Finally! We went back to Mary’s Cabin in Sisters, Oregon, where we’d lived for 6 months before moving to Portland.

We brought our French copains Clélia et Mathieu, and Merce the cat, since that’s his original home.

> Flickr photos

We spent the weekend with Marko y María at our friend Sharlene’s cabin right on the McKenzie River. Oregon is a great planet!

> Flickr set

More pix here.

We’ve become avid porch hunters in the last few weeks, traversing the neighborhood on foot or on pedal in search of porches of a certain vintage from which we may draw inspiration. We’ve taken column designs from here, stair details from there, color organization from the other, and so forth. Today we saw a very simple balustrade in the crafstman mode that we’ve decided to emulate. (To be revealed in a near-future porch post.)

Did you know, BTW, that porch is a Catalan word? It comes from porxo, in which you’ll want to pronounce that x as in xafec — i tant.

Meanwhile, on today’s porch safari Anna found a mirror in a recycle bin. How’s that for a nice recursion? It too is of a certain age, not unlike three or four others we have throughout the house. Where to put this one? We’ll have to think, contemplate, ruminate, cogitate, meditate, muse… on that.

Paint Removal Done

We always thought the people we knew who complained of going crazy trying to wrangle contractors into place — trying to keep them remotely on task, on schedule, on planet — we always thought they must be exaggerating. Surely it can’t be that bad! Well, after 3-1/2 months trying to get the paint removers to (A) answer our phone calls and emails, (B) commit to a completion time, and (C) actually come finish the house not too long after that deadline, we have torn out enough freshly-grayed hairs to appreciate the craziness endured by those who have gone before us. And that was dealing with the company that returned our initial inquiries in the first place! I can’t help thinking there’s a killer business model in being Contractors Who Do What They Say They Will.

But, there it is — the last wall of the house, paint-free! Pinch us.

The gutter guys pointed out this sleepy beastie curled up in the crook of our backyard Douglas-Fir. It was watching them work, but then decided on a nap.

More raccoon pics here.

The old gutters (as they showed me) had been hacked (literally) to make them easier to install, with the result that any overflow flowed backwards toward the house and the rafter tails. The new ones are properly set up to overflow outwards, if it comes to that.

The Gutter-O-Matic

Hard to see, but they have this big roll of white sheet metal (top center) that feeds into the Gutter-O-Matic, or whatever they actually call it, which forms it into gutters on demand. Everyone should have a few of these machines around the house.

More thrilling gutter pics here.

Woof.

After a lovely morning spreading black plastic on the ground under the porch and weighting it down with giant rocks, I took a few delightful hours with a pickaxe and shovel to dig a 97-foot deep hole for our new Evergreen Dogwood tree. Strictly speaking, the hole was about 3 feet deep. But given that the planet in these parts is composed of high-density neutron-star clay stuffed full with rocks, the apparent depth of the hole was 97 feet 4-1/2 inches. It’s like wind-chill factor.

But we have great faith in this little tree, which has already been doing great work with ambient carbon.

More tree pics here.

Painting is Fun!

Anna succumbed to some kind of Tom Sawyer thing, and found herself priming the undersides of all the new porch floorboards. The undersides, blue? Well, it’s the same protective porch & deck paint as will be on the top. It doesn’t care whether it’s blue or fuchsia.

On Oct 9 the guys from Sampson Painting came and did the first priming of the north and east sides. The west side is all porch-repairy, and the south side is still not paint-removed. The primer is actually something called Permanizer, which will be followed by a second coat of regular primer, then 2+ coats of good paint.

Yesterday Paul finished framing the new porch.

More pics here.