Living Doll House :^)

[StephenK]

  I'm putting this here under Visual Arts because I'm seeing this project as something of
an art form that one can live in...   It's like a doll house for grownups...   :^)

    My wife Wendy and I bought a home about 20 minutes from the Washington Coast in a quaint little
town called Raymond.  An old loggers town that is not quite dormant, but it has seen much busier days.
The best we can learn so far is that the home was built around the early part of last century.  There's no
record that we've found yet of it's born-on date so we're just going off what others are able to remember.  

   It was originally built with lumber that was growing within sight of the house.  There used to be an old
mill on the hill above us, and folks use to haul their trees to this mill and then carry it back down to be used for
their homes.  Not a touch of drywall or plaster in this house, all lumber planks.... floors, ceiling, walls are all
out of rough sawn timbers.  It' has been wall papered a bunch!  We've had some walls with paper build up of
almost an inch thick.  

   The layout was very poor, and the stairs were impossible.... 10 and a half inch risers with a two foot opening
to get everything that's needed upstairs....  The back porch was rotten beyond repair... so I dismantled it and
built a two story addition and it was there that I added a new set of stairs, and expanded the master bedroom
and making the downstairs a little more roomy.  

   The wood that I removed from the house so far I've been doing so very carefully.  I'll be using it to build the new
cabinets for the home....  I'm having to completely redo the electrical and plumbing, since the old stuff was very old... with
the electrical being downright scary.  
  
The collection of photos below begins the tour.  This is mostly representative of the before part of the project.  
I'm still working on the electrical and plumbing, but most of the framing is now done.  I've been in the building trades
for about 30 years, with 5 years of those as builder in North Carolina... so I'm happily able to do all that needs to
be done on the house myself... and thank goodness... if I had to sub out everything this project would cost a fortune!

   So this is what I'm now doing every day... I have two rooms that I've left untouched so I would have an inhabitable
area to live out of while the rest of the house is being carried back to it's bones.... The room I'm in now is warm, cozy and
happily I have internet...gotta have internet....!

  Our plans are to turn it into a very cute Victorian.  The raw shape is there it just needs the added flare....

   I'll add pictures along the way as work progresses.....   :^)

Before... having just bought it... this is a picture of the front of the house

Demolition begins... the removal of the rotten back porch

Up goes the new additon

Break time  :^)

Picture of inside downstairs...before

Picture of downstairs about a month ago

Picture of upstairs... before

Picture of upstairs about a month ago (not a whole lot has changed visually since, have been
working on electrical and plumbing)

  And now that I've got this much posted I can add a few pictures now and then as I weave through this
quilt to completion.   This is an incredible amount of work but I love it!   I'm very-much looking forward
to working on the interior and exterior trim.... that part's my specialty....  :^)

[Katze]

 I'm putting this here under Visual Arts because I'm seeing this project as something of
an art form that one can live in...   It's like a doll house for grownups...   :^)

Good morning Stephen ! 

Excellent idea for a thread. WOW ! Quite a project you have undertaken. I am in awe of your talents, quite impressive that you can take a house down to the basics and then renovate it all by yourself !

Thank you for sharing the before and in progress pictures.  Just one question, are you living in a wooden fishbowl ? lol ! there is a curve to some of the pictures.

Cute picture of break time ! Looks refreshing. Have you tried the beer that has lime in it ?

Into Blue      

[StephenK]

Thank you Into Blue!   :^)

   The curvature in the pictures are from a new lens I bought not too long ago.  It's an ulta wide-angle lens that
adjusts from 10mm (essentially fish-eye) to 17mm (very wide).  When used indoors it tends to distort quite a bit but
it's still able to get a huge amount of coverage into a single image.  When I use it outside properly, (finding that sweet spot
to where the horizon is flattened) you can hardly tell that anythings off... and yet it takes in just about everything!

   Here's a picture that I took a couple of weeks ago in Astoria OR. , where I was standing almost directly
under the bridge for the shot.  No other lens that I've owned could even come close to capturing this angle!

