Are we really finished?

It's official, on June 18 we passed our final inspections!! The city officials signed off our permits and say the job is done. We still have some little things to do but it feels incredible to have passed that milestone. Plus the grass has sprouted and is coming in thick & green! A vast improvement over the weedy dirt we have had all year. The new shrubs & other plants seem to be doing well also. I promise to add some photos this week!

Landscaping progress

We've been working hard on the last phase of our Caton House project: landscaping. I confess that I used Photoshop to put green grass on the lawn for the photo below! We've planted shrubs, ferns, annuals, & perennials. On the south side of the house we've installed a pioneer kitchen garden much like the first owners probably had with herbs, shrubs, and a few ornamentals. The bottom photo above shows our stalwart employee, Devlin, raking the sand in preparation for the brick walkway.

The top two photos are the grass seed mix being sprayed on. We hired JB Instant Lawn who charged us about $500 for 5000 sq ft. They mix the grass seed with timber pulp to help keep it in place and keep it damp for germination.

I'm getting interior photos together and will post them next.

What colors are those?

So many people have asked what the exterior colors on the Caton House are that I decided to post them here!

They are Sherwin Williams SuperPaint:
the siding is Tavern Taupe (7508)
the trim is Pavillion Beige (7512)

We started the landscaping this week now that the soil has dried out enough to work it, so stay tuned for flowers & grass!

Final Paint job

When I said that things are happening fast I wasn't kidding! The top photo was taken the day we bought the house, the bottom photo was taken yesterday - WOW! It's amazing what a difference a paint job makes!

The patio for the main entrance on the other side is done. I'll post photos of that soon.

Progress!

Things are happening quickly now. We have the solar panels installed (see photo above), the handicapped parking space is paved, the trim is painted, and the siding will get painted if it ever stops raining. The interior is coming along nicely: all the walls are painted, the cabinets are installed in 3 rooms, the floors are being installed right now, and the lights are almost all installed. Integrity Floors, M&W Electric, Pacific Design Cabinets,ProTek painting, and others to be named later have really done a fine job. The Inkwell has given us a good price on new chairs for the conference room.

Now the bad news: our landscaper had to back out due to a health problem! It's spring, so trying to find a landscaper now is pretty hard. The good ones are booked, but a few gave us a bid anyway - obscenely high! So we've hired someone to install the pavers on the 3 parking spaces and the patio, but it looks like we'll be doing the irrigation installation and the landscaping ourselves - something we really don't have time to fit in, but what choice do we have? In the interest of time & money we've gutted the beautiful design that Beth Young created. I hate to do that, but we plan to implement her design at a later date (when we've recovered financially!).

We've changed the exterior colors. Originally we were going with off-white siding with green trim but when I photoshopped those colors we realized that there's so much trim on the front porch that it wound up looking heavy. So now the siding will be a medium sand color with lighter tan trim. Should look great!

Interesting finds

During the interior tear out we found a few neat things like 60 year
old greeting cards, and comments written inside the walls. The coolest
find was during excavation for the new foundation: 2 old toys. One is a
truck, the other a streetcar! They're covered with rust and so probably
not worth money, but they're valuable to me as pieces of the past. I'm
saving them to put in our new showroom eventually.

The landscape plan is finished, Beth Young did a fantastic job. We've
decided that we can't afford to do the whole yard this year, so we're
going to execute the plan on the east & south sides and just put
lawn on the west side. Next year we'll complete the landscaping on the
west side of the house. It's not too surprising that a project like
this would run over budget, but we'd hoped that wouldn't happen so
early in the process!

We're having solar panels installed on the south side of the Irwin addition. They should pay about one quarter of our electric bill. Federal & state tax rebates will recover about 80% of the cost eventually. The up-front cost is about $20k so it's a significant outlay, but we feel that it's worth it.

Yup, that's mud!

Doing foundation work in Western Oregon in winter means working in mud. Lots of it! The guys doing our foundation are covered in mud from the waist down. One of the guys complained that he'd accidentally knelt in a mud puddle and when he stood up the muddy, cold water drained into his boot - ugh!! The third photo from the top shows the wood sill that the house was standing on - very well rotted! We constantly wonder what's been holding the place up!!

But this means we're within days of having a new foundation. That's exciting news! All the demolition is done on the inside, so now we start putting it back together. The interior walls were so water and time damaged that we wound up stripping most rooms down to the siding. One friend compared it to lifting the radiator cap on an old car and driving a new car under it! That's not far from what we've done. Some of the interior demolition was also due to a city requirement for earthquake supports.

We're also pretty far along with the addition on the west side. The gravel
for the floor arrived today, so pouring the concrete floor isn't far
off.