Fleet Week, Farm Edition

The Farmer-in-Laws live right on the Columbia River; they live a mere 15-ish feet from the river's edge. The Jungle House is across the road, on the other side of the dike, but we still can see the ships, barges, and boats throughout the day. The daily parade of ships on the river speaks to today's global market - barges of logs, container ships flying flags from far afield, huge windmill wings that dwarf the ship they sit on...

The Farmer's mother reads the weekly shipping reports, watches the river like a hawk, and revels in taking photos of the day's sights. The world flows by her windows, and she chronicles it daily.

Last week's Fleet Week - a part of Portland's Rose Festival - brought the rare (but annual) sight along the river: the Naval ships and Coast Guard cutters that serve our country. On the way to Astoria on Monday, from the State Park that provides a direct vantage point of the farm, I saw the ships sail by.

The Penthouse Front (Garage) Entry

The Penthouse's entry is through one of the garage bays. (Reminder: One of the five garage bays) While this was fine, it wasn't ideal. While it obviously is a temporary situation, it just didn't seem very welcoming. And who wants to go into their house through a garage door? Without an automatic opener.

In addition, the third garage bay (on the left in the photo above) is a good entrance for two of the shops (yeah...I haven't shown you those yet), one of which will be The Farmer's Train Room. Yes, model trains. As in 300+ cars. He's been collecting since he was a kid and his set-up is massive. Of course, he reminds me occasionally that he used to work on his train layout before this Brunette showed up and took up all his time. Yeah...she was sorta greedy with his time.

So when we were talking about a house we knew we needed a space for his trains. And while I enjoy the trains, I didn't really need them in the middle of the house. So they needed to be convenient yet out of the way.

Voila! His new train room!

But back to that entrance...

We knew we needed something different, so...

Out comes the garage door.

In comes the wall.

Installing the lock was trickier than The Farmer thought, but we finally got it in.

Upside-down.

The lock to the Penthouse is also upside-down, so perhaps that's the new trend.

And our new entrance to the Penthouse and Train Room!

It needs a little paint.

Sittin' Down On The Job

So The Farmer made fun of the fact that I was "sittin' down on the job" while working on the Penthouse bathroom.

As you can see, it was the most convenient place to sit while taking apart the toilet paper holder.

(Which is a very important job, but the way...)

And I didn't have a lot of room.

But just a week or so later as we took apart the upstairs bathroom...

Ha!

The Penthouse

In case you were wondering, we are not living in the mayhem of the Jungle House - at the moment. Of course, the Jungle House will probably always have a bit of mayhem, but construction mayhem...nope. Didn't want to live in it.

So where do we live?

We live in the garage!

Or above the garage. See the window?

We live there.

We call it the Penthouse.

It's a small Penthouse. Cozy. But we get to live out of the construction mayhem, yet on our property. Perfect.

It has newer laminate floors because it flooded a few years ago and they had to replace and paint everything. Yes, a flood. I know. I know. You are shaking your head.

Fire.

Flood.

Locusts.

No, no locusts...as far as we know.

Of course, we have furniture inside.

The Penthouse really didn't need tons of work, except for a really good cleaning. (And the bathroom...)

So before we moved in we spent a few evenings cleaning. Correction...before we closed we spent a few evenings cleaning.

Yep. We broke in.

Technically there was a broken garage door that we told Fannie Mae about, and since they never came and fixed it we took advantage of the situation.

Though at the end of each evening, I insisted that we hid everything in the closet. Just in case Fannie Mae wanted to confiscate my cleaning supplies.

Of course, one afternoon I made The Farmer go over and get the cleaning supplies because I was so nervous the bank would find out. Then again, now everyone knows because I am blogging about it, but since that was two months ago I hope the bank doesn't care.

And look, The Farmer is using the Swiffer! (and a little brush thingy)

And yes, I was cleaning too. Just to clarify.

But the one room we needed to really fix was the bathroom. Though we couldn't change the teeny tiny size of the room, we could change the teeny tiny sink.

See the space to the right of the cabinet, below the countertop? Yep. It's just a random empty space. The countertop was 38 inches, and yet the cabinet was just 18 inches. And thus the sink basin stuck out into the random space, allowing you to see the bottom of the basin.

It was random.

So we took it out.

We had to cut the back of the new cabinet to accommodate the plumbing pipes, but we didn't have a straight edge.

But I did have a cookie sheet.

Quote of the evening: "Don't ruin my cookie sheet."

(He didn't.)

And our hard work turned into this:

Oh, and if you ever need to repair the bottom of a shower door, weather stripping from a storm door works quite nicely.

Pants On Fire

Now we knew we'd find surprises during renovation.

Such as the original siding behind the wallboard...

Partially scraped cork tile floors under the carpet...

Honeycomb behind the fireplace brick (but thankfully no bees)...

Unused space behind walls...

But the soot and the evidence of the fire was really amazing to see.

behind the sink wall in the upstairs bathroom

behind the toilet wall, also in the upstairs bathroom

The Farmer thought that the fire had been started in a bathroom, so these discoveries confirm this. It was just pretty wild to see the soot (and charred wood...see below) behind the walls.

As the story goes, three owners ago (and when anyone in town asks where we live, they know it as the Sz** house) tried to burn the house down because he thought it would be cheaper to collect the insurance money than try to sell the house. He was devastated that his son had moved away and gone to college, and he wanted to move on too.

He put baggies of gasoline all throughout the upstairs and down the stairs, into the first floor. He set the fire and then left.

The problem?

He was a carpenter and built much of the house as you now see it. He built it well, too well - too air-tight - and he forgot to open a window to let in air. As such, the fire just smoldered.

The owner's brother saw the smoke and called The Farmer's uncle out of the field (apparently the owner and the brother didn't get along and he wanted a witness that he didn't start the fire...the irony...). They went to the house and broke a window. The flood of fresh air ignited the fire into a fire-y blaze, but the firemen arrived quickly by this point and put the fire out.

Unfortunately, the evidence against the owner was all over the house, in small baggies of fuel.

Fortunately, it wasn't much other than smoke.

But as you can see, there was some damage.

Door frame downstairs

The owner? He was deported. He was a legal immigrant but they took this status away from him. He now lives in Britain.

If These Walls Could Talk

You thought I was done with the upstairs bathroom, didn't you? You figured in a few weeks you'd get the "before" and "after" photos and that would be that.

Oh, you were so wrong.

Of course, we thought we were done. We were excited about the before and after photos, especially because the new tub looks so great in the space already - despite the destruction around it.

We were wrong too.

Because, well, this is what we found when the plumbers made a few holes in the wall along the "outside" of the house:

Pink striped wallpaper...

And a three foot space behind the "outside" wall. That flooring on the bottom of the photo above? That is behind the bathroom wall.

The ultimate hide-n-seek location!

And the ultimate waste of space.

Because if you recall this is a small bathroom with a slanted ceiling. To be fair it's not all that slanted (not like the brown bathroom my grandmother added in her upstairs...you really had to bend over if you were over five feet tall), but three more feet could make a world of difference in this space.

So what did we do?

We went to Ikea!

Farmer quote of the evening: "OK, let's see how long it takes for us to get in an argument."

Because, well, it is Ikea...

I'm happy to report, however, that we didn't argue.

Then again, we stopped after one drawer. Don't tell anyone, but we still have to finish this project; it's sitting in the middle of the blue room, lonely and waiting.

But the rest of the project has moved along nicely.

P.S. You might be wondering why the wall - complete with pink striped wallpaper - is so dark. That's soot from the time one of the previous owners tried to burn the house down.

Oh, wait...

Did I forget to tell you about that?

Yeah...