New Home After 6 Months: Man Plans and God Laughs

 

That's water that's come up from under the house and seeped into the concrete floor of the garage of our new home.  Our problems with the house have gone beyond the normal new home teething pains. We've had water leaking into the living space too. This sounds like a very Seattle problem, the kind I used to deal with in our tumble down house circa 1928, and something I never thought that I'd have to deal with here. Small amounts of water ooze through seams in the floor in select spots in every room and leave white crusty deposits of minerals behind. Above is what garage floor looked like in April.  After a rainstorm in May the garage flooded. Since then the moisture situation inside the garage and house has slowly improved, but it's certainly not gone or watertight.

I've repeatedly complained to the builder, sometimes loudly.  The builder had 4 large deep holes dug behind the house looking for water, they were dry. He had holes bored into the lowest part of the foundation hoping trapped water would flow out but that was dry too. The builder says that he's out of ideas and at this point says that it's our problem and our responsibility because he built the house on land that we purchased separately, ergo that's our water and not his so it's not his responsibility. The builder says that his preferred flooring company can take care of this, they'll move all of our furniture, peel up all of the vinyl floor planks to expose the slab, coat the slab with chemical goo sealant, put the floor back down and move our furniture back. Cost to us: $21,000, plus tax. I've had all the plumbing tested, the house independently inspected, I've talked to a lawyer, a hydrologist and various consultants, all not cheap.

I've also talked to local people in the building trades and have slowly come to learn that we are not alone, I've heard a few stories of people all over town with similarly afflicted houses, some new and some old, that have lost very expensive natural hardwood floors to discoloration and warping or had elaborately decorated floor tiles pop up and have their unique hand painted decorations on their floors ruined. Our vinyl planks are basically durable plastic fake wood and won't be harmed by exposure to moisture. What's happened to our house and others seems to be the direct result of the unprecedented record smashing wet winter we had last year. People who have lived here all their lives have told me they never saw anything like winter 2022-2023, it was one for the record books, it was wet winter without end. Water is trapped in the ground all over this part of the state and is slowly percolating up and being released as water vapor. The house is heavily insulated and sealed per code so the water vapor that comes up through the concrete slab has nowhere to go and accumulates in the house.
What to do?

• Improve drainage (swale work already in progress)
• Cross our fingers, do nothing and get on with our lives with the hope that weather patterns and precipitation amounts return to historical norms. Summer is the rainy season here and rainfall was below normal. Still, a long term drought starting right now would be most helpful.
• Have our lives disrupted and pull up the vinyl planks and seal the top of the slab with chemical goo sealant for $21,000+ as suggested by the builder and hope that it fixes the problem and doesn't cause new ones.
• I've purchased some humidity sensors and can remotely monitor moisture levels in the air inside the house and garage and open windows and doors as needed as weather permits.

To make matters even worse the increase in mortgage interest rates meant that our old house took 5 months to sell. The market here got very soft just when we needed it to be as strong and robust as it had been in the last few years. But it is what it is, the sale is finally done and now we'll have the money to landscape and further improve the drainage and overall appearance of the property.

Unless derailed by something else new and out of the blue the plan now is to get on with our lives. We've been preoccupied and grounded by a succession of Covid fears, construction and new house problems for almost 4 years now and it's time to put all of that aside and bust out. We're getting old, the travel window for us will soon close whether we like it or not. Because the time is now.

Let There Be Light!

 

Lights are being installed and circuits are being made hot.  Behold, first light!  Kitchen lighting!

The house now has heat, garage doors and openers and attic insulation.  Still to come: appliances, plumbing fixtures, driveway, decking material and roof tiles.

House Construction Beginning to Look More House-Like

 

Hurry up and wait.  There's still a long way to go.  The interior walls are painted.  Inside there's no flooring, plumbing fixtures, electricity or lighting, appliances, roof tiles and no insulation yet in the attic.  The deck has no surface, only exposed joists.  Our move-in date has moved from mid January to mid February to mid March.  There's supposedly still problems getting materials and labor and there's another snow storm on the way that will once again turn the construction site into a muddy mess so my personal prediction of a move in date is around April tax time.

Our New Home Takes Shape

Little by little our new home is taking shape.  It looks big.  But much of that bigness is the extra deep 3 car garage on the right.  We had an extra 4' of depth added to the 2 car garage at our present house and found it super useful so we added 4' here too.  So, why a 3 car garage for 2 people?  Simple, while we'll be free of a suffocating HOA the CC&R for the property doesn't dictate much but they do say that a 3 car garage is the minimum for this property.  The new house going up just above us is more like a small multi structure compound, it will have a 5 car garage.

So, how about the views?  This will be the view from what will be large windows looking to the west from the living room (imagine no dumpster).

Here's the view from the kitchen window.  There will be a post there but not the support beams that you see here.  And again, no dumpster (it moves with each pickup).

Here's the view from the deck.  One of the City's lakes will be visible from the deck.

We Had A Nice House

We have a nice house in a nice neighborhood.  But some of our neighbors got homesick and sold their homes and went back where they came from.    

