash-heap, it isn’t toxic, there’s good water, it’s in a great location, and we’ll own it outright. If Mr Husband lost his job, we would be homeless by the end of the month when we couldn’t pay the rent. Once we own this property, as scary as it is, we could at least camp there. It would be something of our own. And it will be an excellent retirement plan for us — to own our own place, whether or not we have income. As long as the taxes are paid, we’ll be fine. That gives us HUGE peace of mind, despite the hard work ahead.

We’re already planning how to reuse and rescue materials. I’m gonna get paint from Freecycle as well as light fixtures, switch plates, outlets, etc. People always have this stuff sitting around in their garages. I plan to haul as much of it as we can get and make use of it. I’ve been checking out books from the library and compiling a “look book” of ideas and plans, like using a table topped with a marble slab as a baking station/counter in the kitchen. I’m willing to take a bet I can put that together for free/cheap, based on Freeycle and salvage. I’m a lifelong baker and a baking table like that would be heavenly!

I could go on but suffice it to say that it will mean changes in the short run — we will likely move out of our big house and into an apartment til The Boy finished high school so we can save on rent and put the extra toward renovations. But all worth it! Fingers crossed…

Don’t hate me but I’ve also been working on the Challenges set forth in January. Here are my updates on those:

1) Fat Ass Challenge. I’ve lost 1 pound. Purely accidental. I don’t know how. I haven’t tried very hard, but I haven’t had soda in almost 2 months so that might have helped. I did just start doing yoga in the mornings this week and am AMAZED at how much better I feel when I do it. And that’s free, btw — class is held in my bedroom before coffee. Later in the year, I imagine my hammer-swinging arm will get ripped.

2) Garden Produce/Tracking: In March I had almost $100 in eggs and produce (herbs, oranges) from our little farm (large suburban yard). The number of eggs has increased as the weather has improved and I am trading a lot of eggs — for citrus, ocean-caught fish (Pacific wild salmon steaks!), worm castings, coupons, etc. I’m sharing eggs now with people who have apricot and plum trees for later in the year trades. I found a kitchen scale in my late great-aunt’s kitchen and now it’s mine, and helping to track produce numbers.

3) Meal Planning: I have not been consistent over the past month, since my great-aunt passed away March 21, and I’ve been cleaning her home of STUFF. I also caught a horrific cold when she passed (coincidence? huh.) and have been fighting it for a month. That’s one way, I’ve noticed, that i deal with emotional stuff — i get sick. So those two things, plus the adventures in real estate, have made meal planning sketchy — BUT… we have not been eating fast food. We have been cobbling meals together rather than do take-out, which is in the plus column. I’m getting back on track on this item though.
4) Coupon savings: Have been very dedicated to this, and doing really well. I’m saving about 50% on everything we buy. Or rather, NOT SPENDING it. There’s no actual “savings” from this, but it leads directly into the next item…
5) $25K savings goal: We passed the $25K savings goal in March and are at about $35K right now. This is not a pile of cash, as mentioned before, but money we didn’t have to spend –> cost avoidance, paying off bills and not paying interest, etc. The items that pushed us over the top were receiving a second car (my late aunt’s) for $1, using Mr. Husband’s bonus to pay off 3 more debts and push a credit card debt down to a small balance, an continuing to add to savings, 529, 401K, emergency slush fund, chasing down rebates, getting every penny back through our Flexible Spending Account for unreimbursed medical, making donations in kind (with receipts), rolling coins…etc. Now I’m wondering if we will hit $50K for the year in cost avoidance/cash not spent. I must say that tracking these spending choices on an Excel spreadsheet helps a lot.

6) All Homemade and No Dryer — I’ve been really good about the Homemade Challenge — I haven’t bought anything that I could make myself. I’m really looking forward to exploding this challenge with the property, if the deal goes through. As for the No Dryer Challenge, I slipped a bit in the last month with three things — 1) I have been sick as a dog, 2) it has rained A LOT, and 3) I have been gone a lot to the West County (Sonoma) to work on my great-aunt’s house and look at property) — so being sick, bad weather and not being home = a dozen loads in the dryer, and I’ll just have to live with that.

That’s all for me for now — I’m reading all comments, just don’t always have the bandwidth to respond. Hope everyone had a wonderful Passover, a blessed Ostara, a holy Easter, a lovely spring and also Happy Earth Day today. And many more…