And for the beer you must be referring to Bud Light Lime.  It's not a bad beer at all, but oddly expensive for
a Bud product.  So I tend to hang out with Corona, with a lime twist,  for the occasional beer that works itself
into my day.   :^)



 

[Katze]

Awesome under the bridge photo ! And I do like the lens and the results you get from it, even the inside shots. It gives a unique perspective to the picture, like adding a different dimension. I was just teasing you about the fishbowl 

yes, that was the brand, thanks for the more inexpensive idea - it is only on a rare occasion that I indulge in a beer. I prefer wine, it even has heart health benefits. 

[StephenK]

ohhh I knew you were just teasing Into Blue.... could you imagine how much it would cost
and how much time would be involved in actually building a home with the fishbowl feel as
we see in the pictures!  Would look kinda cool.... but would actually be quite weird to live in!   

    It looks like there may be a problem with my wife Wendy moving over permanently for a bit.  She ran into
a situation last evening that was so bizarre that she no longer can see herself working for this
company.  Her attachment to the company was already on thin ice but this one was a doozy... I'll
write more about it this evening.....   There are odd situations that one confronts in life that are sometimes
so uncomfortably bizarre that one would normally expect to only see them in movies ... this was one of those......   

[Katze]

I wonder what the goldfish think as they swim in their bowl ? Ever wonder if they have that closed in feeling ?

sorry to hear about your wife having such strange work related problems, I hope she is ok .

[StephenK]

Hi Into Blue  :^)

    She's physically okay, but last night was quite the experience for her!

      A couple of days ago she was asked by the human resources person at the company she
worked for if she would go to some "relatively small" get-together and explain to the people there
what their company did.  She was asked as a favor because they didn't have anyone else at the
time who could do it... oh well, she thought, it meant loosing a night and having to drive into
town, but, okay she'd be a team player and do it....

      So she drives in, arrives at the building, walks into the room and realized what the deal was
actually about.  The gathering was huge, semi-formal, all doctors and head nurses and hospital
administrators.  There were 5 or 6 other top insurance companies that had flown in teams from
all over the country to make presentations to the attendees on behalf of their clients.   And then
she saw that she was third on the presentations list.  There was a stage, in a large hall, and from
there they were doing their sales pitchs.  The companies that presented before her had slide shows, large
binder handouts, 15 minute presentations with every bell and whistles imaginable.... They were
fully professionals and did presentations for a living.....  Wendy had nothing.... the company had
sent her and one of their low-level outside sales rep in totally unprepared for both the size of the
event, and the nature of the clients they were addressing. Not even with talking points... Most of
these doctors she knew in some way on a professional level.   Wendy's been a nurse in the Spokane
area for the better part of 17 years and has worked just about everywhere there.  She takes great
pride in her integrity and her professionalism.  

   Came her time she went up on the stage, the sales rep followed, she looked over the crowed
as they stared back at her.... and then they bluffed their way through about 3 minutes.... she
said it was obvious to everyone they had nothing... but Wendy's pretty ballzy and put her best
face on it, spoke with authority..... and waited until she was driving home in the car before she
allowed herself to completely fall apart....  she termed it as this being the most humiliating situation
that she's ever been involved in....  

    Earlier today she was looking for another job... (that's when I wrote you) by this afternoon she
decided she'd stick around a bit longer (so she can run back and forth between here and spokane freely) but
she's hell-bent on getting a job on the West side of the state, sooner rather than later.  

    What happened last night is currently circulating among the management of the company and
stuff is likely to be trickling in for some time over the way this was handled by the department that
is suppose to be over seeing this sort of thing.....

    Wendy is still in a mild state of shock..... physically okay but still emotionally shaken...  

   It's bizarre the way a company will treat it's own people at times....  I'm happy I was there and for
the invention of cell phones so we could talk throughout the day to relieve some of the pressure....

   I'm not thinking she'll ever volunteer like that again....!    
 

[Jitendra Hydonus]

Stephen i think it might interest you to read the story of Paramahansa Yogananda's  coming to the U.S. for the first time on the Sparta and his 'talk' at the religious convention in Boston. These stories are in the Autobiography of a Yogi, Wendy could probably relate to it. Sometimes things like this go a little beyond a company you know. There are forces that are higher than us that make adjustments to our lives... Steve

[Katze]

hi Stephen & Steve,

That was quite the evening for Wendy. I give her lots of credit for handling the mess in the professional way that she did, not everyone would have had the courage to get up there and participate like she did.

