This week, I think I should get you caught up on my life. Last fall, DH and I started looking for our way out of Oakland. We own a successful building inspection business here. I run the office and it pretty much consumes my life. DH is our lead inspector, but his body is telling him his days of crawling under houses are numbered. We both dream of lush green woods and countryside. So last year, with that in mind, we started shopping for a retirement property...someplace other than expensive, dry California.
I voted to go home to Maine, but in the end, DH decided he was too frightened by real winter. So we got the idea to look at Oregon. We took a could trips up and fell in love with the coastal range. We looked at a lot of places, but kept going back to one property. Not 100% what we need for horse keeping, but it definitely ticked off many of our other boxes, including DH's request for open water. Long story short, we bought it.
It's just about 3 acres in the middle of nowhere between Eugene and the coast. It will work for the horses as long as we manage the grazing and build a nice solid sacrifice area. But the reason we bought the property is it has 1000 feet of creek front. We got told this week by a long time fisherman that we have one of the best spots for Steel-head and Salmon he's seen. We just like it because it supports a ton of wildlife and has a happy splashy-gurgly sound.
The downside of the property is the actual house, which, if we had any sense at all, we would tear down. Instead, we talked to someone this week about lifting it and putting a foundation under it. That's right, the home inspectors bought a house without a foundation....and a leaky roof, and termite damage, and smells like rat pee. It's cute.
Anyway, we took a week off and spent some time there last week improving the driveway and ripping the deck and the porch off the house.
Here's a few photos (you can click on them to see bigger versions):
This is one corner of the property.
Here's part of the creek.
And here's one of the cool features of the little town we're in.
The biggest mistake folks make with stream-side properties is turning them into golf course carpet lawn from house to water's edge. Anyway, keep us posted!
Definitely a non-professional on-going weekend project. It is 672 square feet...and that's with the addition. It apparently started out as a 2 room cabin in the 1950s and was supported off the ground on single cinder blocks. The front sill looks like a termite freeway. The electrical service is being ripped off the wall because the house is sliding off the sticks it's sitting on. In the walls we've opened, the rats have carried off all (and I mean ALL) of the insulation and left rat poo in it's place. Really, it's only redeeming features are the well and septic.
