Highland Hills House

Furnished home for rent in Highland hills neighborhood.

Three bed, two bath, completely renovated in 2018.


Nice kitchen with newer appliances, including gas stove with hood.

Comfortable, shaded back deck 


with grill and smoker.

Sun room.

And access to Palouse Clearwater Environmental Institute.

Other amenities:

Laundry

Water softener

Formal dining area

Kitchen nook

Newly renovated baths with heated floors.

Walk in shower

Office
One Car Garage

Blaze King fireplace

$2000/mo. First, last and damage deposit.

Call or text 509-595 5566 to apply for a viewing.

Attached Shop

I built this attached shop onto a house in Coos Bay for my father.  He had recently sold a hangar, house and five acres to "re-retire" to a smaller place in the town he grew up in.  The five acres was way too much because he was 87 at the time.  But he needed something to do with his time, so he wanted a small shop to build furniture in.

Sept 13, 2021

I don't know if you've ever been to North Bend/Coos Bay, but the entire town is basically built on a sand dune.  They leveled these lots in the 80s and trucked in about a foot of top soil to allow for a poor lawn.  I dug this 1' x 1' trench for the foundation/slab and hit sand everywhere at one foot deep.

Sept 20, 2021

Here's the forms and rebar, ready to pour concrete.

Sept 30, 2021
We contracted the concrete.  $1500 if I remember correctly.  They pumped it in from the street and it arrived via that hose.


Oct 4, 2021
We put anchor bolts in the concrete after the pour and once it'd cured, we bolted down the pressure-treated sill plate.


Oct 4, 2021
It took the better part of a day to slap a wall and joists up on the slab, attaching the joists to the house as high up under the eaves as plywood and roofing would allow.


Oct 5, 2021
It rains a lot in Coos Bay, so let's get the tar paper on quick.


Oct 5, 2021
I do good work.  Look at that alignment.


Oct 6, 2021
I forgot to bring my roofing nailer, so I did this with raw roofing nails and a hammer.  I think it actually went quicker.  Must remember that next time.


Oct 14, 2021

We put the insulation in quick and I drove the sheet rock very quickly.  I cut accurate pieces fast whilst my brother and dad hustled to hang them and keep up.

Oct 14, 2021

Side walls are up and sheathed.


Oct 14, 2021

Wide door to allow for large-ish projects.  Dad put the door on later.  Two different sizes of siding.  I did not do the purchasing for this job.


Oct 14, 2021

Weird joint on the internal wall with the siding.  See next pic.


Oct 14, 2021

The weird extension beyond the house.  Had to cut the siding to account for the rain gutter.


Oct 14, 2021

It was tough getting the bench installed.  We hauled it down from Chehalis in one complete piece and muscled into place with just me, my brother, and my dad (87).


Oct 14, 2021

Corner of the shop with the bench installed.


Oct 14, 2021

Pano of us sitting in the new shop having a beer.  I'm the goofy one on the right (no, the one on the extreme right).


Oct 14, 2021

Yay. Done.  Dad did the wiring and insulated the ceiling and joist gaps.


I live in North Idaho and drove down to Coos Bay 4 times to complete this job.  The foundation digging and forms/rebar may have take 8 total hours of work. The framing, sheathing and roofing was maybe three six-hour days. and the remaining walls, insulation and sheet rock was probably another three six-hour days.  So maybe 45 total hours of work.

Garage-Top Deck

This is a rebuild of a deck atop a strangely built house from the 1970s.  The garage is an addition with and exceptionally low-slope roof -- on the order of 1" every 6'. 


This time I remembered to get "before" pictures.  The house was recently purchased and here are the problems:
1) The railing was exceptionally weak.
2) The stairs were wobbly.
3) The deck was old and rotting (std fir decking).
4) The roof was leaking a bit
5) The east wall of the addition was sided with vinyl, and leaked far too much around the window, causing the chip board wall to rot.

It doesn't show in this picture, but the railing posts were only 2x2s screwed into the end grains of the joists lying on top of the garage, which had begun to rot.

Lotsa weeds growing up out of the deck too.  Many of the boards came up quite easily with a crow bar due to rot of the underlying joists.

After stripping, we found the plywood sheathing to be in excellent shape, with just a bit of staining from previous leaks, but thoroughly sound.

Ready for roofing.

The main house siding was more of a paper product, than a chip board, but the east wall was only vinyl, which is impossible to seal around door and window openings.  And since all for the water on the deck rolls down the side wall, much of it ends up in the wall on the edges of the window. I also found a nice little infestation of insects beneath the vinyl.

Water damage and rot clear through the chip board sheathing and into the garage.

Cancer removed.

And replaced with exterior grade plywood of the proper thickness.

The siding was closest match I could find in size and thickness, but the texture didn't match exactly.
We got the siding and roofing on just in time for a nice 3-day rain that thoroughly tested the new surfaces.  No leaks.  Ready for decking.

The customer chose Silver Maple Trex decking instead of natural wood, mostly for the guaranteed longevity. And it was the right choice.  Looks nice.

Looking down the steps prior to installing the railings.  The customer had small children so a temporary gate was a reminding for the kids not to climb the stairs.

I couldn't think of any sturdier method to install the rails that by bolting a foot-long overlap through the side of the garage structure.  This railing will not weaken quickly.  The customer chose redwood stained slightly redder than natural. 
It's too small a detail to see in this picture, but there is a 1 1/4" drip edge just below the deck that throws the deck runoff away from the wall, instead of letting it all dribble down the surface of the wall.

Solid new stairs with a low railing for the kids.

Solid top stair landing supported by 4x6 posts.

The bit of color makes the house look nice too.

Solid stair railing.

It's almost like a big rooftop crib, or a birds nest, up in the shade of the trees.

With a gate for the youngest ("Charlie Bear").

Trex Deck Rebuild

A good friend had a deck that had a rotting sub-structure beneath some fairly original Trex decking that seemed in reasonable shape, though most Trex decking from that era had been recalled due to flaking. But the rotting underlying substructure was causing the deck surface to undulate in a way that was becoming quite dangerous. Sorry, I have no picture of the “before” deck. 

I really should spend some time getting "before" starting demolition.  This was a tricky job because to save money we salvaged all of the existing decking, which is already cut to exactly the right shape.  Therefore, we cut the decking off the rotting substructure and placed it in order on the lawn while we rebuilt the substructure.  Wish I had a picture of that too.

Plus we added a built-in bench on the south end.  Here is the structure beneath the seat.

Plus we replaced the original bench surfaces after sturdifying the posts.  Solid, 3 feet deep into concrete.

Deck and benches complete.

Paint, Shutters and a Fence

You can see that I’m catching up on posting projects that I did last summer. Many more to follow. I was quite busy all summer. 

In fact, what usually happens is I get done with a project and the customer asks me to keep going. Here, the customer that I built the redwood deck for asked me to paint his house, build him some shutters, and build a fence. 

This threw something of a wrench into my scheduling of projects.

The customer was from Connecticut, and has an affinity for the imagery of spe whales, so we put that on his shutters. 

Close up. 

The shutters do improve the appearance of the house. 

And he also loves fly fishing, so the back shutters have flies and jumping trout. 

Sorry, no pic of the fence. I got too busy and forgot to take a picture. Six foot tall, dog-eared and stained the same as the deck. It’s only a partial fence and ends against a large fir tree. I got cute and cut the last board wiggly to match the shape of the tree trunk to within a half inch.