At long last, progress

OK. We're making progress now. I stopped by the lot today with Patrick. We found that the forms for the foundation were almost complete.


And here is the view of Mt. Hood from our front porch!

The big day has arrived

Today we moved the last of our possessions out of the house in Clackamas. Yesterday, we moved ourselves to Independence, OR in the motor home, but we couldn't quite fit all the rest and residue of our stuff into the two cars. So, we made a trip to Clackamas (59.4 miles!) and retrieved the remainder.

We returned to Independence/Monmouth where we deposited said items with others at Pat and Katie's house. They are very kind and gracious to have lent us garage space until our new home is complete.

After unloading, we decided to head for Dallas and see the progress on the new house. Much to our delight, the contractor and a helper were on site and have formed the foundation footings. Actual progress has been made; something that hasn't happened for three weeks while the monsoons have continued unabated.

We also stopped at our mailbox and collected our first delivery of mail at the new address. This in itself was an achievement. Yesterday, I received a phone call from the post office. The woman said that they would be unable to deliver our mail, because we haven't a house. (Now I know how TRULY homeless people feel.) I explained that we had gone to the post office with the intent of renting a post office box, but the man behind the desk said that he would instead give us a key to the community style mailbox which will be ours when the house is built. He said we could just have our mail delivered there. The woman said she would see about that!

Today, she called back, and in a rather apologetic tone (Imagine! A government worker with an apologetic tone!), she said that she had checked; we can actually receive mail in this manner. That was wonderful news, because it saves us another address change. So, many thanks to Ben Franklin and his marvelous mystery machine, the United States Postal Service.

Once we retrieved the mail, it dawned on us that we all were hungry. Patrick suggested that we try a restaurant that none of us had tried before. We settled on "Bert's Family Restaurant." Now Bert's has a beautifully landscaped lot and a nice looking building. On the inside, the decor is, shall we say, less than opulent. The food, however, was quite well cooked and very tasty. Friday is "all you can eat fish and chips" day, so of course, that's what Patrick and I ordered. We will return; oh, yes! We will return.

After dinner, we returned to Pat and Katie's home for some gaming. We played a board game called "Ra." It is quite simple, but very challenging. Katie made some shrewd maneuvers and came away the winner. We all agreed that periodic and regular meetings for gaming will be in our future.

Once the game was over, Jill and I returned to our little home at Ash Creek RV Park, where we are quite comfy. I will post some pix in the near future.

Our peas in two P.O.D.S.

This post is long overdue. It has been a busy time as we prepare to move from our home of 8 years into our 31' motor home, Sadie, as interim housing while our new home in Dallas is built.

The process has been less than onerous, and we are actually enjoying it and looking forward to the adventure. On Thursday, P.O.D.S. (Personal On Demand Storage) delivered the first of two 16' boxes, into which we moved about half of our household goods. Today, the storage company came and carted it away.

Alas, they left another POD for us to fill. This time we had help from the young man whom I am mentoring and a couple of his friends. We are currently about 97% packed up, with two whole days left to complete all our tasks. Among those are cleaning up the house, a final mowing of the lawn, loading the one bed that remains for our snoozing needs and the last two chairs.

Signing for the final closing of the sale of our home is scheduled for Thursday. We have three dinner dates in the next four days. We will be living aboard Sadie beginning on Tuesday.

If you have never seen the P.O.D.S. storage system in action, click the photo for a slide show of the delivery of our first P.O.D.S. unit. The removal, of course is the same process in reverse order.

The young man in the photo is Keith, our go-to guy at P.O.D.S. Today, we were scheduled to have our first unit removed and the second one delivered. When we received an automated confirmation call, we were disappointed to learn that, instead of 9:00 AM, when our helpers were scheduled to arrive, the unit wouldn't arrive until 2:00 PM. (Bugle playing "Charge") Keith to the rescue!!

At 11:00 AM, Keith showed up and said that he had received a message that we wanted the unit earlier. He removed the first unit and returned in about 20 minutes with the second. In the meantime, I had called our helpers, and bless their hearts, they juggled their schedules to come and help. We have nothing but praise for Keith and his personal care. Well, that is not exactly true; we had a maple bar for him, too... And our loaders were a Godsend.

We are feeling quite like this whole caper will come off as planned. The only glitches in our plan so far have been 1) the weather has been atrocious, so the builder has been unable to make any progress (because the ground is too wet for a geo-tech survey), and 2) our buyer's buyers, who are eminently qualified for financing, have been told that the loan for which they qualified is under review. The reason is that, although they don't need for their home to sell in order to qualify, the banks are running scared in this economy, and they routinely double check loan papers for people who own one property and are buying a second. The result? We will get the proceeds of our sale one week later than originally planned. Domino effect, you know.

Our realtor is not worried, so we are not worried. Pogo, on the other hand, is worried.

Not so much to tell

Click the photo for a slide show

We visited our property last Monday. The excavation is complete, but we are waiting on a geo-tech survey to make sure the foundation will be stable. The big problem is rain...and rain...and did I mention that it has rained a lot?

As soon as the geo-tech survey is complete, forming the foundation will begin. The hope is to have the foundation poured by the end of next week. That would put us on track to start framing about the time we move to Dallas.

Speaking of moving, we have packed about as much stuff as we can pack and still be able to live! We wander around the house looking for things to do. There is little packing left, until our P.O.D.S. come and we can start loading stuff out of the house and into the storage units. There is nothing to read, because all the books are packed. We have decided that it is better to have a real estate deal close in one month from acceptance of the offer, instead of two. We are feeling in limbo and ready to get on with the adventure.