If you haven't read " Autobiography of a Yogi " yet, you might like to take Steve's suggestion to do so. I have read most of it, need to finish the last few chapters and it is a great book. Also after reading this I would suggest reading " Mejda " which was written by one of Yogananda's brothers and tells about his ( Yogananda's ) early childhood years. It completes the story of his life and as you read this second book, it really feels like one gets to know Yogananda in a more personal way. (I have to finish that book too )...

so in reply to Steve's comment

There are forces that are higher than us that make adjustments to our lives...

I was thinking, perhaps there was a reason that this incident happened in Wendy's life. Perhaps it was a little nudge to her, to seriously look for a different job. God works in mysterious ways sometimes, and sometimes we may not realize the whys or wherefors at the particular time something is happening. I am sorry she had to go thru such a humiliating experience.(((((hugs)))) to Wendy

Into Blue

[StephenK]

  Thanks Steve and Into Blue for the warm and empathetic responses! 

 And I understand the thought behind what you're posting.   I tend to call these "triggering events".   Some are large some are small,
they seem to be custom designed around what's needed at the moment.  In this case she was wanting to move-on from both the
job that she's in, and the Spokane area.  But she had been ground-down somewhat by the responsibility she felt around keeping
things the same for the sake of relative safety.   This episode  finally pushed her beyond that.  She's putting in applications in institutions
surrounding our western location.  She's basically has a no-holds-bared approach toward completing this transition.
 
    We have long found that things tend to line-up for a reason.  There are people she will be interacting with in the future that are
awaiting her arrival.  And her own inner course is in the process of being realigned by the changing of events that addresses both
need and want,  and helps in augmenting her spiritual and intuitive awareness.  That's the dryer version   :^)

   On the more personal side she hates that we're apart and wants desperately to begin a new life... the kids are now grown to the
point to where they no longer need us in the ways that they used to.... in some ways it's like we're dating again...  We've long
joked that we rarely take short vacations....  that if we want to see somewhere we move there and spend years bonding
with both the people and environment.  This habit carried us though North Georgia, Salem Or., Greensboro NC, Denver, and
eventually to Spokane, where we've spent the last 17 years raising our children in a steady environment.  And now that they're
grown we're unleashed again..... the excitement between us over this is quite energizing... we're now working through the complex
details that will help make it so, without too much disruption.   And it appears that this triggering event was a sign that things are
now ready for her to push forward....  she's certainly going at it with a great deal of gusto...!    :^)

    And thanks also for the reading suggestion..!  I know of the book... I'm actually surprised that I haven't read it already.
The problem I'm having now with reading is that I have so many irons in the fire that reading is pulling-in near last.  I found a
great book that I was telling Into Blue about... it talks to my soul... it's amazingly incredible as I drink-in the pages, but even
with that I'm currently only to page 22.....  my experience with reading right now is sip and run....   :^)

     Thanks again for your wonderful replies.... this discussion actually belongs in this thread because as I'm working on the
house itself, these seem to be the events that will help bring about our eventual experience with the finished home and the
life here that awaits us.     :^)

[Katze]

hi Stephen 

It sounds like Wendy has things under control in going about moving forward with her plans to relocate with her job. Interesting phrase " triggering events " fits right in.

And her own inner course is in the process of being realigned by the changing of events that addresses both
need and want,  and helps in augmenting her spiritual and intuitive awareness.  That's the dryer version   :^)

Very nicely worded.

I can definitely understand her feelings regarding being apart, it is difficult wanting to be with someone and them being so far away - for whatever reasons.

Nice that you had the opportunities to live in a variety of places, and to have the memories to take with you as you travel to the next stage of your life.

I almost thought you were going to reply with you already had read the book ! ohh I can definitely understand, the not having time to read now with all that you have going on. Just shelve the idea, hee hee, for another time as you sit relaxing in front of your fireplace on a cold winter's night with nothing to do.

