GROWING VINE STREET & THE CISTERN STEPS
For information contact: Myke Woodwell, 441-7702
Belltown Cottage Diary III & IV
by Glenn MacGilvra
courtesy of the Belltown Paper, Jan. 2003
This is a continuation of my involvement with the renovations of the Belltown Cottages at the corner of Elliott and Vine.
January 2, 2003
Another month, and nearing the end of the cottage renovations. To recap briefly, I am one of the volunteers overseeing repairs to the Belltown Cottages, three little houses built in 1916 near the corner of Elliott and Vine. Once fixed, they will be homes for writers, a place for meetings and the backdrop for a small park. This is my account of those renovations.
In December, the weather was a problem, as the contractors dug utility ditches, poured new foundations and fixed roofs in the wettest month of the year. The roofs were finally finished on the weekend following Christmas, while I wasn't looking. I heard about it the following Monday (December 30) and stopped by that afternoon to glory in the gloriful gloriousness of the shingles. The roofs now look like they did 87 years ago. More important, they keep out the rain.
That night, somebody pushed over the fence, drove a car in, and stole some garden tools and rain gear, as I found out the next day at the normal Tuesday contractor meeting. The workers seemed to take it philosophically, one comparing it to another time working downtown, when he went inside a building to get a hammer, came outside and found that his skillsaw had been stolen. Don, the supervisor, did miss the rain gear, worth more than $300, sadly describing how it lasted him 10 years and had only one small rip.
The roofs still made me happy but one worry began taking the place of another. At night, the rain just sounds peaceful, but now I think about people sneaking onto the site to steal or destroy. Human destruction is somehow more mingy and dispiriting than nature's. Malicious humans give me the creeps.
On the other hand the whole project is partly based on the assumption of petty criminality. A selling point for keeping the cottages, and making them residences again was to provide an useful watch over the park and P-Patch next door. More broadly, if it weren't for transients hanging out with the day laborers around Casa Latina and the Millionair's Club who get drunk, litter, and use the neighborhood as a toilet, property values would be higher, and purchase and development of the garden and cottage site more difficult. The selfish, criminal side of human nature could be one more example of a natural force, like the rain, to be diverted, channeled, adapted to. Perhaps.
The workers put up plywood along the walls and reinforced the fence line to discourage future trespassers, while planning the next step, replacing siding. As I walk around the site Tuesday with Don the supervisor and Myke, Don suddenly looks at the gutters and says with surprise, "that's not where they should be!". More examination and head scratching and calculation and it's decided that connections to the drain pipes need to be moved. The volunteers will be called in to dig the holes and reattach pipes.
New Year's Day I happily did some recreational ditching to keep the constant rain running smoothly past all the houses, and then moved dirt under one of the cottages to smooth out some dips. It was an oddly pleasant time. The rain took a while to soak through jean jacket and pants, it wasn't too cold, and shoveling and dumping dirt took on a rhythm. Later, after cleaning up, I headed to the home of a good-looking woman in Redmond, for corn bread and black-eyed peas. (Thanks Suzie!). She says it'll bring good luck for the new year.
January 3, 2003, Friday.
This morning, more doughnuts for the workers. The heavy rains of yesterdays cut little channels through the dirt and silted up the drain, but to no harm as finally the landscape is sufficiently contoured to drain it away. Don tells me the siding will be here next week. I'm not sure what the workers are doing right now, but they seem happy. I poke around the site and the P-Patch. No one broke in and no one crapped in front of the P-Patch tool shed as they had been doing the previous two days. It's a convenient place for both the crapper and me; hidden from view, yet on ground that's not being gardened and near a shovel to scoop the turds up. Still, all in all, a morning not spent cleaning up human excrement is a better morning.
January 6, 2003, Monday
Most of my volunteer time during the cottage renovations has been spent moving dirt from place to place. It's a reasonably good task for volunteers as the risks from error are low. After all, you can always move the dirt back. Saturday morning, Jay and Robin came by to help move sand under one of the cottages, where there are still large dips and hollows. It's hard work, made harder when it began to rain, first lightly, then heavily. Pushing dirt around underneath a building involved a lot of crawling around on hands and knees. Shoveling dirt into barrows outside just made you very wet. We finished at 12:30 in time to see the sun come out in a glorious blue sky.
January 7, 2003, Tuesday
The Tuesday morning contractor meetings are usually interesting and frightening in equal measure, this morning's particularly so. Representatives of the contractors, the city and the volunteers stand around discussing the week's work and I stand with them understanding little of the words of the song, but hearing the tune of problems, possible fixes, new expenses not budgeted for. Today was a lesson in urban archaeology. After having put in the drain lines for the sewers and water, the contractors were tapped on the shoulder by the plumber who had a question about the laundry sink in the basement of one of the cottages. It's the only cottage with a basement and a garage, which can be seen from Elliott. Both were put in by Frank sometime in the 1940's. Frank owned two cottages at the time, and lived in them for a good long time. His nephew, Jerry the Drummer, later inherited the lease on one, and lived there until 1997, when he was evicted by Skyway. According to Jerry' Frank installed the concrete basement and foundation by himself using only a wheelbarrow and a shovel.
