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.

Success!!

As hard as it is for us to believe, we have permits!! After another insane conversation with the city planners, Brian went to the head of the department and said "I'm not leaving here without my permits, if I have to stay all day!" Finally, they gave us "conditional" permits, meaning we still have to jump through a couple of hoops, but we can get work scheduled. The relief is so sweet!!

The Elephant is Winning

We STILL don't have building permits! We are now becoming convinced that for some reason the city doesn't want us to save the Caton
House. We discussed suing the city, but that would just take more time
& money. We seem to be at a dead-end. The city keeps demanding more
paperwork; stuff they could have told us about months ago. One person
says they're ready to issue permits, then the next person says "no, you
need to give us a notarized letter stating...". It's insane. Every time
we think we're close to getting permits they throw up more bizarre
restrictions and demands. We're thoroughly demoralized. Our
documentation is now well over 200 pages for ONE REMODEL JOB!

Ok, I'm done venting for now.

Waltzing With The Elephant

I'm so behind on my posts, I apologize! We managed a 2 week vacation, spending a week in Provence and a week in Tuscany. We really needed a break, and came back much rested.

Our biggest problem with Caton House is dealing with the City. Early on we requested a meeting of city staffers to review requirements. Several staffers didn't show up even given weeks of notice. So requirements that fell under their purview weren't addressed and are now jumping up to bite us. Plus the fact that we paid a sizeable fee for the meeting!

Another issue we've had is that we never know who to talk to at the city. Last week Brian stopped by the planning department and asked "Fred" a question. He was told to go downstairs and ask "Jeff". So he did, only to have "Jeff" tell him to go upstairs and ask "Fred"!! That's a typical interaction with the city, unfortunately.

We have generated an appaling amount of paperwork on this project. As of a month ago we were up to 79 pages, and I know it has grown to over 100 pages since then. There's one application that's so complicated that we've had to hire another engineer to fill it out. Plus the number of times city staffers have contradicted and reversed themselves has made this project truely frustrating.

We've given the city staffers feedback on these and other issues, and can only hope that things improve. We've requested that the code books be put on reserve at the local library so we can access the info we need. We hope to have our permits soon as we have a "carved in stone" moving date.

On the positive side, we have gutters! So we're inching forward as much as we can without permits. I'm meeting with a graphics artist to make a business sign for us. He has some really good ideas!

I'm attaching a photo from Google Earth of the house. The bottom of the photo is the southeast corner of our property.

And now a paint job!!

We have one coat of primer paint going on the house today. Yesterday they (Protek Painting) finished the east side and today they're doing the west side. The difference is astonishing! Even though it's just the flat white primer and not the final paint it looks so much better to be all one color! We need to finish the foundation and replace the damaged siding on the bottom of the house before we can have the final paint applied, but this will make it look better and protect the siding in the interim.

Our renovation proposal was heard by the Corvallis Historic Resources Commission last Tuesday. We were worried that they'd want us to make a lot of changes to our plan, but not only did they say yes to all our proposal, they gave us one item we didn't ask for: they asked if the window shutters were original. We don't believe they are, and we don't like the way they look. Apparently neither did the Commissioners because they gave us the option of putting them back on after painting or not. So we'll leave them off.

We found out that for Corvallis' 150th birthday this year the City wants homeowners & businesses to plant 150 new trees in Corvallis. We've been planning to plant a couple of street trees anyway so I called the (extremely helpful) City Forester and requested 2 trees. As soon as I decide which kind we want she'll order them at no cost to us! We'll plant them when they arrive, probably in late fall.

Brian has been doing a lot of tear-out inside the house. The long-term water damage has made it necessary to replace a lot of the interior walls. I've attached a photo that's typical of what we're finding. The wood is so rotten that if I gently touch it, it crumbles. Not good! (top photo) On the positive side he's discovered some neat old joinery, the photo on the bottom shows some mortise & tenon he uncovered in the flooring!