Just a short update today since we’re heading back to Washington for a few days.  Our daughter is getting married on Sunday and we still have a few things there that didn’t fit in the U-Haul.

Digger Guy (his name is actually Rick, by the way) came by last week and told us he hoped to start on our septic system last Friday, but assured us he would be here by yesterday at the very latest.  True to his word, he got here just as the well crew was finishing the installation of our new pump.  Rick didn’t get much digging done, but he unloaded his equipment and dug an approach so he could get it down to where the new tank will be installed.

This is the last major piece of the puzzle.  With a little luck, we’ll be able to turn everything on in the house when we get back.  For now, it’s time to hit the road.  We have about 780 miles to cover today.

I frequently talk about the work we’re doing here, or describe some of the projects we’re undertaking, but I haven’t really talked much about how this house got to the point we found it.  From what we’ve pieced together from the county records and title report, the property was purchased by a couple in 1989 and they built the house two years later.  I’ve heard that the winters and elevation began getting to them as they got older, and they sold the house, along with the barn and twenty acres to a property investment company called Bottom Line Results.  The owner of that company sort of ‘sold’ fifty or sixty properties in varying states of distress, including this one, to individuals and families who paid him cash and moved in to start making repairs.  I’ll skip over a bunch of the details and just mention that it turned into a giant Ponzi scheme.  He went to jail for fraud, all of the properties ended up in bankruptcy court, and the families who put up the money for their dream homes lost everything they had invested as they were forced to leave.

When we first saw the house, the plywood over several of the windows made it clear that some damage had been done and that some repairs would be necessary.  Honestly, this was a big factor in our decision to pursue this project; the structure itself seemed solid, but it needed work and we’d always wanted to take on a challenge like that.  Most importantly, it meant that the price was right.

In 5. Some Good News and Some Bad News I briefly mentioned that I met Kevin, the guy who lost almost $90,000 in this place.  I was working on a section of the driveway when he just drove up.  He didn’t waste any time telling me how badly he had been treated and how horrible the experience had been for him and his wife.  Most of the conversation, though, was about how tough he is.  According to him, he was a Marine sniper who spent several tours in the Middle East killing people, and then went back as a civilian sniper with Blackwater to kill more people.  He liked this property because he could shoot “Bessie”, his sniper rifle every day; calling it his ‘therapy’.  He told me about finding trespassers on the property and holding them at gunpoint until the Sheriff’s Office arrived, and told me that thieves and tweekers were a constant threat.

I won’t bother sharing the entire encounter, but suffice to say my impression of the guy was that he was a liar who suffers from some pretty significant paranoia and an overly developed ego.  He mentioned that the house had hardwood floors, but ‘someone’ had broken in and stolen it all, along with the tankless hot water heater.  I certainly can’t prove who caused the damage we found or took the missing materials, but after 30+ years in law enforcement, I can say that vandals and thieves are typically too lazy to put much effort into their activities.  They spray paint graffiti, they break every window in the place, and they rip copper wire out of the walls that they can sell quickly.  They don’t carefully remove and haul away solid wood flooring.  Let’s face it, there’s just not much of a black market for pre-finished Maple, and I’ve never met a drug dealer willing to swap a baggie of dope for a few square feet of really nice lumber.  I’m hoping Kevin’s one visit will also be his last.

We didn’t have any graffiti issues, and the only missing wire was the main supply line that we’ve already had replaced.  The flooring will come later, but this past week has been spent addressing those door and window problems.

Since some of the windows needed to be replaced anyhow, we decided to make some design changes at the same time.  The living room had six (three pairs) windows that were six feet high, by three feet wide.  They provided spectacular views, but the lower portion was really sort of useless and there wasn’t any wall space in the entire living room along which furniture could be placed.  We swapped six vertical windows for three horizontal ones a little higher up.  We’re really excited about how they look.

Likewise, the kitchen had three separate windows over the sink, but because they were so long, they extended nearly into the corner, which meant that there wasn’t enough space to run upper cabinets along the back wall.   We removed three windows, re-framed the wall, and installed a single sliding window.  I think the result will be pretty positive.

As of this afternoon, all of the broken windows have been replaced, the mudroom door is new, and the two french doors have been swapped out.  I’m grateful for a friend’s help on Tuesday to replace the big, upper window over the living room door (which was obviously broken from the inside!).  I’m just not fond of heights and Joe was a huge help; seemingly unaffected by spending the afternoon atop a twelve-foot scaffold in the wind.

We still have a lot of work to do, but it’s official as of yesterday……

No More Plywood!

