Prelude to A Big Change

I left my wife.

I'm living in a trailer down by the river.

Little Trailer in the Big Woods. My home away from home as I build a new home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm living in a trailer down the the river - Pilchuck Creek. 

A river runs through our woods and the salmon run through our creek.

 

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Context is everything. 

A summary of the situation: We own 50 acres of woodlands and a portion of salmon habitat labeled on the map as Pilchuck Creek. It is rural Pacific Northwest beauty about 50 miles north of Seattle. We had a nice house that was built by Sue's parents at the toe of a cedar and alder wooded slope overlooking an old apple orchard.

Needing a source of income to meet mortgage and tax obligations for this property, we felt our best option over 20 years ago was to rent our 3 bedroom house with a full, day-light basement. In a world that Calvin tells us is populated with fallen humanity and total depravity, we hired a property manager and sought paying renters to enjoy the quiet beauty and forested shelter that we could provide at a reasonable rate. None of our tenants would have surprised Dr. John Calvin.

Our first tenants, mother and daughter, liked the place because we had a barn and they wanted to have a horse. They didn't want to pay for heating oil for the old furnace, so they chopped up our large legacy, solid maple workbench we'd left in the basement and burned it for firewood. They lacked money for not only paying the heating bill but the rent as well. They were asked to leave.  

Our second tenants were a family that believed that the contract they signed was superfluous to their personal desires, which were never discussed with us. He cut a hole in the concrete basement wall to install a wood-burning stove and rewired (not to code) the basement and built some shabby rooms. They moved on. Good riddance, leaving us to tear out his fire-hazard, shabby handy-work defiling our faith in him and our property.  

Long story for our third tenants, ending in a drawn out eviction ostensibly for non-payment of rent, but the reality is they had destroyed or broken everything inside the house in the process of turning the place into ATV party place, drug shooting gallery, hosting seekers of dark deeds, welcoming the criminal elements among their dissipated friends and punching out the windows in the basement to run a marijuana growing operation. The place was trashed. Dead, smashed and rusted autos scattered around the property, used needles strewn across the shadowed corners of our basement floor, it all became an unlivable/unrentable hovel. 

Once the wretched tenants were gone, we were on the way up to assess damage and begin repairs. Before I arrived on our place for repairs, several picture windows were smashed out of the recently vacated home. Those were boarded up as we gathered supplies to start major repairs. Vandals cut through the locked gate again and smashed all of the remaining windows and all of the interior light fixtures. We labored for eight days inside a completely boarded up house in October, 2016 to paint, patch, repair and restore.

My limited landlord time was up, I unplugged all appliances, locked the door and the gate behind me and returned to Texas with plans to return in a month to resurface the hardwood floors. Halloween Night, 2016 we got a phone message from our property manager; "Call me."

I asked Sue, "What do you think this is about?"

"Fire," she said with a grim certainty.

I returned the call. "Mark, I'm here at your place with the fire marshal. He has some questions for you..."

The house was a total loss. We had insurance, but not in the amount that covered the solid oak hardwood floors, the plaster and lath walls. We decided to rebuild with the settlement rather than take a lump sum casualty loss and pocket the money. After all, we felt we had insured a dream of our future, not a rental property.

My idea was to makes some changes to the original floor plan, move the kitchen from the north side of the house to to the south end to gather the Pacific Northwest southern sunlight, expand the footprint a little and build on top of the old basement walls - which were the only thing that remained after the unsolved arson.

I figured we'd have a new house ready by early autumn, 2017. I didn't figure the red (and green) tape hurdles that would be thrown up in front of us. The county would not permit a rebuild without 1) An environmental critical areas report ($$), 2) A geohazard mandated assessment for a rebuild of essentially the same structure - since we were within 100' of a slope of more than 20 feet in elevation, a "landslide hazard" ($$), 3) Must have a new water well, the old well was not in the county records [it's an old property, used since the early 1900's with a perfectly good well], but a new one had to be approved before building would be permitted (more $$), and 4) redesign a new drainfield - which was going to be needed.

Between architect, structural engineer, geohazard and environmental rigamarole with the planning and development commission, we were delayed years. In the mean time, the abandoned property was a haven for gate-cutting criminals. We unwillingly hosted keggers in the burned out basement, several car theft rings  used the out-of-sight environs to chop stolen cars, drug parties and 15 homeless campers squatting in our woods. Our address was a know location for total depravity to take root, a criminal nuisance. Several Biblical parables of Jesus come to mind.

We finally had all of the permits in place and were ready to start construction in February, 2020. Cement forms were in place to begin pouring the new foundation.

Ground Zero for a tiny little bug known as COVID-19, found its first domestic foothold in Washington State. The governor shut down all functions of government, including field work by county building inspectors needed to sign off on our concrete forms. Nothing happened for a year as Washington flipped through Phase I, II, III, I, II...

We lingered in government induced limbo. Allstate Insurance calls and says, "You causality arson claim has been out for too long. We're going to not pay the significant second part of your settlement if you don't finish building your house." I protested, it would have been finished last year, except the governor prevented anyone from completing the work we started. "Too bad, so sad - get it to sheetrock phase by March 31 or no payment." 

Working with our excellent General Contractor, Phil, we inched back toward putting all of pieces in place to rebuild in 2021. Phil worked from his end in Washington, I worked over the phone with him from Texas. I tell Phil, "I'll be on site to oversee the construction details once we celebrate the twice delayed wedding of our son in early September."

The wedding was a blessed success and a fun event gathering much of the family in The Woodlands, Texas. The nuptials were off on their honeymoon and I returned to Garland to pack for an extended stay on the job site in Washington. 

I load up and head North by Northwest knowing my wheels are spinning away from home and whispering, "This is the prelude to a big change." My heart hears these whispers as it sings softly, 'Enjoy the journey'; my head spins and I wonder if one is ever ready for the Big Change that I see coming.  

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Context is not everything. The reality is that I left my wife and I'm living in a trailer down by the river.

Looks like I'll be here for a long while.