A Frewing Wedding and A Skelton Ranch
What a difference a week makes. My best friend is married and Team Skelton now owns a home in Portland Oregon. It blows my mind just to write that.
We arrived in Portland last Friday. Friday night was a nice metal music tinged bachelor party for the Good Doctor. Even tho YOB called in sick to their performance at Sabala’s, the evening was still full Metal. Saturday culminated in a small backyard BBQ groom’s dinner. Sunday was the wedding day, a fine early morning affair up in the Southwest hills. The rain held out until 20 minutes after 3pm, just as the brunch style reception was wrapping up at the Portland Golf Club. Congratulations and cheers to both Amy and Dirk on their marriage.
By Sunday afternoon the misses and I were pretty wiped out from all the wedding festivities. We returned to Dirk and Amy’s house, where we would be spending the next week house sitting as they enjoyed their honeymoon in Maui. Unfortunately resting was not in the cards for Team Skelton. You see, we had come out to Portland for two very specific reasons. They were: 1) celebrate the wedding of Dirk and Amy (done), and 2) buy a home in Portland Oregon (not done). With the celebrating and merriment fresh in our hearts and minds, we needed to now focus our energies on looking for, finding, and purchasing a house in Portland. We had one week to do so – starting Sunday night and ending the following Friday.
We rallied enough Sunday night to go poke around some neighborhoods and to look at listings online. We were warned and we were somewhat ready for an absolutely insane housing market in Portland. The reality of which set in fast as we quickly realized how much house we could afford and where we could and could not afford to purchase a home. By Monday morning we had a ton of listings from our realtor and from our own research to go scout out. We covered a ton of ground that day – Southeast, Northeast, Southwest; we were pilling on the miles to our rented Buick Rendezvous. We drove around until it was pitch black out and we couldn’t see any of the houses anymore. Monday we were doing all drive-byes, getting a good feel for neighborhoods and the different styles of homes. There were a couple homes that we marked that we would try and get into the next day but we didn’t see anything we were gaga over yet. At the end of Monday spirits were still high.
Tuesday we finally got together and met our realtor *Superstar*. We spent the bulk of the day going into homes in Southeast Portland. I quickly learned that one of the things that can immediately turn you off to a home is the smell. There are two kinds of smells that rank homes take on. One is sour and is produced by any bad combination of dogs, cats (and cat pee), other animals, human B.O., rotting food, smoke, and mold. The other is sweet and is usually produced by an ambitious realtor or homeowner who tries to mask the other scents of a home with an insanely overpowering air freshener. The end result of either of these is horrible gagging on the part of a potential buyer and the inability to look past your stinky-ass house! We encountered a lot of this. Other turn-offs included, huge terrible stains on rugs and window curtains, the absence of any appliances, large holes in sheet rock, stairs that were on an almost vertical incline, homes that had neighbors with cars and other assorted machinery parked in the lawn, and upper level floors that, at my height, were impossible for me to stand up straight in. Also a big turn off was about every house we looked at that was constructed after 1970. Especially the 80’s. Seriously, what the fuck happened in the 80’s? Vinyl siding and fake brass fixtures are the work of the Devil after he has snorted ten lines of coke and given you a lecture on the benefits of Reganomics.
Tuesday was a total bust. By the end of the day morale was sinking. Luckily we took a much needed break that night and powered up with friends over fresh delicious sushi. After an intense and long gorging, spirits were back up and resolve was returned to 100%.
Wednesday I felt was the make it or break it day. Our realtor warned us that not much else comes on the market after Wednesday so it was time for the heavens to shine down upon us. An early morning online check of the new listings saw two good possibilities in Southwest Portland. We decided to do a cursory drive by of these two properties before we headed down to the realtors office. We drove by and they both had a lot of potential. Excitement grew. We were just about to head to the realtor’s office when she called and said a new listing had just popped up on Southwest Alfred Street- go drive by it. We did. At first I was skeptical, It looked newer, possibly 70’s, and it looked like it might have vinyl siding. But it was in a very cute neighborhood. Their also wasn’t a for sale sign up yet so we didn’t know if we had the right place or not.
We drove down to the realtor to plan out the day. We thought it a good move to go back up to Southwest to look at the two we had driven by earlier in the day. The realtor asked about the Alfred house and we kinda said, ‘maybe’. Then she said pictures of the Alfred house had just been posted. We took a look at ’em. We were into ’em!! It was actually built in 1957, the siding was wood. The pictures were very enticing. We decided that we would go look at all three houses but start with the Alfred house.
As we pulled up the Alfred house for the second time (around 11am) someone was just putting up the For Sale sign. We toured the house. It had a great open floor plan with nice vaulted wood ceilings and wood beams. For good and ill much of the home is in it’s original state. Very mid-century modern. Built to allow a lot of interplay between the outside and inside. It was very bright and well lit with natural light. The upper level had hardwoods floors throughout. After about ten minutes we knew this was the house. It was better than anything we had hoped to find and it was within our price range. The realtor reminded us again that we had better move fast, this house wasn’t going to last long. We were the first to look at the house but there would certainly be more coming by that afternoon. So we decided to not even go look at the other two possibilities and return to the realtors office to draw up an offer. At about 3:30pm the offer was complete and faxed over to the seller’s realtor. Our offer expired at 9pm that night. Hopefully we would hear something before then. The waiting game began. We returned to Dirk and Amy’s home and paced around the house and yard for about two and a half hours before our realtor called with the good news that the offer had been accepted!!!!!!!!!!! We shook our booties. There was even some high-fiving! Oh happy day. The house was ours! It wasn’t even on the market for eight hours, which is about par for the Portland housing market right now. Our realtor also told us that there were multiple offers on the house that day but ours was first.
*Sigh*
And that was that. It took less time than we thought and we got a home that was truly a dream. Of course the house isn’t ours yet…it still needs to pass an inspection and we have to get all the financing and stuff in place. I’m confident on all fronts but you never know. For now, I’m thinking only good thoughts.
With the housing situation wrapped up we actually got a chance to relax and hang out with friends for the rest of the week. If all goes according to plan we will close on the house July 29th. The hardwoods need to be refinished before we move in (the house is currently vacant), so our projected moving date will be sometime around mid-August. Whole. Eee. Crap. That means a lot of work to do in a very short period of time. Keep your fingers crossed for us. Hopefully you will be coming to visit us in the new Skelton Ranch. Flickr set photos of the Skelton Ranch. Google satellite map of property. Portland Map break down of the Alfred house.
By the by, Alfred Street has to be one of the worst street names ever. Also, we discovered architectural blueprints of the ranch in addition to tons of plans that were drawn out for additions to the house. All the plans were drawn up by a Portland Architect named Clive Kienle back in 1963, None of the additional builds were ever done. Some of those plans are included in the flickr photo set. I couldn’t find anything online about the architect but I would love to track him down if he’s still alive and talk about the house. Perhaps we’ll be able to see the plans through to completion.