Rain

Last Sunday was a beautiful day. Since then, it has rained every day.

But the house is moving tomorrow, rain or shine. We have tarps on the lot at 62nd to keep the ground from getting too muddy, and the second floor of the Cheney Cottage has been pulled out of the Gill Tract and is sitting on the concrete. Tomorrow morning at 6 AM, we're meeting Phil and Celeste and the crew to start the move. We hope to get to 62nd Street some time close to 9 AM.

Wish us luck. The story continues, tomorrow.

Nes Gadol Haya Sham*

February 16, 2011, 1 PM: Tom got the final signature on the permits to move the Cheney Cottage to 62nd Street.

What this means is that the City of Berkeley has finally, after 10 months of delay, gotten out of our way, and the project is moving - literally. The second floor of the Cheney Cottage has already been pulled out of the Gill Tract and is sitting on the parking lot, waiting to be moved.

Sunday morning, at 6 AM, we'll meet Phil Joy at Albany Village, and the truck will be hitched to the house, and we'll begin hauling the house over to 62nd Street. The first floor will follow, one week later.

Looking back over the blog, I find many points when we thought we were on the verge of getting the permits. Back in April, we thought it would be a matter of days. Several times, it appeared the City was going to help us get this done - but always there was another glitch.

Now finally, we have made it. The Cheney Cottage is heading home.

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* "A Great Miracle Happened There" This is usually used in reference to the events surrounding the first Hanukkah, but actually getting our permits from the City of Berkeley seems to be a miracle as well.

The Countdown

The future location of the Cheney Cottage, as seen from the Delaney House

One week from today, the second floor of the Cheney Cottage should be leaving Albany and moving to its new location on 62nd Street. By this time next Sunday, I fully expect to be sitting here, posting pictures of the house move - the fourth of five.

So today, Tom and I spent most of the day on 62nd Street. Hilary graded the lot with his bobcat, so the lot is level, with a gentle slope to bring the house in from the street. We repaired the chain link fences, cleaned up debris, and moved piles of wood into new piles. We also took down the section of fence that used to be at the back corner of the Delaney House.

The most important thing we did was sort through the pile of Cheney Cottage pieces. When we removed the eaves and the front porch of the Cheney Cottage, we saved all the pieces to be able to put them back. We labelled them, but at the time we had no idea it would take 10 months to get to work placing them back on the house. So we're not 100% sure what the labeling scheme we came up with means.

But we have lots of pictures, and as we look at the old eaves and porch, we're starting to figure it out.

On Sunday, after the Cheney Cottage arrives on 62nd Street, Eric and his crew will begin rebuilding the eaves. Once they are on, Tom and I will strip off all the old roofing, and the tack a tarp down over the house (we hope this is the last tarp, as we have gone through many tarps in the last 10 months!). Then the following weekend, the second floor will rise up into the air, and the first floor will arrive to slip below it.

The lot is ready. The house is ready. We are ready. The City permits are mostly ready. Phil Joy and his crew are ready. Eric Angress and his crew are ready. We're poised to get this project underway again. Keep your fingers crossed.

Back in Business

God willing and the creeks don't rise, we're going to be moving the house next weekend.

We have finally worked out all the details with the City of Berkeley, and although we don't have all the permits yet in hand, we will have them early next week. So the plan is to move the top of the Cheney Cottage on the 20th, and the bottom on the 27th. By early March, the house should be reassembled and sitting on its new foundation.

So the work has already started. Hilary brought his bobcat over to 62nd Street yesterday, and began grading the site so the house can easily roll in from the street. He also pulled up the rest of the roots from the two redwood trees we removed (seems like years ago.....) The site is level and ready for a new house.

Today and tomorrow, we're doing some final prep work. Hilary is back, finishing taking out all the piles of brush and debris, and loading them into his dump truck for recycling. We have to move some logs back to the back of the lot, out of the way of the Cheney Cottage. We also have to take down a section of the hedge, as the cribbing has to go there when we raise up the second floor. We'll also sort through the pile of pieces of the Cheney Cottage we took off, finding all the pieces of the old front porch and the eaves that we had to remove from the second floor.