 

For the past couple of months, I’ve been enthusiastically sharing updates on our utilities.  First, we had electricity at the barn, which allowed me to power the trailer.  Then, we got a new power pole and the electricians showed up to run a new, main supply wire to the house, which set us up with a temporary outlet so I didn’t need to fire up the generator to run my power tools.  I had DirecTV set up, and then we struggled with customer service agents (who just don’t seem to have mastered the English language yet) to get all of the local channels here.  The well needed a new casing, wire and pump, but that was up and running after two crews spent nearly a whole day working on it so we could run hoses up to the trailer for water.  And, of course, we had the phone line installed, which gave us a landline and Internet service.

I’ve been a little less enthusiastic about the monsoonal rains and the unusually high rainfall Colorado has experienced this year.  Mostly, it just impacts how we plan our days: anything that requires being outdoors needs to be done in the morning, while it’s dry, before the storms hit in the afternoon (every afternoon).  Along with the rains come thunder and lightning.  In fact, according to a local news report, there are over 30,000 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in El Paso County to our east (Colorado Springs) and Teller, our own county, each year.

How do these two subjects relate, you may wonder?  Last Sunday, we sort of took the day off.  It was absolutely beautiful in the morning; warm, dry and clear with gorgeous views for miles.  We basically just hung out until late in the afternoon, when Sandi decided to go to town for a few groceries.  I stayed home, intending to work on planning our upcoming trip back to Washington.  Very quickly, the sky began to darken, the rain began to fall, and within a few short minutes, it started to hail.

This was my view during the first few moments of the storm.  If you look closely, there’s even a small river running past the truck already.

As the storm grew, so did the intensity of the thunder and lightning.  I was frantically trying to shut everything down when I saw a flash, heard a loud thunder clap, and felt a sort of jolt go through me, all at the same instant!  I wasn’t entirely sure the trailer hadn’t taken a direct hit.  Oh, and all of those utilities we’ve worked to get turned on so we could enjoy a little modern comfort and convenience?  Gone!  No power, no TV, and no Internet.  The hail had piled up against one of the barn doors and forced enough of a gap underneath that a good portion of the floor flooded, soaking several boxes we had stacked inside.  Fortunately, most of our household goods weren’t affected, but it sure made a mess.  The hail in shady spots didn’t fully melt for three days.  A day or two later, we discovered that we couldn’t get the well working, either.

I took the truck down to the road to get Sandi, since she wasn’t able to get her car all the way back up our driveway.  The power company got the electricity back on late that same night, and Century Link sent a tech out with a new router a couple of days later.  Our satellite receiver is fried, but they sent us a new one.  Unfortunately, they sent it to our Chehalis address, so I guess we’ll be bringing it back in a couple of weeks.  Apparently, it also took out both of the HDMI ports on our TV, so we can’t get the DVD player to work, either.  The well guy came out and ran some tests before deciding the pump was damaged and would need to be replaced.  Unfortunately, they don’t have a repair crew available until Monday at the earliest, so in the meantime, we’re hauling water up from the Ace Hardware store in 6 gallon water jugs.  They’ve been nice enough to let us fill the jugs from their hose.  We can still take showers and wash dishes, we just have to work for it a little more.  On the upside, the pump is covered under warranty, so we were thrilled to hear that.

This has been a trying week, to say the least, but I think we’re on our way back to where we were before the storm, though we weren’t able to watch the ‘Hawks last night.  As far as the house goes, we’ve made some real progress there, too.  Our new electrical panel passed inspection, so we have working lights and outlets inside the house now.  Our 1000 gallon propane tank is full, so we can use our new furnace and hot water heater.  The chimney was inspected and cleaned, and Digger Guy came out to look at the septic tank again and promised he would be starting on Monday.  It’s the last piece needed to get all of the systems in the house turned on and working, so we’re hoping he’s true to his word.

We’ve made some great progress inside, too, but I’ll save that for my next post.

For those who have been wondering, we’ve made a big decision, football-wise.  Since we’re in Colorado, we figure we can root for the Broncos occasionally.  That’s not to say we’re planning on becoming fans, exactly, but what could it hurt to support the home team?  So long as I don’t have to wear anything orange and so long as they aren’t playing the Seahawks, obviously.  At least we don’t live anywhere near San Francisco.  I can’t imagine how anyone actually cheers for the ’49ers.

Which leads me to our latest little setback.  I think I mentioned that I had a satellite dish for the RV that was tied in to our home DirecTV service for all of the cable channels, while I was able to get one of the local network stations using the antenna.  So, there we were on Sunday….  tuning in to watch the Seahawks’ first pre-season game.  Since our base service is still out of Washington, all of the local, Seattle channels still show up on our menu, even though we can’t watch them since we’re so far away.  Everyone else here in Colorado was watching the game on the NFL Network, so we tuned in, too, only to find out that the game was blacked out for us because it was showing in the local market on channel 13.  Remember how I just explained that we don’t get the local channels?  Yep, no football for us last weekend.  Sandi spent 3 hours on the phone yesterday talking to a wide variety of customer service reps trying to get our address changed so we can watch “local stations” here, but by the end of the day, we didn’t have any satellite reception at all.  A tech came out this morning and got us back up and running, so the great football drought of 2017 is officially over.