The neighborhood changed further when Covid arrived.  This was when people started to disinfect their groceries and Amazon deliveries.  People were afraid.  I was afraid.  Interaction among neighbors on the street was reduced to awkward conversations at the mail kiosk when people stood 20' apart and loudly asked how each other were coping with the threat of the virus and the isolation of the defacto lockdowns (there were no official government mandated lockdowns here).  More than once I concluded these conversations with, "OK, see you next year!"  I was only half joking.  We had a nice house but eventually whatever cohesiveness this neighborhood had succumbed to Covid.

Meanwhile, Covid was no joke.  Several people in this neighborhood got it and had long hospital stays and longer recoveries.  One of my wife's friends died.

I began to think that I was getting a preview of our later years, when we will further bow to Father Time and have slowed down even more.  What if Covid never stopped and we had to spend much of time self confined?  Wouldn't it be nice to live in a house to prepare for that time?  We looked at a few homes about 20 miles away, many had sewer grinder pumps (meaning no connection to city sewer), no natural gas connection or no cell signal.  

And then this piece of land became available.

Standing on the land we had just purchased.  Click here for larger picture

• It was 3 blocks from where we were living
• It had a view.  The homes across the street are restricted from building up by their HOA.
• Nearly an acre so we'll have plenty of lebensraum from neighbors and street traffic.
• Had municipal water and sewer, high speed Internet access and natural gas hookups.

But that was only the beginning.  In early 2021 the economy was still wobbly.  To sell or to build?  We spent a few months waiting to see what would happen and finally decided to build a new home on the land.  First we had to figure out what kind of home we wanted.  And then we had to find someone to build it.

I knew that whatever we build we'd need to have a deck and big windows in order to capitalize on views like this.  If I'm going to spend a great deal of time as a homebody because of age or infirmity I want something better to look at than Netflix or Prime video. 

Click here for larger picture and to see the snow capped peaks

Leap Year

Leap year comes once but every 4 years and every 4 years I do a double take when I look at a calendar and see February 29th.  I've did a double take after I found out that my next step in prostate cancer treatment, seeding the prostate gland with little bits of a radioactive substance, was scheduled for the morning of February 29th.  

So imagine my surprise when I received an email from the builder of our new house in Arizona saying that they'd like us to come on down for the closing on our house to trade a large sum of cash for title and keys on February 29th. What are the odds?  

By the time you read this I'll be move in ready!

The builder broke ground the day I received my cancer diagnosis.  So in the race to see whether I'd beat cancer first or have to cough up money for a house I can't move into until I beat cancer is over, the house won. Needless to say I can't hand over money in Arizona while I'm sedated and having an invasive medical procedure performed on me in Seattle so my wife called the builder and sweet talked them into a no cost extension, because moving into a new house is a really big deal but becoming cancer free is job #1 prime directive now.  Only after recovery can I seriously think about job #2: paying for the new house, moving to the new house and selling the old house.  New house closing date is now March 15, the oncologist says I should be roadworthy by then.

I'm in the home stretch of daily radiation treatments and can't wait to hit the 5 week finish line.  The most annoying radiation side effect so far has been on my bladder.  Driven crazy by radiation it's in perpetual freakout mode, always alerting me that it's full and ready to burst. "I gotta go!!!!!", Right NOW!  There are no half measures, no stalling, no putting it off for the next rest area on the freeway.  It's always seems like a matter of desperation.  I sometimes awake every hour during the night to stumble to the bathroom and pee and man, is that annoying.  My oncologist says that this should diminish when the daily radiation stops, only to pick up again in March when radiation will be permanently installed in the prostate gland itself.  It should permanently diminish as the radiation half life decays the radiation away, kills the cancer and the seeds become inert.  Those inert seeds will go to the grave with me.

So how is this seed installation done?  What happens after the radioactive seeds are implanted?  If you're curious click here and read,

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM A SEED IMPLANT: THE FIRST TWELVE MONTHS

I received that in the US mail and it was most likely written by my oncologist as his name is first on the masthead. 

I had been under the impression that they would place these radioactive seeds in my prostate gland through my back door just as the urologist previously biopsied it but this isn't so. 

Following anesthesia, thin needles containing radioactive seeds are precisely placed under ultrasound guidance through the skin between the scrotum and rectum and into the prostate.

Yow!  That sounds like a frightening thing to let strangers do in a very tender place.  Anesthesia isn't what I thought it would be either:

The first choice is a spinal anesthetic where a thin needle is inserted in the lower back and a Novocaine-like medication is injected. With spinal anesthesia, patients are temporarily numb from the waist down and will not feel any of the needles being placed. In addition to the spinal anesthetic, patients commonly receive a sedative intravenously so that they are more relaxed and often sleep through the procedure. The spinal anesthesia is the most frequent choice of patients and the one that we usually recommend whenever possible. 

The second choice is a light general anesthetic so the patient is completely “out.” This works well but patients are often groggy for some time after the procedure. The anesthesiologist will review the details including both pros and cons of these two approaches. Sometimes the type of anesthetic is determined by the patient’s overall medical condition; other times it is a choice for the patient to make.

Make mine choice #2, light general anesthetic. I don't want to experience the lower half of my body turn numb while I watch people insert things into me.  I know that this work needs to be done, wake me when it's over.