Then the plan is:

• Move the second floor to 62nd Street and position it in the house's new location
• Put the eaves back on, and strip the roof down to the skip sheathing
• Lift the second floor into the air
• Move the first floor to the site, and position it under the second floor
• Gently lower the second floor down onto the first floor
• Reattach the first and second floors
• Dig out and pour the new foundation
• Reroof the house
• Rebuild the front porch
• Reattach all the exterior trim that had to be removed

Then the fun begins: getting electrical service and rewiring the house; running the water pipes to the house and the drain pipes out to the street; redoing the bathroom and kitchen; refinishing floors, patching plaster, and fixing all the damage caused by the house's 10-month unnecessary stay out in a field in Albany.

Once the Cheney Cottage is done and habitable, we will turn our attention back to the Delaney House: raising it up in the air, building a new foundation for it; building the first floor.

So after 10 months of inactivity, we see a lot of work in the next couple months. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy year.

Ready to Begin Again

It looks like we're on the verge of a breakthrough.

After months of inactivity, the City is finally coming to an agreement with us as to how to move this project forward. So assuming we are able to work out the final details, we might - MIGHT - have our permits this week. Which means we might actually move the second floor of the Cheney Cottage to 62nd Street on Sunday.

The house has suffered during this 9 month hiatus in Albany. We have tried to keep it covered with traps, but water has gotten in. We won't know the full extent of the damage until we get the house back to 62nd Street and put it back together, but we may have to replace floors, do a lot of refinishing, and repair plaster that would not have needed it (if the house had not had to spend almost a year in a field).

But hopefully, it's all behind us now, and we will soon be moving. Stay tuned for the fourth move.

Reflections on Taking a Break

Our lavender truck, taking a well deserved break under the Fall colors

We have been away from the houses the last few weeks, taking a bit of a break as we struggled to resolve the issues with the City of Berkeley. Despite the fact that it is painful for us financially, it has been a good break.

For me, it was somewhat enforced. I had to have surgery to repair a hernia - a minor enough procedure, but painful enough to take me out of the running for over a week. I had the surgery on the day before Thanksgiving, and though I was back at work on Monday, it took me longer to heal than I had thought.

The time off has given me time to reflect on where Tom and I are in our lives. I remember reading "Breakfast of Champions" as a teenager, and one line has stayed with me: Kurt Vonnegut wrote the book as a 50th birthday present to himself, and he said something along the lines of "Turning 50 is like crossing the peak of a roof - having ascended one sdie" I always knew that, past 50, the slow slide down the shingles begins, quickens, and ends with a trip over the gutters and a final face plant on the pavement below.

In my mind, I thought this change would be lessened for me than it is for most. By beginning losing my vision at age 23, I felt I had already addressed the decline that we all get to experience. Somehow, I had gotten there earlier than everyone else, and the increasing infirmities of davancing age would be easily taken in my stride.

But I find that I'm as vulnerable to this as everyone else. My vision has prepared me only to recognize that our bodies change over time, but this surgery has made me start to really see the view down the slope of the roof. It's an amaazing, awe inspriing and terrifying view, all at once. I feel more keenly than ever that who I am, and who my body is, are two very dstinct beings, and that my body is going to take a path that my mind cannot greatly control.

We all get to take this trip down, and it is in many ways a wonderful thing. Feeling the aging of my own body, and seeing Tom dealing with aches and pains that, at times, slow his step, continues to be fascinating to observe. How much worse would it be to confront mortality after having a life of no pain, no disabilities, no limitation? This slide helps us all prepare for that final free fall - it's frightening and beautiful.

The hernia surgery has also reminded me of another important life lesson: at 52, I should stop lifting radiators.

So now we are getting back into the swing of work. Our bond application is moving forward, and we hope to be back moving the Cheney Cottage very soon. As I type, Tom is on 62nd Street, finishing the laborious process of scraping the paint on the front of the Delaney house. I'll go over in an hour or so and put up all the colors we've chosen, so we can see how the house will look.

Soon we hope to have the two houses on the same lot, and electricity and running water restored. Then the real work can begin - the restoration of the Cheney Cottage, and the building of the new first floor for the Delaney House. This blog should go from being my railing against the City of Berkeley's draconian policies to being what I hadhoped it would be: an interesting tale of restoration of these two beautiful houses.