We’ve been making some real and visible progress on the house, which is a great feeling. We’ve also had a bit of a reprieve from the rains, which has certainly helped, too.  The past three days have been dry and pleasant, save for a very brief drizzle each afternoon, so opening big holes in the side of the house hasn’t been quite so dicey this week.

We removed the 6′ wide, glass front door today and added some framing to narrow the opening to accommodate vinyl, 5′ wide French doors with the blinds inside the glass.  It took us a little extra time to complete since a piece of the floor needed to be repaired and we moved a floor vent over about 12″.

     

Before and after shots.  We ran out of steam this afternoon, so we’ll piece in the vinyl siding on the left side of the door tomorrow to finish it up, but we really like the way it came out.

Yesterday, we finished the mudroom entrance by adding a new entry door and replacing one of the broken windows.  It means one less piece of plywood on the outside of the house and the glass really brightens up the space.

                   

We’ve begun framing a new entry closet and in the next few days, we’ll be making a few changes to the kitchen so we’ll have the space ready when the cabinets arrive.

Still no word on the cat, though we continue to check the shelter’s website everyday, hoping to see her photo in the ‘Recent Arrivals’ section.  While we were treated to more of the same monsoonal rains that caused damage and minor flash flooding in the area, it seems that the rain is finally letting up a bit.   Our mornings are predictably cool, clear and beautiful, and we’re still experiencing those ominous clouds to the west every afternoon, but lately, they’ve passed to the south with just a sprinkle to keep us on our toes.  Some of our bigger puddles and the muddy spots on our driveway have been drying up, so getting around is a little more pleasant.

Unloading the U-haul turned out to be incredibly easy, thanks to a website address we found on a sticker in the truck.  We were heading across Utah, or some other, equally desolate stretch of highway, when we began kicking around a plan to get the truck unloaded, get our belongings stacked and stored, and get the truck returned within the time we had available.  We both agreed that the effort and labor involved was not something either of us was looking forward to.  Fortunately, U-haul has a network of companies all over the country that will come to your house and either help you load or unload for a pretty reasonable fee.  We signed up on-line and followed it up with a phone call.  The next morning, on Monday, two very enthusiastic guys arrived about 9:30.  I had backed up to the barn, opened the doors and stepped out of the way.  The truck was empty after just an hour and a half and we were able to return it by noon; a day early. Our backs didn’t hurt, nothing was broken, and we were only out $140.

I had been thinking that our electrician and the furnace installer would be here on Tuesday, so I’d have Monday afternoon to get some last minute things done.  I guess I wrote the dates down wrong because the furnace and the rest of the duct work was finished by the end of the day on Monday.  The electrician got most of his work done on Tuesday and we actually have power to a few of the outlets and lights in the house now.  That piece of the puzzle should be complete by the end of this week.

For those keeping score, that means we have a working well, a hot water heater, a furnace, and a new power pole, meter, and electrical panel.  All of our doors and windows have arrived, we’ve ordered our kitchen cabinets, and our chimney is supposed to be inspected and cleaned later this week.  So, what’s still missing?  We still don’t have a working septic system.  Digger Guy told me before I left for Seattle that he’d have it done while I was gone.  According to the email he sent me the other day, he didn’t feel comfortable putting his equipment on our hill with all the rain and wet ground, so he’s hoping to get to us “soon”.  Maybe this drier weather means we can soon put a check mark next to that project as well.

We had to spend two days last week running back and forth to Colorado Springs to pick up doors, windows, and appliances, so we haven’t made a lot of actual progress on the house, but this is a new week!  Only one new door is installed, but the rest of the doors and windows should be in by the end of the week if the weather holds and we don’t run in to any new problems.

I don’t have any photos for this post, and really don’t have anything interesting or fun to share, but this should bring us up to date.

 

 

The past few weeks have been incredibly busy.  I flew back to Seattle on a Friday night and, since I got in so late, I went straight to the hotel.  By Saturday afternoon, Sandi, my mom, my sister, and my niece had all joined me so we could catch the cruise ship on Sunday.

