The Beginning

Hello.

I've started this blog to document the story of my purchase and reconstruction of a derelict house in Eugene, Oregon.   I purchased the home at the beginning of August 2010 .  I had been up to my sister Kate's in Eugene for a visit from Los Angeles in June and she pointed the place out to me.  I had been considering relocating north though not very seriously.  After looking at the place and mulling over for a month or so the idea of buying a home that needs almost totally rebuilding from the ground up I decided buying the house out right would allow me to live rent free while fixing it up.

    I will try to tell the story from the beginning but there will almost certainly be backtracks and digressions as I go along as this is an impromptu operation.  Too I would like to be responsive to queries folks might pose and will include those responses here as well.  It is now November 16 and I have been in an apartment I made in the garage for about a week.  I finally feel that I have the security of place and comfort for winter in place so I can go ahead and spend energies on communicating the process to those who are interested.   I'm just getting started here and feel the reality of being here permanently is beginning to set in. 

       The photos I've posted today show the exterior of the home I purchased.  I made four trips from Los Angeles to Eugene this summer.  First was to visit in June.  Second at the end of July I'd decided to buy the property so made a trip north for the closing and also brought some belongings with me.  I stored them at sis Kate's house.  I was in Eugene for about ten days at that time.    Once I purchased the house I decided to come up to Eugene at Labor day for a couple of weeks with more belongings and to prepare the house - mainly the garage - for winter habitation.  The previous tenet of the house had allowed animals - primarily cats - to over run the place and they urinated and defecated freely through out the house.  So one thing photos won't communicate is the stench that continues to plague the house itself while the garage was spared as it was being used for storage.  My focus became preparing the garage for habitation so I can live there while I work on the primary residence.

 There was a sizable tree growing over the garage the branches of which had abraded the roof of the garage 'til it was gone allowing rain to get into the garage.  The large holes caused in the roof allowed water to damage the sheetrock and insulation that had been installed there to make a comfortable pottery studio for a former tenet.  A photo here shows the stump of that tree left remaining after I cut it down.  I put my keys on the stump for scale.  Disintegrated sheetrock and insulation dangled from the ceiling where the rain had gotten in.  The stud walls of the garage are rotten toward the bottom so the garage will ultimately need rebuilding itself so I wanted to make it habitable but didn't want to spend money on repairs that would have to be torn out later sooo...   In the best spirit of recycling I took some pressboard wainscoting that had been installed in the bathroom of the house and used it to repair the roof and ceiling of the garage.  I stripped the faux wood grained linoleum out of the main living area in the house and used it along with some 30 lb felt and some other linoleum my sister had around to make a waterproof roof for the garage - so far so good!  At the time I did the roof on the garage I put a bib of old linoleum around the chimney to keep it from leaking there as well.  It had separated from its old flashing because the house is settling considerably due to the floor joists being rotten all the way around the house on top of the cement foundation.  I cleaned the attic of the garage out which had a bunch of canning jars, a number of old speaker cabinets, a few sheets of plywood, and a bunch of small pieces of 1/4" plywood in it.  I used the large plywood pieces along with the wainscoting to cover holes in walls and ceiling of the garage to make it ready for decorating on my return in October.

Other photos here show the new (well new and partially recycled) 200  amp electric service I installed so that I could have power.  EWEB - the public service company here - wouldn't hook up the old two wire 60 amp service that the house had in place so I relocated the service from the back porch to the side of the house and hung one outlet under it so I could get inspected by the city which allowed the utility to hook up electricity.  I have gone ahead and wired the garage into the new service but that will ultimately need to be redone as well as it is not up to code.   I needed the help of  a local - Doc - to get the new (recycled) mast up through the existing roof so it would be waterproof without damaging the fragile old roof.  He pushed the heavy steel mast up from the ground  while I stood on the roof holding the shingles down and guiding the mast upward properly.  

     My other chore while in Eugene over Labor day was to clean the house out some to start reducing the stench.   I scraped cat poop out of kitchen cupboards and cleaned defecations of homeless people out of the nonfunctional stool all the while with as many doors and windows open as possible to let the place air out.   Too I scraped quite a lot of dirt from right around the house up as the previous owner had apparently been dumping kitty litter after used right out the front door and bedroom windows.  I relocated that dirt out into the yard where there were low spots.   The ground around the garage was quite uneven as the city had replaced the sewer pipe from the alley to the house a few years back and the damage had never been leveled.  Too while the traditional car park has been in front of the house and garage I want to move it behind the garage off the alley so there will be quite a lot of earth to move there.  In the process of leveling the area I found a plastic bag protruding from the ground.  Not being wise enough to leave well enough alone I unearthed the bag thinking to discard it only to find it contained the rotten and very smelly remains of a dog.  I quintuple bagged the remains and disposed in Kate's biweekly garbage pickup.

I had redone the electrical service, had it inspected, and finally the day after Labor day EWEB came and hooked up the electricity.  That allowed me to spend the rest of that day and part of the next power washing the inside of the house with a finicky pressure washer Kate has.   The week before I had washed with hose and water only the interior of the house.   All the water flooded the house but there are enough rotten places in the floor that all the water seeped out.   Prior to returning to Los Angeles  I sprinkled a bag of barn lime around the house to help eliminate the odor.   

So this is the beginning of the story.  I will continue with the story of my fourth and final trip to Eugene from Los Angeles as well as the events that occurred in regards to the house while I was in Chicago and Wisconsin visiting my mother and friends during September and October.  Too there will be photos of my garage apartment and of the interior of the house.  I have uploaded photos in full resolution if you should care to look more closely at some detail or another.  As time goes on I will attempt to document here at least some of the proceedings involving renovating the house.   'Til then peace.    d