From Amber to Taryn: August 2014

Saturday, August 30, 2014

The Stuborn Wall

Late last year, our neighbors had us over to see their great room after they removed their wall. It was basically the same wall as ours. That sealed it for Sandi and I: the wall separating the family room and the dining room must come down. With resolve matching Ronal Regan's statement to Mikhail Gorbachev, "Tear down this wall!" we made plans for June 22. My friends Mike and Maurice came on Sunday afternoon and we turned this:

into this:

Before we started cutting the studs out, Mike had the foresight to take a look in the attic, just to make sure the wall was not load-bearing. He came down from the ladder with bad news: it is load-bearing. I couldn't believe it. I looked online for help in determining the structure of the wall. Basically, wall perpendicular to the ridge of the house are not; wall parallel to the ridge are. Somehow, our house fell into the 10% of house frames that make all walls load-bearing.

I cleaned up our mess and started calling contractors for bids. Upon first look, each one was surprised that it was load-bearing. (For those who might be interested, a contractor said the builders did not use trusses and instead 'hand-framed' the house.)

It took us awhile to settle on a contractor - Jason. It took longer to coordinate schedules and be told by the city that we need professional drawings to get a permit. Oh good, let's unnecessarily complicate things!

While our contractor went on vacation in mid August, an architect showed up to take measurements. Things began to pick up speed last week when the city actually approved the permit. We got an email from Jason on Wednesday saying he was getting supplies and will be ready on Friday. Let's do this!

Friday morning came. Sandi and I are finishing up breakfast. Jason shows up and we leave. Sandi comes back at 2:00 and finds this:

The wall is gone!

The room looks deeper than we thought it would. The dining room is so big we had to add the extra leaf in the table to fill the space.

There is still a lot to do. I need to wrap the beam (it's just plywood) and fill the hole in the floor. A dry-wall crew will come in September to make the two rooms seamless.

We love it. Having a great room will be a huge benefit for us.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Backpacking Badger Creek

This is how we role: Sandi carrying the bulk of our gear and me enjoying a cool glass of water.

Last weekend was our backpacking trip. Backpacking has such a narrow season in the Northwest that hiking at Mt. Hood or other popular trails would probably be crowded. We opted for Badger Creek just southeast of Mt. Hood.

As the name implies, it is a hiking trail that runs parallel to Badger Creek for 12 miles until it reaches Badger Lake.

Even with our early start on Friday morning, our boots didn't hit the trail until almost noon. We hiked a couple miles before stopping at a campsite for lunch. Trail is dotted with campsites with great creek access.

Since it followed a creek the slope rose fairly gradually. I think we only hiked one switchback - certainly a departure from most hikes around here.

I'm sure there are a lot of good reasons to strap 50-pound packs to your back and start walking for a few days. We do it for the food. It's amazing how good dehydrated food tastes after hiking 8 miles through the heat.

This is our lunch the first day: Dry salami on
ciabata rolls and a fresh peach.

This is a new one for us: Gnochi (Italian-style potatoes) seasoned with cheese and peperoni.

It was a pleasure having dinner by the creek

We tried it for a few reasons: it came vacuumed-packed and only needs to boil for 2 minutes. It turned out well, though next time I will go easier on the peperoni.

Breakfast on both mornings consisted of black tea and instant oatmeal and flax with trail mix.

Our campsites were great both nights. We had easy access to water and plenty of level ground for our tent. The only bummer was we couldn't have campfires.

The first day we hiked 6.5 miles. Our idea on Saturday morning was to hike a couple miles toward Badger Lake and set up camp. That would leave us about 3 miles to hike to the lake and have lunch before turning back to our campsite. The advantage, obviously, is that we could drop our packs and have a nice walk. That would also leave us with about 8-miles to hike out on Sunday. Here what happened: we found the next campsite just over a mile of our first site - too early, I felt, to drop our packs. Certainly, there must be another site a little farther down the trail. It was probably 3 miles before we saw the next site and it was taken. We didn't see another site until we reached the lake.

We had lunch and started back to the first site we saw that morning - each carrying our full load.

That made it a ten-mile day, about eight of which could have been done without our packs.

Even with that massive miscalculation we had a great time. We broke a couple personal records: most miles backpacked in one day (10) and most miles hiked in a trip (24). The trail was beautiful and well maintained, the food was great and we had a good time together away from the normal routine.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Dog Mountain

Sandi surrounded by information.

Dog Mountain is a perennial hike in Portland known for its steep terrain and wild flowers. I've hiked it a few times. Sandi has wanted to for some time. We took a free Sunday morning in July and invited Sandi's dad and brother to join us for the 6-mile hike (her mom was in Japan at the time). As the sign above indicates, there is a shorter, steep path and a longer, gentler path. We chose the steeper path up and the longer path down.

This hike offers an amazing view of the Columbia River Gorge from the Washington side.