As an aside, there were two ships docked in Seattle that day, both boarding at the same time and both following roughly the same itinerary for their 7-day Alaskan cruises.  Our trip was terrific, but the other ship was the scene of a homicide,  delays caused by the resulting FBI investigation, and another death due to a heart attack.  There is no phone or Internet service on the ship unless you pay extra for it, so we didn’t know anything about it until we checked our phones a couple of days later and found several frantic messages wondering if we were okay.  We were, and as I said; we had a great time.  We got to spend time together, ate very well, enjoyed our port calls, and have some fun, new experiences to remember.

For those who haven’t done one of these trips, I highly recommend it.  This was our third cruise and the second visit to Alaska.  It’s not cheap, but you unpack once, visit several different places, and they take very good care of you.  I’d prefer if there were fewer people, but that’s just me.

We got home a week later and dramatically shifted gears.  We had begun packing and sorting some time ago, but it was time to get serious about it.  Mom stayed to help pack boxes for a few days and Jack and my girls showed up to help load the truck.  Speaking of the truck….  we had a tough time even finding one to rent.  We went on-line to reserve a U-haul and the site told us there were no trucks available until September.  There’s no point describing all the phone calls and e-mails that followed, but we eventually reserved a truck with Penske and later managed to find a truck through U-haul for almost $1,000 less.  We ended up cutting into that windfall a bit at the end of the trip, but I’ll wait to explain that.

While we packed and loaded, we also smoked almost 100 pounds of pork shoulder.  Aly wants pulled pork for her upcoming wedding, so I ran three different batches.  Each batch was four large shoulder roasts, smoking for about 14 hours.  We pulled it at night before going to bed and then vacuum sealed it all so it can be ready for the reception.

We finally ran out of time and space and needed to get on the road.  I had scheduled the furnace guy and the electrician for the next week, so we really had to be in Colorado by Sunday night.  We hit the road on Friday evening and headed south.  We stopped at a rest stop just before we got to Portland and decided to try ‘walking the cat’.  She rides pretty calmly in the car in her little carrier, so we figured the trip would go pretty well, but we didn’t know how potty stops might go.  Sadly, we found out just an hour into our trip.  Sandi set her down just as a semi pulled in and scared her to the point that she panicked, managed to roll out of her little harness and bolted for the tree-line.  The brush was very thick, the thorns and stickers were very sharp, and it was quickly getting dark.  It broke our hearts, but after searching for an hour and a half, we didn’t have much choice but to get back on the road.

The next 1500 miles went very well.  We spent the first night in Pendleton Oregon, and made it to Kemmerer, Wyoming the second night.  Along the way, we learned that we had a signed contract for our house, so that took a little pressure off our shoulders.  This is the second time I’ve driven away from an empty house and sold it from the cab of a U-haul.

The last half mile is where things sort of fell apart.  While the weather in Washington has been hot, clear, and dry, Colorado has been experiencing record rainfall during this years’ monsoon season.  In fact, we hit rain as soon as we left Wyoming and entered Colorado.  As we approached our driveway, I was focused on the on-coming traffic lane, pulling wide to make the right turn, and just didn’t realize how much of our driveway approach had been washed out by all that water.  The front wheels made it, but the rear wheels dropped into the newly created ditch and the rear bumper landed on the pavement, which basically meant we were high-centered from the rear.  U-haul advertises that they have the lowest loading decks in the industry.  That’s helpful when you’re hauling heavy boxes and appliances up the ramp.  It’s less helpful when you need the clearance to get up your driveway.  It was dark and raining and we were blocking both lanes of the county road.

We met a couple of Cripple Creek police officers and a Teller County deputy who showed up to help with traffic control while we waited for the tow truck.  All of them were very helpful, concerned, and seemed like good guys.  Keep in mind, we were in a 26 foot, fully loaded truck towing a trailer, so a regular “little” tow truck wasn’t going to cut it.  We got one of those big wreckers they use to tow semi trucks.    The driver was great.  He pulled us out from behind and got us back on the road really quickly.  We went up to the gas station and turned around so we approached from the other direction.  There was enough of the driveway still intact from that direction that we were able to make it rather easily.  The tow driver went up the hill first just in case we got stuck so he’d be able to pull us up the rest of the way.  It turned out that we didn’t need him, but it was sure reassuring knowing he was there.  We parked, paid the bill, and finally relaxed a bit that we had made it.

A couple of final notes for this post….  the bill was nowhere near as high as I was expecting; $262 seemed really reasonable considering the circumstances.  There was no damage to the truck and the damage to my trailer can be repaired very easily and cheaply.  Also, we got ahold of the city on Monday, and their plan is to come out on Friday and replace the plugged culvert.  Fingers crossed.  Oh, and no word on our cat yet, though we’ve filed missing pet reports with Clark County Animal Control, the local Humane Society there, and the company that monitors her micro chip.  They were going to put out a live trap and let the rest stop hosts know to watch for her.  We’re hoping she turns up soon.

To be continued……