GROWING VINE STREET & THE CISTERN STEPS
For information contact: Myke Woodwell, 441-7702
Belltown Cottage Diary II
by Glenn MacGilvra
courtesy of the Belltown Paper, Dec. 2002
This is a continuation of my involvement with the renovations of the Belltown Cottages at the corner of Elliott and Vine.
Thursday, December 5, 2002
I dropped by this morning to assure myself the cottages survived the rain. At this point the roofs are off all the buildings, with nothing separating them from the air except studs and plastic. The sides were also taken off one building, facing Wall Street. At 7 a.m. Tuesday, when I arrived for contractor's meeting, the cottages glowed in the dark, like lighted ghosts of houses. They look too delicate to survive a storm. Though the rain on Wednesday probably helps every other person in Washington, I still resent it.
This morning, the back yard consists of a large pile of dirt and a trench. The big blue excavator was scooping out the end of the trench, which went down at least 4 feet, and was dumping the dirt onto an ever higher pile, threatening the portable toilet. The trench will contain all the utility lines for the cottages, replacing what was old and inadequate before. Don, the supervisor and I stood watching. Next to Don was a man from Puget Sound Energy. I told him a little about the history of the cottages, how the rents during the 80's were $95/month and how one inhabitant, Myke Woodwell, initially received his lease in exchange for a bike. The man from Puget Sound Energy laughed and then said, you know it would have been cheaper just to tear them down and build replacements.
I protested, he laughed again and said he'd only said it to get a rise out of me. But he's right. Renovating three little houses costs more, in the time and labor and therefore money than just building three fresh of exactly the same size. Why bother?
Right now it's not an actual option, as the cottages have been landmarked. But that also was a choice. Even accepting that the scale and look of these three were important in their place, why insist on the actual buildings instead of replicas?
True, the replicas would necessarily be different if built now. In the stripped interiors of the cottages, the 2 x 4 joists that support the roof and walls are all exposed. Don said that if he were building them now, he'd use 2 x 6's or 2 x 8's because the wood at the time was stronger. He also noted that the floors were made of clear fir. This cottage was undoubtedly built with the large old trees that used to cover Puget Sound. I miss those forests, and Denny Hill and the Alexandria Library and other things I've never seen that are now destroyed. But there's still some comfort in considering how that old growth became transmuted into the clear strong beams of these buildings. When the lumber is gone too, there'll be nothing actually left of the old woods but regret.
The trouble with that argument though, is that when covered by paint and walls and roofs, no one will know what wood is underneath. To just about everyone, the copy will be indistinguishable from the original. When those who know it's different leave or die, it'll make no actual difference at all. At that point, stubbornly insisting on keeping some part of the original wood and fixtures from these houses becomes an act of faith; that there's a value to history, old trees, and old carpentered wood that goes beyond their surface attributes.
I have that faith. But I cannot explain it further.
Friday, December 6, 2002
This morning the pile of dirt looked even higher. I hand a bag of chocolate chip cookies to Don who showed off the new concrete foundations. As I noted last time, two of the cottages were built with "post and pier" bases; literally 4x4 beams sitting on small pyramidal concrete blocks (about a foot square at their base) sitting on dirt. To preserve appearances, the new foundations also look like concrete pyramids, but they are formed into one piece with a concrete pad below them. Monday, Don says, the cottages get lowered back onto their new bases.
This morning, the Seattle Times said that it would be clear through next Tuesday, which would be great since that's when the utility ditch gets filled in. Later this morning I consult the Seattle P-I which states that the rain will start on Monday, and the web edition of the Seattle Times agrees. Sigh.
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
It started raining Monday afternoon, then stayed dry until Tuesday afternoon when it rained heavily again. This morning I woke up to the rain and it hasn't stopped. The large utility ditch finally got filled in on Tuesday, and so that worry is over but the roofs are still off and not all the foundations have been dug.
Tuesday mornings are for meetings with the contractor and Parks managers. It's generally a companionable time, with a lot of standing around, pointing at things, mutual assurances all the problems can be solved. Yesterday, though, something close to an argument started between Don and one of the Parks inspectors. Don proposed not trying to compact dirt put back in the utility ditch, normally required, since the moisture content was too high, though from groundwater, not rain. There's a test for moisture content, but Don said it was so obvious the test was unnecessary. Compacting, he said, would just turn the dirt into mud. He was in favor of putting in dirt, letting it subside, and then filling more in as needed, pointing out that the backyard was meant to be a park, not a parking lot. The Parks inspector was mulish, suggesting we should test anyway, try to do some compacting, obey the rules as written.
My head goes back and forth between these guys. All I can think of is that we should do whatever is cheapest and fastest to avoid the threat of rain, but I don't know the terminology and can't contribute. I am again the lay person at a surgery, eyes pressed to a window watching surgeons argue over the body of my friend.
Tuesday was also one of the few times Myke and I have been asked our opinion. The original contract called for saving trim pieces from inside the cottages, sanding them, and then replacing them. For one reason or another it turns out a lot of the trim was damaged, either over the years they were there or in their removal. The supervisor wanted to toss them and use "MDX". I have no idea what this is, but learn it's a modern product, a combination of wood and glue. The supervisor insists that there is nothing particularly special about the trim, no excess decoration or ornamentation, no point in keeping the pieces. Myke barely glances over to me, before we nod our agreement, standing in the stripped shell of the building, mud on our shoes, December outside.
Today, Wednesday, I came by early to drop off doughnuts for the crew. The site has now gotten real muddy. Planks are laid on the dirt to give people something to walk on, familiar from pictures of pioneer Seattle and WWI trenches. The Big Blue Excavator is still on site, removing excess dirt to a dump truck to be hauled off god knows where.
