We Take a few Trips to Oregon...

May 2007 - We take our first trip to Oregon. Our renters have moved out. Mrs. G says, "No more renters!". I can't disagree with that. It was nice having someone care take the place but renters are hard on the property. Before we take possession of the place, We buy an enclosed cargo trailer. I never expected to invest in a cargo trailer a year ago but after looking into the charges U-Haul wanted just for a simple rental - I decided that shelling out the $3000 for this trailer would be a good investment. I figure that I have to make several trips over the next several years. I do the math. I buy the trailer. Besides, it has proven to be a great place to store stuff before we shove off to Oregon. We opted for the 6X12 ft model. I had reservations about my Toyota Tacoma 4 cylinder being able to tow the load through the mountain passes. The Toyota was able to tow the load - however we couldn't go very fast (55 mph/avg). My first load up there is modest and light. We take a sleeper sofa, the oak table & chair set that we've had for the last 30 years and a small buffet. We also take the usually filler stuff (lamps, dishes, pots & pans and bedding). Still a light load. We get up to Oregon and spend the week cleaning up after our renters and moving in our first (of many) loads. We also go through the house and take measurements of rooms, windows, doors, etc. I also take dozens of photos of the place for planning purposes. We also make some arrangements to have the place worked on.

Fast forward 90 days later. Summertime in Lake Havasu. I'm getting burnt out from work and the Lovely Mrs. G wants to do something on our house in Oregon. We've been going to Home Depot and Lowe's buying items for the property. We made a 'list' of items to get on our last trip in May. She talked me into buying a bedroom set, a washer & dryer combo and other items too numerous to post here. I packed the entire kit 'n caboodle in our trusty Haulmark trailer. The photo above shows you my 'rig'.

In the first week of August, I manage to get three weeks off from work. I've coordinated to have my time off while some construction work takes place on the house. Best be there in case of any problems, I say. We get up to Oregon without any towing problems. Good thing too... I had a heavy load to haul and it's been hot while we made the trip. I worried about the trip. Hwy 93 through Nevada is a lonely stretch of road. Bad place to break down. Guess that I worry more in my old age.

We roll in to Canyon City late on a Saturday afternoon in good spirits. It's cool up here in comparison to what we're use to. We start unloading the Haulmark. First order of business is to unload the Washer/Dryer combo and the bedroom set. I start unloading all this stuff solo. The Washer & Dryer are easy. The bedroom set is a bear. The damn dresser weighs close to 400 lbs and is almost impossible to handle alone. Somehow I manage to get all of the stuff into the house without damaging it. Now comes the task of assembling the bedroom set.

The bedroom set. My wife is accustomed to having 'good' furniture. Have you ever noticed the the vast majority of the furniture produced today is made from something other than solid wood? When we looked earlier at furniture - we made sure that we were going to buy something 'solid'. We bought a nice set from Ashley. The stuff was solid and well made. It was also imported from Vietnam. It was also very, very heavy. I had to assemble the pieces into the final product. I have to admit, I was pretty impressed with the quality. No problems with assembly. Sunday night we finally had a 'real' bed to sleep in. Sweet.

Little by little, the place was becoming more like home. When we first bought the place, we slept on the floor on an air mattress. Oh, what a joy that was. Our last trip, we brought up a couch with a pull-out sleeper (a minor upgrade of sorts to the air mattress). This trip, a real bed. One with a nice mattress. Like I said, "More like home as time progresses.." Ginger immediately staked out 'her spot' on the bed.

Next came the Washer and Dryer. For this I had to do some prep work in the Laundry/Utility room. By Prep work, I mean that I had to paint and do some other tasks before placing the the combo in there. After doing an electrical inspection. I come to the conclusion that I need to re-wire both the 120v and 240v circuits. Damn. You never plan for all these small details to crop up just to install something simple. I forgot to mention that I had to re-route the dryer exhaust venting too. Will this ever end? The small jobs take two days. Mrs. G has been putting on the pressure to install the washer dryer combo. "I refuse to go to that Laundromat!", she mutters at me. The local Laundromat being somewhat dingy and a place where local ranchers are more apt to launder Horse blankets. She is really really pleased when I get the washer and dryer in place.

Next job - correcting the wiring boo-boos of the previous residents. Wow. Where do I start? The illegal wiring or the stuff that needs to be removed and redone? Although I bought a ton of stuff at Home Depot and Lowes, I become a 'regular' at Ace & True Value Hardware stores in John Day. My main concern is to make the place 'winter proof' as it is going to be vacant during the freezing season. This equates to exterior painting (where wood is exposed), fixing the porch and car port roofs for leaks and most importantly, insulating the water pipes under the house. After hearing from the locals that it has the possibility of dropping to 20degF below during the winter. The thought of busted water pipes has a scary ring to it. Going under the house has a scary ring to it too. The crawl space under the kitchen is small. Too small for me to navigate. I've talked to the contractor about someone (other than myself) to go under there is discussed. A second contractor I hired with will do an insulation job at the house. He's going to blow in insulation in my exterior walls and attic. I ask him about insulating the pipes (and anything else the under side of the house needs). When I get to Canyon City, I see that he has done the insulation job, however no evidence of anyone going under the house. I get a bad feeling in my stomach.

My main contractor, Andy Lane has shown up to re-side the house in Vinyl Siding. We opt for Vinyl for the maintenance aspects. Personally, I would have liked Cedar or some other traditional siding. I select Vinyl for it's low maintenance in the long run. Andy has preprepared the house prior to our arrival for the siding job.

The siding needed to be replaced . This is what the house looked like before Andy started his work. Not only did the siding need to be replaced, the front window(s) were still the old single pane type. The doors needed replacing too. We had Andy replace both front windows, replace both front and rear doors and add storm doors.

Notice the new windows. We were very pleased with them. The new siding gave the place a different character as well. The change was more pronounced on the back side.
Although the picture does not give it justice, this before picture shows just how nasty the old siding really was.
Here, Sam (Andy's dad & business partner) is installing siding on the back of the house. See the little white door at Sam's feet? That's the dreaded crawl space access. Speaking of this, I asked Andy to cut a trap door in the utility room floor to access beneath the house. Good thing I did. Andy cut a hole in the floor. Much to my delight, I could now access the 'basement' of the house. Yes, it was cramped - but I can now access the area under the house. I take a 'first look'.
More bad news. Well, not bad news in the sense. The pipes do need wrapping and several other nasty jobs also need to be done as well. Better plan this job out...
Here's a photo of Andy & Sam when the siding job got finished. Watching them work, made the siding job look easy. However, I have my doubts how easy the job would have been if I had to do it. When done, the house looked completely different. I did a side job of repainting and residing the front entry way. As you noticed, the house was painted in a 'battleship gray' when we bought it in 2005. We had to eliminate all of the gray trim and Lattice. Right before we left Oregon for the trip home - all of the battleship gray was removed from the front of the house. At least the house now looks 'presentable' from the street. I never got around to taking a picture of how the place looked when we finished. I ran out of time. Actually, I should tell you something about time management and this house. That will have to wait until the next entry (as I'm out of time).