What the plumber noticed was that the drain line for the laundry sink was lower than the outlet for the sewer drain in the wall of the basement. The pack of us went down into the basement this morning to look around and confirm that this was in fact so. Myke (former resident and head of volunteers) theorized that the drain pipe for the sink went into a pipe that went, somehow, to the street outside. He also pointed out other drain holes in the floor of the basement that also looked like they connected to the street. In the 40's, it probably made little difference to anyone that soapy water was draining out onto Elliott Avenue. No one has used washer or sink for a number of years and the holes are probably plugged up. Unfortunately, if a functioning laundry is to be set up here, the drains have to connect with the newly laid lines.
We all stood looking and then people began working out solutions. Lower the outlet hole? Raise the sink? How much distance did we need? Andy is the project's manager with the Parks Dept. He has a beard, and engaging smile and a near fanatic gleam in his eyes. Also a gung ho attitude. He quickly walked outside, grabbed some shovels and started digging down to locate the existing pipes. We used a tape measure and fancy laser pointer to locate the lowest possible location for the outlet hole that would still allow some kind of drainage. It all looked doable, and we could still make use of the large, concrete laundry sink inside. Don, the supervisor joked that Andy had a future in construction work at $15/hr. if he were interested.
I keep hoping it all works out. What lends me hope is the fact that all the people involved in the project on site really seem to want it to succeed. What keeps me anxious is the steady stream of extra expenses eroding contingency funds.
January 14, 2003, Tuesday
I haven't been diligent in going by in the last week, but the workers still seem to do fine without me. Yesterday, they put in two windows, including the big one that faces front. It has 14 small panes above, three big ones below. It hasn't been in good repair for a long time. Two years ago, Myke and another volunteer, who subsequently got disgusted at the slow progress and left, repaired the main window, putting in new panes of glass, but left it without operable sashes, and with the window frame still broken and rotten in places.. We did so thinking we were only weeks away from being able to make someone a temporary resident/caretaker. However, we weren't able to satisfy city requirements for occupability without making more repairs than could be done on our lonesome. So a whole new window gets put in. I try to avoid dwelling on the various moments of wasted effort that stud the history of the project.
The meeting this morning was a little jangly. Participants were out of sorts. Myke was missing, some of the city people had to rush off to another meeting, a carpenter in the corner of the room where we met was banging in nails. The main controversy was the hot water heaters. I'm always surprised how many choices we face in repairing these houses. It's not like the standard plans for a subdivision home. We need hot water heaters and a place to put them and the decision comes now. Heaters did not come with the original buildings. In two, they got stuck in the kitchens, in a third the crawlspace. Myke wanted on demand heaters, which run water through heated pipes, instead of having holding tanks. Don, the supervisor didn't think they would fit where Myke thought they could go, under the sink. Measurements are quickly made and it looked doubtful. Ordinary heaters would cost less, by $600/cottage (though cost more over the long run). Andy, the parks contact, in Myke's absence, quickly decides to use ordinary heaters and stick them all under the buildings, in special concrete pads. (Later, that turns out not to work either. They eventually get put in the outside shed). We move on.
The gutters are also in place, fairly cheap metal, painted white. They replace a set volunteers installed two years ago. Someone asks why we didn't use copper, as it would be more historic. Andy answers it was too expensive. I console myself thinking that even the originals didn't have copper, instead using wooden gutters which quickly rotted. At least we keep to the original spirit of using what's cheap.
The siding to replace the temporary plywood on half the walls, was supposed to arrive yesterday, but won't get here until Thursday, according to Don. I suggested, being an optimist, that perhaps the suppliers had run into trouble. Don, a realist , said no they flat out lied. Don is also an organizer of men as well as materials and pointed out the consequences of delay. He had told some workers to be ready tomorrow to come in to put the siding up. If the wood were here Monday, he could orient them on Tuesday and get three solid days of work before the week ended "riding them like hell". But if the wood were here Thursday, then little work could be done with new people on Friday and everything would have to be told them again the following Monday. In construction, timing rules everything.
January 21, 2003, Tuesday
Over the last week, the siding has begun to take shape, with new boards going up on the walls of the south and west sides that had been most exposed to the weather before. The new boards are clear fir, but in a peculiar form. Short clear pieces are glued together with dovetail connections to form long pieces 20 feet by 3". Apparently, it's difficult to find long clear pieces anymore, another consequence of the loss of the old trees. The effect however is, to my eye, quite beautiful, a dappled array of various shades of tan, and brown. In their array, this siding makes the walls look from a distance like they are shingled too. Steve, a worker on site and Anne, a friend, both commented it was a shame we couldn't just lacquer them and leave them as is. Unfortunately, half the walls remain, in their own old way, painted white, and it'd be quite a contrast. The new gets painted over to look like the old.
