What’s happening now

Time to relax and explore

Sat, 18 Sep 2010 13:37:41 -0700

Life is an adventure! And now that we are settled in we have been doing more explorations in this beautiful region. During late August and early September we made several day trips and a couple of overnight excursions to see what we have been missing while focused so intently on building the house. After all, we are only a couple of hours from two National Parks and a National Monument, and of course there is the Rogue River that runs right through our town on its way to the ocean. So there is a lot of interesting country within a short distance of Gold Hill.

We’ve been to Crater Lake a couple of times this past year (see entry Making a new home in Southern Oregon in the archive) so we started out following a different path, the Rogue Umpqua Scenic Byway. It so happens that Gold Hill is the starting point for this circle drive which follows parts of both rivers, past waterfalls and spectacular scenery. We stopped to take short hikes to the beautiful Toketee and Watson Falls and later stopped for lunch at Diamond Lake. It was a great day trip.

A week or so later we decided to head for the coast, so we took the Redwood Highway 199 through the mountains to Crescent City California, passing through the northern end of Redwoods National and State Parks. We drove south as far as Eureka where we stayed the night in a 100 year old refurbished hotel in the historic old town area before a leisurely return home, stopping here and there.

We have been talking about camping all year but we were too busy it seemed, so we finally made at least one overnight camping trip to the Mount Shasta area, near McCloud. We happened on a nice campground on the McCloud River with several waterfalls along a riverside hiking trail.

In the morning after breaking camp we went into McCloud for breakfast and happened on a couple of cars with “Tokyo to LA the Hard Way” painted on the doors. It turns out that these guys were driving two family sedans from Tokyo to LA by way of Siberia, and the Alaska Highway for a story in Motor Trend magazine and had been on the road for over a month when we met them at the McCloud Hotel where they were spending the night on the last few days of the trip and heard about some of their adventures. You can find out more with the blog link on the right.

It was good that we did our exploring when we did, because yesterday the rains started. We are sure that there is a lot less rain in Southern Oregon than in the north, but this timing could have been better. Today Linda was helping with the Ride the Rogue bike ride as it passes through Gold Hill. She agreed to help hand out snacks for the 100k section of the ride that passed through our town. Unfortunately the rain put a damper on the event so everyone was pretty wet by the time they arrived in Gold Hill, only about 8 miles from the end of the ride, in Rogue River.

Settling in again

Fri, 6 Aug 2010 11:04:06 -0700

We moved into the new house right on schedule on June 30th, the day after the final inspections. The total cost was very reasonable and close to our estimates. The house is energy efficient, too, and we are using virtually no cooling from our heat pump. With typical daytime highs of 95 degrees this past month, it stays consistently 20 degrees cooler inside.

Five weeks after move-in, we have now unpacked most of the boxes but still have nothing on the walls and finishing work to do inside. Things like base and door moldings, cupboard doors and window coverings and landscaping are upcoming projects, but we are not feeling rushed any more.

We’ve had several overnight guests in our new guest room already, including Pat’s daughter Kirsten, her husband Mimy & son Roy, Pat’s daughter Erin and her partner Sam and friends Jean and Jerry Gerich from Portland.

Kirsten and family stopped on their way as they were moving back to Portland from Oakland. Kirsten is able to take her job with her, so they decided to return to Portland where they bought a house in SE, not too far from Caitlin & Ryan’s place.

Erin & Sam stopped by heading north for a long weekend in Portland, taking a break form their own house remodeling project in Oakland.

Jean and Jerry, ever the adventurers, went on a three-day raft trip on the wild and scenic section of the Rogue River and then stayed with us. We also reconnected with our cat Trixie. When we left the country three years ago we found a good home for her with our friend Bruno, but Bruno is no longer able to keep her, so we brought her back to Gold Hill to live with us again.

Now that the house doesn’t require all of our energy, Linda has also returned to the Gold Hill Community Food Share Garden where she is volunteering again. She even got me over there the other day, taking pictures and picking beans. This garden is a great idea. It’s over an acre and is run entirely by volunteers who grow food which is distributed free to food banks and individuals who want it. Volunteers get to take some home, too. Last year they gave away 26,000 pounds of vegetables.

So will there be more updates to this blog, or has life for us just settled into something too simple to be of interest? It’s hard to say, but it is good to be settled here and have it feeling more like home after our years of travel.

We are nearly done

Mon, 7 Jun 2010 17:27:26 -0700

This past month has been especially busy with drywall, painting, siding, and time out for a four day trip to the Seattle area. The house is beginning to look livable, and all of the siding is on the house at least, although garage siding and trim work remain. As weather permits, Linda and I have been working outside, staining siding and battens and painting window and door trim.