I brought the doughnuts into one of the cottages, but there's barely a clean surface to leave the box and I can only hope someone finds time to eat one. Today they are lowering the cottages back down to a foundation, tomorrow they bring in new roof trusses because those old strong 2 x 4's had gotten bowed over the years. (An added expense. Sigh). But when I ask about replacing the roofs in the rain, his face clouds a little, and he wonders out loud about the effect on the floors if they get soaked. Then he shrugs and says, oh the roof guys can blow those roofs on in a hurry. I go back to the car and spend the rest of the day in my office watching it rain.
Monday, December 16, 2002
Over the weekend, I again learned the value of Myke. Saturday morning, I showed up at 10 to string up lights and decorations on the Christmas tree. The contractors insisted on having a tree on site and seemed to see it as necessary as the toolbox or toilet. Two thousand years ago, there probably would have been a shrine in the corner for a sacrifice.
It was raining, as it had been all morning. The first thing I noticed was a scrap of plastic stapled to one wall which had caught some roof runoff and was carrying 6 or 7 gallons in a fold, threatening to tear away from the nails and dump all the water . I punched a hole through the plastic to drain the water into a bucket, but when I walked further down the site I saw a more serious problem; two rivulets of water heading directly under the north cottage. Not all the concrete had been poured yet, though the holes had been dug, while the pads that did exist were standing in holes left by removed formwork. The running water was carving discernible channels along the edge of the house and you could see water moving around underneath. At the corner, several large holes for additional concrete pads were now just pools of murky water.
The water could be traced back upstream to the parking lot across the alley. Local geography and the lot's lack of onsite drainage meant it dumped two-thirds of its water onto the P-Patch and Cottage property. Picking up speed the two streams had the flow of a garden hose. There was a drain with a grate, but it was about two inches off the surface, in anticipation of future site work, or perhaps just a mistake. The water flowed merrily around the grate on its way to turning the dirt under the cottage into a lake.
My reaction was to panic, and curse the parking lot. Myke showed up about 15 minutes later than I did, looked around, and immediately concluded we could build a dam around the grate to collect the water and raise it high enough to flow in. Quickly he cut some pieces of a silt fence to serve as a filter and stretched it under the iron grate. Then he started shoveling together a dam, with the help of another volunteer, Jay, while I cut two ditches running across the width of the lot and into the P-Patch, to catch the water headed towards the cottage and redirect it
Others who were there went ahead decorating the Christmas tree. (Thanks Robin, Sandi and Maura!). Soon the water was flowing into the drain (a wonderful sound) and the rivulets going under the cottages had mostly dried up. We prettied up the dam and left.
Later that afternoon, around 2:30, I looked out the window of my condo and noticed the rain sheeting down, in torrents, and grew uneasy again. Though I had grades to get in, I couldn't stop from driving down to the garden at 4:00, if only to see the Christmas tree in the dark. When I arrived, it was immediately clear that a lot of water had come down, cutting deep channels through the dirt. The grate wasn't working, and water flowed through a break in our temporary dam into a sizable stream again headed under the cottage. Fortunately, Myke showed up as I was standing in despair, having independently decided to stop by. He quickly figured out the filter was clogged, cleaned it off, hung it so it wouldn't silt up again, and reinforced the dam. The dirt was so wet though, that water was seeping through it now and back under the cottage. So we dug a drainage ditch that reached around the cottage, along the top of a slope, and then down to a pipe that brought it to Elliott. By this time it was dark, and we were muddy, but finally all the water was running through the site and either into the grate or past the building.
Later that night, after watching Al Gore ache for a presidency that danced off just past his fingertips, I drove by again around 12:30 a.m.. The ground was drier now, the pools less.
When I was a kid I liked to play with mud puddles and make the water flow from one to another. Later, I believed in allowing rivers to run wild, and in taking unneeded dams off streams. And now I am back to digging ditches and watching water move and appreciating the engineering it takes to get rain out of neighborhoods safely. Meanwhile, the rain comes down and around as it will, when it will. I've got to stop hating it.
This morning, Monday, it was raining again. I came by the site with coffee donated by the Starbucks at 2nd & Lenora (Thanks Matt!) and cookies. The supervisor was apologetic about the drainage. He's worried about not having enough workers right now to get the roofs back on before Christmas. I don't know what to tell him, so we end up agreeing it'll all be fine.
Tuesday, December 17, 2002
Rain in the morning, turning to showers and thunderstorms. The supervisor thinks he might be able to get the roofs on by Christmas. But probably not.
December 24, 2002
Blue skies for the last couple of days. Over the weekend, six volunteers moved dirt into holes under the cottages and raked it smooth. (Thanks Curt, Shirley, Robin, Jay and especially Dave who spent most of the morning crawling around in the dirt). It cheered me to see clean ground under the houses. At least that part looks complete. Sunday, I moved some of the old bowed joists aside for later reuse perhaps in our park. I was thinking about a poem by D. H. Lawrence, which I will find and put in here, about old things.
This morning, they're putting shingles up one roof and the sky is dark and cloudy and dry.
Naked Plea for Help. The project needs volunteers to be successful. Anybody interested in digging, painting, helping, kibitzing are encouraged, no begged to contact me or Robin Miwa. It'll be fun. (Me at glenn@speakeasy.net or 726-8554, Robin at rkmiwa@email.msn.com)
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Sponsored by Friends of the Belltown P-Patch
Friends of the
Belltown P-Patch
a neighborhood 501(c)3
non-profit organization
2225
First Avenue Seattle, WA 98121
206.441.770
Created by Myke
Woodwell on his trusty Powerbook over Saturday morning coffee.
Images
by Myke JWoodwell ©2002
Myke Woodwell / mykejw@speakeasy.org