At the meeting this morning, we decide the placement of kitchen lights, bathroom sinks and outdoor lights. Myke noticed all the lights seemed to have switches, pointing out that the cabins used to have pull chains. The electrician said nobody made fixtures with pull chains anymore and he'd have to rework the wiring. The contractor and parks representative nodded in agreement. Myke repeated that when they were built, none of the lights in the cabins worked by switches, they were all pull chains. I chimed in, let's keep it pull chains. So we'll get pull chains, I think, if they actually do go back to revise. I wonder if anybody living here will ever curse our decision. Switches are easier to find when walking into a dark bathroom. On the other hand, chains are more fun to pull.
Weighing over my mind this morning, as usual, is money. Myke and I sat down with the woman from city's Department of Neighborhoods who is administering our $200,000 matching grant, the principle source of funds for this project. As a matching grant, the funds aren' t available unless we match expenditures with donations of cash, labor or materials. Right now, we are doing fine, but looking ahead, it's clear that we won't be able to show sufficient volunteer contributions to entitle us to receipt of all the funds. We could be short by the time we pay the final invoice, or some part of the work ends up unfinished. So we have to think of a way to increase volunteer contributions over the next 6 weeks. Which means finding more volunteer projects, or more volunteer dollars. The latter seems tough in a stagnant economy in a depressed city.
Myke and I walk back towards downtown brainstorming various notions. It's a rainy day and I fight a feeling of despair. But at least the roofs are up. Something will work out.
January 23, Thursday
Last night, the volunteers sat down to talk over the long range plans for the site with representatives of the Parks Department and Historic Seattle, who will serve as property managers. Much is said, but what we all agree on is that the site needs a mission statement and concrete management plan.
Anyone who has ideas feel free to send them here. The renovations should be done in a little more than one more month. Then these Cottages get launched into the world.
Cottage Diary IV
January 27, 2003, Monday.
I realize that there's probably more going on in a lot of lives in Belltown, than the renovations of the Belltown Cottages. I feel at times slightly abashed at the time I spend on the project. Sunday, I was at a meeting/party held by Allied Arts, a public design advocacy group in the loft owned by Koryn Rolstad at the Banner Building. (It's a beautiful loft. The bathtub in particular shows charm and insousiciance). The discussion was on the Seattle waterfront, its troubles, accretions, evolution and current Viaduct inspired muddle. Paul Dorpat, the local historian, gave a slide show in which, at the corner of one photograph, in a fuzzy washed out way, I think I saw a glimpse of the Cottages. That seems to be about their place in the scheme of things.
January 28, 2003 Tuesday
The Tuesday morning meeting was strangely jovial today. Perhaps it's because on Friday evening at Belltown Billiards, Myke and Andy and I made decisions about budget cutting, and faced the fact of potential money shortfalls, and now we are just living in the aftermath. There's nowhere to go but onwards. At this morning's meeting Andy, the Parks contact, mentioned to T.F., the liasion with the contractor that switching from commercial to residential levels of insulation on some pipes should produce cost savings. T.F. looked a little puzzled and amused. "yeah", he said, "maybe 10 bucks". Andy just smiled.
Chris our Parks inspector learned at the meeting that the third cottage would not be finished off in this go around and would wait until volunteers could get to it. He also looked surprised. That's only about $3,000, he said. You could tell what he was thinking. Having the contractors on site already putting up the interiors on the other two cottages meant that doing one more would be easy, fast and relatively cheap to do. Efficiency cried out for the contractors to knock it off on their way. Andy replied "We just don't have the money".
Volunteers will be painting the interiors next week. Chris, the Parks inspector will be there, donating his time and expertise, his respirator and his masking gun, something above and beyond his city job. I just have to find us some paint. Kelly-Moore has been generous in the past. Perhaps they will be again.
January 31, 2003
Yesterday, my girlfriend indicated she was going to break up with me. This morning as I bicycled downhill towards the site it's all I can think about. What the hell difference does it make to me whether these cottages stand or go? Some day when I'm old and still alone will I hobble up to them and insist somebody give a damn about How They Were Saved?
On site, Don, the supervisor, has a question about where doors go. I have no idea, having left that to Myke. Inside, the drywall has been hung, our fallback choice when plaster proved too expensive for our budget. The rooms look smaller now without the ability to see through the interior walls, that have been just studs for the last two months. I look out through the bathroom windows at the P-Patch. One of the frustrations of hanging out around the cottages for the last four or five years is that with the plywood up to protect windows, you couldn't see either in or out of them. They were closed off both ways. Now I can see out clearly and see my little plot.
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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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.
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by Myke JWoodwell ©2002
Myke Woodwell / mykejw@speakeasy.org