We decided to have a painter do the interior painting in order to speed things up, so lately we have been installing flooring, plumbing fixtures, and cabinets instead of wielding paint rollers. Wanting to build as green as we can within our budget, we chose to stain the concrete slab on the first floor with soy-based stain for a finished floor instead of putting another type of flooring on top. We’re are also using low emission paints and varnishes and re-cycled material when we can.

First floor lighting is mostly recessed in the ceiling, and we originally planned to use compact fluorescent floods for their low energy use, but then Linda found some disturbing information about the health effects of these* and we decided against it. Sometimes choices are difficult, especially when you have to choose between energy efficiency and health.

We’ve put off most of the utility work until the end, and now, as we approach move-in, Jerry the excavator is back digging trenches for the gas line and sewer line, and next week he will be digging up Fifth Street for the water line. It is about 150 feet from Marksbury Street where the gas and sewer lines are located, and we will need two roughly parallel trenches for these, starting with gas, which is to be installed tomorrow.

Digging with heavy equipment makes us both nervous. It is a big deal to rip open the ground like that, and even though there are locators who come first, finding and marking where utilities are buried, it is unsettling all the same, and potentially expensive, but in this country, we need those services that we have come to regard as basic: water, sewer, gas, and electricity, so we do what we have to do.

Last week we gave notice to our to landlady Donna, so we now have a real target date for moving into our house, the end of June. This is really quick considering that we just poured the concrete in mid-January, so it will be just over six months to move-in, if all goes as anticipated. Of course, this all depends on getting through the list of things we still have to do to pass the final inspections, but we’re getting there and we are determined to get it done!

There is still time to read

Mon, 3 May 2010 11:44:24 -0700

We’ve been very busy with the house, but there is still time for other things, including reading and getting together with our book group. When we first arrived in Ashland last July, Rebecca Brunot shared her home with us. One day she announced that her book group was meeting that evening at her house, and she invited us to join them. Everyone welcomed us, we found that we had a lot in common, and we became part of the group.

The common thread in the book group is Rebecca, who as a realtor, sold everyone houses, or a lot in our case. The group meets at different homes each time and this month it was our turn. We all squeezed into our little rental house to discuss the current book, Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea, which I highly recommend. We also had dinner and took a small side trip to show off the new house.

Insulation was installed last week and all of the rough-in inspections were completed successfully. This week the wallboard is going in. It’s heavy stuff, and it was delivered on Friday with a boom truck that can lift it to upper floors and position it in doorways. It was interesting to watch as they maneuvered the arm by remote control up to the window on the second floor and then pulled in the wallboard, sheet by sheet. This definitely beats carrying it up the stairs!

Today the installers are putting it all in place, and when they are done, the finisher will come in to finish the joints and add texture to the walls. I expect that it will be done by sometime next week, and later this week the siding is supposed to arrive.

With all of the activity inside, I am limited to outside work now, so I am hoping to start work on the siding. Over the weekend we put on house wrap and painted some of the trim. We decided on cedar board and batten siding and found a guy (on Craigslist of course) who custom cuts it so we can get the lengths we need. Last time we used cedar shingles, and it took a long time to install. By the end, we were all shingling scholars. This siding should go much faster for us.

Progress, slow but sure

Sun, 4 Apr 2010 17:40:46 -0700

Warning: This blog entry may bore you to death unless you are somehow interested in details.

This is a more complex phase of house construction, and it is going much slower than before. Since the last blog entry we have been doing interior framing, building the walls that divide rooms and define all of the inside spaces. We have also been installing the many systems hidden inside the walls and floors, including drains, water piping and electrical wiring.

My least favorite of these is the plumbing, especially working with the black drain pipe. Lots of rules apply to this, specifying which of many fittings can be used in what conditions, and adding in the extra complication of vents, which are pipes that attach to the drains and have to go up through the roof to do whatever it is they do.

The incoming water lines are better. They are more straightforward. As long as they can hold the water pressure without leaking, you can’t go too far wrong. This is also an area where new wrinkles have come into plumbing. PEX piping is a tough plastic material that comes in red and blue for hot and cold of course, and I am using it with another newfangled device, a manifold to which all of the pipes connect. This works like a breaker panel for electricity, so you can turn each line off at the manifold. So that is about as exciting as plumbing gets, except for the tankless water heater. We put in a gas tankless water heater that mounts outside, another new wrinkle.

Since we are using a gas water heater, planning on a gas fireplace, and a gas range, we also have to install piping for the gas, a project that I haven’t started yet. All of these tasks have to be completed and inspected before we can insulate the house and then put in wallboard and move on to the next phase, finishing the interior. Will we really move in in the summer? We still have fingers crossed!