On the up side, we have found a nice RV park in Independence, about a 1/2 mile from Pat and Katie. The managers of the park are a nice, Christian couple who have made sure that we have a primo space in which to park our Sadie for our summer stay. We have access to our mailbox at the property, so we have a forwarding address. We have an offer of help from some young men who are willing to load the heavy furniture into the P.O.D.S.

That process will begin on June 10th, and we will be moved out by the 16th. We'll park Sadie in the driveway after the P.O.D.S. are gone and spend the day of the 16th cleaning the house and yard. The morning of the 17th we will head for Independence, and "PeeWee's Big Adventure" will be in full swing.

So, that is the latest. More reports and pictures will follow, as the building project progresses.

So much to tell

Click photo for a slide show of the ground breaking and some of our new neighbors

This has been a busy week. Last Thursday, we met with our contractor. He took us to visit several of his vendors, so we could see the quality of materials that will be included in the basic allowances. If we want to upgrade anything, we have the option to do so at our own expense. So far, we see little to no need to consider upgrades. At the very least, I think we may be looking at a few hundred dollars rather than a few thousand.

Monday, we met Duane again in Salem. We signed two contracts. The first was to secure the lot in our name. The second was for the building of a house on said lot. We met at an escrow office and did everything in a very business-like fashion, which I appreciated very much.

Following our meeting with Duane, we parted ways temporarily. Jill and I went to Independence and made a reservation to stay at the Ash Creek RV Park during the time of construction. We picked up some lunch, and then we headed for Dallas, where we were able to see the footprint of our new home plotted on the lot. It is going to seem like an estate.

Duane met us there and walked us around the lot and explained everything to us. We met several of the neighbors who walked by and stopped to chat. Jill already has two water aerobics partners and a walking partner, and Pogo had a friend named Buster.

Today, we drove back to Dallas for the groundbreaking. We arrived a few minutes past nine, and the crew was busily "logging" the lot. Several trees had to come down to make room for the house, but we will have several oaks, a cherry tree and a fir tree in the back yard. It should be quite lovely, with plenty of afternoon shade on our west-facing patio.



The weather soured while we were on site, so we decided to come home and let the workers do what we are paying them for. We stopped at the mechanic's shop to pick up Sadie, our motor home and soon to be full time home, following a carburetor rebuild. We took her to the storage facility, and now we are home.

Tomorrow, we continue packing up the house. Our official move out date is June 17, 2010. We have ordered a change of address with the post office, and we received our keys for the community mailbox that will be ours. As soon as we get to Independence, we will have mail delivered to our new Dallas address. Stay tuned; things are happening at break neck speed around here!

It's all in the plan

It took me a few days, but I finally figured out how to convert a .pdf file to a .jpg. So, now I can post some drawings of the new house.


This, of course, is the floor plan. We have made some minor changes to the pantry/laundry/master bath area, which will give us a larger pantry, with the door closer to the kitchen. We also plan to have a 6'0" X 6'0" window in the dining room in lieu of the patio slider. We will replace the window on the left side of the dining room with a door with a full length window that will lead out onto the covered portion of the patio.



And here is a front elevation showing the RV garage on the left end. Duane carefully redrew the front porch cover (second gable from the right) a little larger to balance the visual weight of the extra garage area and its necessarily taller overhead door.

Click on the drawings to blow them up for closer inspection.

I spoke with Duane on the phone today. He expects to have the plans ready to submit to the planning commission early next week. I believe that means that we will have a contract soon, and then it should be about a week before we can break ground. Heady stuff!

A major step

Another trip to Dallas was on our agenda today. We checked out the lots that will fit our plan. It was a tough decision, because we had in mind to find a west-facing lot, but all the west facing lots that fit our plan had an awful slope to the rear of the lot.

At last we realized that the lot we liked best, although facing east, has a nice stand of oak trees in the backyard. Well, actually they cover about half of the lot, so we will have to take several of them out. Nevertheless, we will be able to have a nice shady yard in the afternoon.

We walked down the street to one of the houses that Duane has built in the subdivision. It has several oaks in the backyard and the owners have done a beautiful job of landscaping around them. We will definitely introduce ourselves and study their work. There will be plenty of room for a stream/waterfall/fishpond.

Duane took us to see a couple of houses he has built. His craftsmanship and attention to details is wonderful, and both homeowners said that it was a joy to work with him. Jill, of course, made immediate connections with the two women who owned these homes. I believe we will have friends in Dallas long before we move into our new home.

Interestingly, both of these homes have RV pads on the property, but neither party owns an RV. Jill mentioned that we will need a place to park our motor home during construction. Now we have two offers of RV pads we can use. While the offers are tempting, there is the problem of sewage. It would be quite inconvenient to have to drive somewhere every three or four days to empty the holding tanks. I think we will look for an RV park with a full hook-up.
After our adventures we were hungry and we wanted to go back and just dream about our new home. We stopped at Subway and got a sandwich, and then we went back to the lot for a picnic. I called Patrick, and he came over to see the area and the lot we chose. It is within about four or five blocks of a dear friend of his. The fact is that we looked at a house right next door to Dave and Kellie's!

So, the ball is rolling, and we are impatient to see some big progress. Duane will call us in a few days when he has put the drawings together and made a cost estimate. I can already tell the waiting will be the hardest part of this project.