AUG-B-3
THE FORLORN RETURN TO THE
GUTTED CAVE
OF WHAT HAD ONCE BEEN MY
HOME IN DERWOOD,
WITH PROGRESS, NOW KICKED
INTO RAPID GEAR,
BASED ON OVERCOMING GLITCHES
IN PERMITS FOR THE
RECONSTRUCTION, NOW THAT THE
DEMOLITION GUTTING IS NEARING COMPLETION
If not a complete shock, it was eerie returning to Derwood in the dark. I had left it completely packed away, but at least intact. Now when I cam up the drive there was just a lot of bark everywhere and more than the usual evidence of fallen branches, a standard greeting upon my return at any time. But, now I stumbled around the detritus of the trees—not only the usual fallen branches in storms, but the residual of the three big trees that had been sawed off at the base and literally sky craned up and out, with all the logs and firewood transported away within the first days of my absence.
I felt my way to the door and unlocked it and reached around to turn on the light switch—nothing happened. The power and water are turned off as well as the hot water heater disabled during my stay abroad. I went back to the Bronco and got out my headlight. I shined the light through the eerie cave—all the wall coverings have been stripped, and the ceiling acoustic tile is ripped out exposing the floor joists, with hanging coaxial cables dangling down form everywhere where the electrical and lighting system has been ripped out. All the kitchen cabinetry is gone, and the glass dining room pass through has been ripped out. The den or study is now open to the kitchen with the entire bathroom, and the steel pan, which had been under the shower, has been ripped away with a hole visible to the basement. The roughed in basement bathroom has also been torn out.
All that is left in the kitchen is the oven, since it is hooked to a 220 Volt electrical line and an electrician is coming to disconnect that before it, too, goes down the chutes connecting the blown open dining room window to the dumpster below. There had been one full dumpster load carted away last week. This one is nearly full, and it appears that what is in the dumpster is the doors, cabinets and all the formerly pristine partitions of the main floor rooms, like kitchen division form dining and living rooms.
I went up the stairs carefully, with the stairs covered in a protective cloth. The side molding and baseboards had been torn away so there are rough edges, but the upstairs is intact, with even the light working in the two rooms boarded up for storage.
I dropped my backpack and opened the laundry I had hoped to do form the backpack in which it had been put away wet form the stream in which it had last been washed. No luck on the laundry, since there is no water, hot or otherwise. There is no point in my trying to stay here on the floor or otherwise, since the bathrooms are not working.
By dawn’s
early light, I saw a Dodge Ram V-8 pickup truck in the drive and wet a chunky
young guy named
It seems
that the survey “site map” for the plat on which the house stands was in the
courthouse all along, and the survey I had just got a bill for to determine the
housing site was unnecessary and a redundant map of the same information that
All of this was based on the ruling that if you increase the size of the house by over 25%, you have to get a new septic approval. After getting all the data and finding everything in order, Glenn then went back to them and noted that the increased space is largely the storage room under the library and the garage which do not count as living space and are not included in the 25 % expansion calculation, so that mooted the whole issue of the septic system in any case.
So, the building permits are going to be picked up on Tuesday or Wednesday by Kasha, the women in the DG Liu office who deals with permits, and then the footings can be laid out for the foundation on the addition out back, as soon as the demolition is completed and the big dumpster removed. That could be as soon as this weekend.
The start
of construction triggers another payment, and the first payment which I had
sent by mail in advance has been diverted or lost in the mails, so it is a good
thing I am back home form my stranding in India, so that I could write them
another payment check to replace, or follow the one in the mail which is still
missing. The two projects are coming
together this week—that is, the “start of work” which is the demolition phase,
and the start of the construction and framing, which will happen when the demo
phase is concluded and the big dumpster hauled out with its last load. I scramble d to find the checkbook and the
folders all set aside for this purpose, which, like everything else I may need
for the next half year or more, I had stored over at
As Glenn
instructed Carl on getting started on the second floor and the demo of my
bedroom—blowing away the closets and the walls between the Northeast and
Northwest bedrooms for the expanded bathroom and walk-in closets on the plans,
I took a last stroll around, and took a few pictures of hat the “housekeeping”
has resulted in to this point. It looks
like the aftermath of a fire and vandalism at the moment. They remarked on how solid and well built the
house was, and a lot of those very solid well-built features are delaying the
ease of tearing it all out, and it may be replaced with things that are
veneered and a lot easier to do in a next stage of “demo.” Later Dale had called me and he had taken
pictures of the remarkable operation of Ernie Sheflett and his crane operated
tree removal and the heavy big logs that resulted form that early process
before any of the inside “demo” work had got started. I will be called by
I had come,
and it was time for me to go. I went to
the Post office and picked up the month’s mail, and dropped off the stop
delivery order for my Alaskan out-of-town period.
I went through all the mail that I had accumulated, which included the series of bills for redundant operations—like the two extra surveys done for site maps already in the courthouse, and the lawyer’s request for Ellen Bennet to sign off on the discharge of mortgage—a request that had been made in January before I found the documents in the attic, and only later did she sign something—over six months after the settlement on the Derwood property and the “quit claim.” So, it seems that things that were urgent and set in motion to repair defects in the process, were all set in slow motion, and each of them are coming around at some expense and very late—but each is coming back over half a year after the irrelevance of their extra services is apparent.
I opened a
batch of pictures form the Ladakh trip, which had been sent in by prepaid
mailers returned with
Today I pick up the slides and prints from the
Lingshed-03 Trek, which I had dropped at GW Photography, and will inquire from
them where Kodak has gone? I got a slide
roll I had packaged in the pre-paid mailer and addressed it to the
I sorted
mail all day—never finding the missing check, which must still be in
transit—and tried to pay a few of the leftover and late bills. I discovered that the heavy suit bags I had
brought over on the morning of my departure with lee Dutton to
I will be
going out to the