127 Year Old Gets Facelift

Or If Walls Could Talk

My daughter-in-law and I enjoy watching the Home & Garden channel program “If Walls Could Talk.” Monday we discovered that our walls in Ilwaco have withstood 127 years of life on the coast, including hurricane force storms the last two years, by divine providence. The old (I assume Finnish) workmen who did the construction must have had occult knowledge because there was seemingly no reason for the South side of the house to be standing.

I will back up for the benefit of readers unfamiliar with our little house by the sea. I lived on the Long Beach Peninsula when my husband and I married almost exactly eighteen years ago. It was agreed that when my husband retired from the FAA we would retire here. Being a loving indulgent husband not only did he make a down payment on a house in Gig Harbor for my children and I to live in, but two years later he sold a home in Bellingham to buy this old Victorian lady in the place I love. We chose the property because there is a little cottage behind the barn for my Special Needs daughter.

We’ve forgone a lot to have this house because we can’t afford to stay in Gig Harbor after retirement and the Long Beach Peninsula has been where I am happiest for my entire life. If necessary I could be happy in our Victorian lady if not one more improvement were made. Over the years we’ve owned her we’ve repainted and reroofed, but were not in a position to make major improvements.

At the same time that my husband was reaching twenty-five years with the FAA and thinking about retirement, Lockheed Martin took over his division. The opportunity to save his retirement checks for a real retirement and continue to live on our combined salaries was too good to pass up so we put off retirement. Now the economy is pushing it farther back, but it has become necessary to make repairs to our “retirement” home. After 127 years the old lady needs a facelift. Actually she needs a full facelift, but is only getting a partial this year.

For people who do Christmas shopping at Goodwill you can imagine that the cost of home repair is unnerving. I am pretty good at making a “penny scream,” using it up and wearing it out so writing checks with more than two zeros in the number is enough to send me scrambling for the valerian. Add to that the fact that we’ve had some bad experiences with contractors, we out and out procrastinated doing what needed to be done to the South side of our old gal. That’s the side that the hurricane force winds have been slamming us and so far we’ve been lucky. We just didn’t know how lucky we’d been.

It was like a blessing to have two contractors come recommended after spending a year figuring out who we did not want to hire. It was icing on the cake to get someone who shows up on time so with the small setback of having to have shingles ordered last week, I eagerly awaited Monday and for the repairs to begin.

Dean Halverson and his crew showed up on time and started removing the shingles. At first we were cheered by the fact that although we’d had some leaking windows the old shiplap siding showed no rot. Yeah! Dean thought he could salvage our windows and we heaved a sigh of relief. But when I returned to the house from an errand to find Dean and a neighbor—himself a retired contractor—in glum conversation I knew the smooth sailing had hit a reef. “Is there a problem,” I asked. “You could say that,” our neighbor J.R. said. “We don’t know why this side of the house is standing up.”

It turns out that there was nothing between the outside shiplap and the inside wall. Under the some tacky paneling the inside wall is 1X12 inch vertical planks to which Finnish newspapers and wall paper had been applied. I was not totally surprised. My aunt lives in a house in Seaview built in a similar way. The outside shingles are nailed to the inside tongue and groove paneling that is between exposed studs. At least she has studs. Our wall was being held up by thought.

Monday wrapped up, literally, with felt on the South side of the house. All the old shingles were hauled off in the back of one of Dean’s trucks to become a bonfire on the beach for the boys on his crew. The plan was to come back Tuesday, build a false wall with a nice big header, repair our old windows and start shingling. Dean went off to buy the materials for the false wall.

He and his boys showed up punctually at 8 AM Tuesday and began work. I took the dog out to the cottage and spent time with Amy before we went together to run Tuesday errands. I’m going to have to quit leaving because it is then that Dean finds the problems. If I hang around maybe things will go better. Anyway, Dean had more news. It wasn’t really bad news and I could have said no, but he wanted to talk me into buying new vinyl windows instead of him repairing the old wood ones. He was convinced that it would be less expensive and more durable.

Being a lover of authentic old houses my romantic nature wanted to stick with wood windows, but knowing that this is the side from which we catch Nature at her wildest my practical side won out and I agreed. We tried the Long Beach window shop only to be told that we could have the windows in two weeks. Longview Home Depot was a no. Dean just knew he’d find them in Astoria or Gearhart and flew off in his truck after the house was buttoned up. I told him to call if he found them so when dinner came and went I assumed that he’d come up empty handed. Just before seven o’clock he called to say that he’d gone all the way to Cannon Beach and not found a thing, but he was sure he knew a place in Portland. Portland! I said.

Through the detective work of Dean’s wife the number of a place in Portland was found. “We have a plan,” he said happily. “I’ll call them in the morning. I know they’re going to have them. I’ll go get them first thing tomorrow.” “Okay,” I told him, not entirely convinced. “Just don’t go off on a wild goose chase. Make sure they’re there. We can always order them from Long Beach if we have to. Or Home Depot opens in Warrenton next Monday.” “No,” he insisted. “I want to get it done before your husband comes next week.”