Yes, I remember the soul book, I need to make time to read that one too. So many books on my reading list- need to have more hours in the day/ night.

Looking forward to more pictures of your renovation in progress.

Into Blue
     

[StephenK]

  Hi Into Blue   :^)

     What happened to Wendy is finally making its way through upper management of the company she works for
to the point where she got a personal phone call today from the medical director.  He's the top dog just below the CEO.  
He asked her what happened and she explained the whole event blow by blow.  He was both stunned and embarresed
for both her and the company... enough so, that he was taking this to the top and wanted her to send all coorapondences
on what had transpired both before and after the event.  This may actually serve as a catalyst to change a weak aspect
of the company itself.  It's a non-profit health care insurance company that serves the poor population of Wa. state. (a person
has to be 400 percent below the poverty level to be eligible for this insurance.)  So it's in the best interest of the people it
serves, for the company to be on top of things in order to better address those in need.  She's feeling much better now that
she knows that this isn't being swept under the rug, and that her discomfort may actually accomplish some good.

    And what a crazy day.... as I had posted you about earlier in PM.  Even now when I sat down to write this my daughter just called...  :^)
  I enjoy hearing from her and my son since in some ways I double as something of both mom and dad... I was a stay-at-home dad
with them for about 8 (?) years.  We homeschooled them both so we were around each other continuously for that time.  
Our connections are almost seamless.... so our conversations are often a continuation of the last one.  The four of us, Wendy my
son and daughter are all best friends... as well as father husband wife and children (well... young adults  :^)  so when somethings
going on in their lives they often think of us first... and of course we're always there for them... and yet they're incredibly independent.
Both are solid as a rock... not needy at all... in fact my daughter gets tense with us when we offer her money.... even though she's going
to school full time and has a full time job..... My son installs fiber optic cables and is heading off to Ohio shortly to lay down 500 miles,
with another job right behind it in New Mexico laying another 300 miles..... over the last couple of years he's set down fiber for months
at a time in Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Western Washington... and Alaska for a whole summer.  He gets around...  :^)

    So it's really not much of a problem when they call.... I'm in awe of who each one of them are!! Only I don't get a whole lot done on the
house when they do...!    :^))

[Katze]

What a wonderful family Stephen !

[Katze]

Just stopping by to check on the house renovation progress Stephen. I hope all is going well and on schedule, if you have a schedule. I heard Colorado had 4 inches of snow the other day !

  Into Blue

[StephenK]

Just stopping by to check on the house renovation progress Stephen. I hope all is going well and on schedule, if you have a schedule. I heard Colorado had 4 inches of snow the other day !

  Into Blue

     Hi Into Blue  :^)

         Progress is moving along at the pace of one person, but still steady and reasonably sure-footed! 

Winter is close at hand...My son was in Montana a few days ago and they were waking up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit.   
And I was talking with a cashier just yesterday at the Home Depot, whose husband and son were visiting the
grandparents in Wyoming and were running into white-out snow storms already.... I fear it's here in some places
in the US already....   

     We're still fairly warm here yet... have had a few frosts but it warms up pretty quickly... right now we're heading into
a several day stretch of rain... it does rain a lot on the western side of the state... we'll be getting what Seattle is
generally known for... winter damp.... but not much in the way of stick-around snow...! 

      So I did take a couple of pictures a few hours ago to bring the thread up to date on current progress. 

       As a reminder I'm posting a demolitioned benchmark...... it's a picture where the old porch was
removed, and before the two story addition was added.   Following that one is late this afternoons pictures of
the addition and the new back porch... I just finished up on shingling the two roofs today. 
   I had also saved some of the old siding and added it to the side of the house, covering the one wall on
the new addition.... yesterday I sprayed it with Thomsons water seal.  We decided not to paint it but just
seal it... The old color, once pressure washed, was too cool to pass up... you simply can't buy color that
will do that kind of effect.   

    Tomorrow more plumbing, insulating and maybe hang some drywall....  I'm quickly reaching that stage where
the house will have parts of it actaully livable.  Still a few weeks yet before furninture could be moved in... but
I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel!  :^)