This was so different from my experience in Gig Harbor the summer of the kitchen fire/remodel. That contractor had no problem with me having a nonfunctioning kitchen for the entire summer. I hope this job isn’t going to take ten weeks, but I doubt it because Dean is going to dog those windows until he tracks them down.

So tune in next time for "If Walls Could Talk," a DJ Construction production.

As a parting thought, I’d like to request recommendations for contractors in the Tacoma/Gig Harbor area. We’ve a 1974 house that needs some updating before we can even think of selling/retiring. My middle son suggested that his younger brother, author of the notorious last-day-of-school-fire several years ago, do some cooking in the bathroom, but frankly I don’t like the contractors insurance companies foist off on you so we’re planning to just hire someone for bathroom remodels and are taking names.

A Good Contractor is Hard to Find

And the View from My Porch

After 127 years a lady can need attention. After two hundred-year storms, two years in a row thus making them at least seem annual, our 127 year old home in Ilwaco, WA at the mouth of the Columbia River is in need of attention. Actually, we started looking for contractors a year ago after we’d secured funds to make repairs, but on the Long Beach Peninsula it can be problematic just to get contractors to return calls much less do bids and show up to do the work. The Hanukkah storm of 2006 left them with plenty of work, particularly roofs. Fortunately the 100 mile an hour shingles my husband had put on our place had held, but the South side of the house, the side from which most storms pummel structures here, had problems let go too long.

Following the early December storm in 2007, which did not much disturb Pierce County, but hammered the coast with gusts up to 147 miles per hour, my husband and I drove down to Ilwaco to check on my elderly mother who had sat in the dark for three days with no long distance telephone service. The devastation we drove past looked as though a giant had stepped through the Willapa and Black Hills, squashing massive Douglas Firs in his path. “You know of course,” I said to my husband, “we’ll never find someone to work on the house next summer. All the contractors will be busier than…well, a one-armed paper hanger.”

This business of checking on houses on the Long Beach Peninsula has a history in our family. My grandparents had a summer home in Seaview and after every storm my mother would say, “Well, we’d better see if the house is still there.” It always was. Except for our fence which we have finally replaced, we’ve been lucky with storms.

Many people on the Long Beach Peninsula were not so fortunate last December. Many had roof damage. One restaurant in the Black Hills was swept away in a landslide from the record rain that accompanied that storm. My mother’s lights had never been out for more than a few hours because her apartment building is across the street from the hospital. This time the power lines between the Peninsula and Longview had gone down and the roads were blocked by trees making it difficult for PUD to get to places where the lines had been damaged. Basically the Long Beach Peninsula had become an island for three days, cut off from the world by blocked highways and downed power and telephone lines.

My mother’s lights and heat had come back on the day the roads opened. After going to Sid’s Grocery store and stocking up on the basics and some canned food for her we drove back home convinced that our old lady (the house, not my mother although perhaps her as well)would have to keep her chin up for whatever storms 2008 bring us. We’ve focused on replacing the rotten fence and landscaping the front yard with an eye to our being here full time eventually.

This week we had two pleasant surprises. Two contractors showed up on our door step two mornings in a row! These men are not just contractors; they specialize in old homes (one of them will not work on anything but old houses and buildings).

Our neighbor, Kevin Palo is a master craftsman who has worked on houses and buildings all over the country. We had been after him for an estimate for the South side of our house, but between the demands of his restoration business and his work on his own Victorian, he had not had the time to estimate the cost of doing what we needed. So when Dean Halverson showed up on our porch saying that another neighbor who is a retired contractor had sent him we were delighted. We were even more thrilled when he told us he could start as soon as he could get the materials. We have a little family gathering planned for late in August and to have the work done before then seemed too good to be true.

Twenty-four hours after securing Dean to do the job, Kevin showed up on our porch. We had to tell this talented man that we’d already secured someone to do this first project, but we chatted about other things that need doing. I mentioned that we need a better looking and more functional front door. The old door that was here when we bought the place is tall and thin. Buying a readymade door was not going to be in keeping with the character of the house and would not fit. More over a tiny two-paned window over the door was something I want to keep. Kevin said no problem. He would look for a door to make fit and would even make the transom functional so that we could have it open on warm days.

Dean was supposed to start work today, but showed up on my porch this morning to say that he’d had to order the shingles and would start on Monday. I’m not discouraged. Dean is from Portland where contractors make more of an effort to show up on time and get the job done. I love the Long Beach Peninsula and the whole “beach time” thing may be quaint, but it can be frustrating to anyone working on a schedule.

Within twenty-four hours we had two gentlemen who understand old houses secured to improve our old lady. The work was going to force me to stay on longer in Ilwaco this trip, but being here seldom hurts my feelings although I am sorry to be away from my grandchildren. They will be coming here in August and perhaps by then we will have new shakes on the south side of the house and windows that don’t leak! Check back and see our progress.