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

The Second Owners

Been a while, hasn't it? Things have not been moving much, so I haven't had a lot to post - but there is progress being made.

Basically, we've had to cave if we're going to get this project done. The City of Berkeley screwed us over - had we known they would be so implacable on the bond issue, we would never have moved the Delaney House back, and simply sold it. But now that we've moved it, we're kind of stuck - we HAVE TO finish this project. So we're proceeding, following the City's rules. But rest assured: the City of Berkeley Permit Center is an evil entity. The Death Star. Darth MacQuarrie rules.

Okay, so enough of that....

We have done a lot of research about the Delaney Family, the first family we know of who owned the house on 62nd Street. The house was probably built in the 1880s, but the first records we have found have been from 1901. So we can only assume the Delaneys owned the house before that - there's no way of being sure.

The Delaneys sold the house in 1947 - but to who?

In our work fixing up the house, stuck behind the wainscoting in the kitchen, we found a negative for an old photograph. We had it developed, and it showed a strong, somewhat stern looking african american woman, sitting on a porch that, although it resembled the Delaney House, was not our house.

Doris Anderson, from whom we bought the house, was really nice to us - waiting while we dealt with all our odd financing, and trusting that we would be successful in purchasing the house. So we wanted to do something nice for her - the negative presented us with the perfect opportunity, and we had it printed and sent her the photograph. We assumed the woman in the photo was her mother.

After receiving the photo, Mrs. Anderson called us, and Tom had a delightful conversation with her - from which he learned a lot of the Thomas family history. Here are his notes on his conversation with Doris:

Belle Dixon

The woman in the picture was not Doris' mother, but was her grandmother, Belle Dixon, at her house in Hearn Texas. She died at the age of 50 not long after the picture was taken in the 50's.

Doris was born in the early 1930's in Galveston. Doris's dad, George Thomas, came west from Texas to join his brother and cousin during the war to work in the Vallejo shipyards. Doris' mother Essie said she'd come west to join her husband if God gave her a sign that she should go. She said, "God, if I wake up at 2 am this morning, I'll take that as a sign I should move west." That night, she woke up at 2 am, and so she packed up Doris and her sister onto a train headed to Oakland. On the way west, Doris was impressed with all the soldiers and sailors, fearing that her sister would be snatched up, but her sister appreciated all the attention.

Doris lived with her folks during the war in a modern duplex in Vallejo. She and her family would visit with her uncle, a porter with the Southern Pacific railroad, who lived on Tyler Street in South Berkeley. Her uncle would take them joyriding around town on weekends. Little did she know that her family was looking for a new home in the neighborhood. Not long after graduating from high school in 1947, on a sleepover visit with friend or family member in West Berkeley, her mom called to tell to wait another week before coming home. When she called back, her mom told her to walk with her bags to 1634 62nd Street. Doris walked up the steps of a strange old Victorian home, and her mom opened the door, surprising her by saying "Welcome home!". After living in a modern duplex, and developing friendships in Vallejo, Doris was very disappointed to move to an old house in Berkeley!

According to Doris, back in the 1940's, 62nd Street was primarily an Italian neighborhood. She recalls only three other black families living on the street back then. After the war, George worked in San Francisco's Playland at the Beach amusement park. Essie raised chickens and Jackson roses (many of the rose bushes survive in the yard). Doris remembers having a chicken for a pet. George only had a 4th grade education, but he was very handy, building duck ponds and chicken coops, and basement bedrooms for Doris and her brother, Preston. Doris' older sister at first lived in the bedroom adjacent to the kitchen, until their aunt who came to live with them displaced her, and then she too moved into a basement bedroom.

Not long after moving to 62nd Street, Doris got married (in 1949) at the Progressive Baptist Church on King St and Alcatraz Ave (two blocks away). Her husband was a veteran, and they decided to move into their own house in North Berkeley on Kains Street. Doris remembers having her wedding reception in the backyard on 62nd street, fearing that the chickens, ducks and roosters would interrupt the festivities, but they were respectful. Doris' new neighbors in N. Berkeley had a parade to welcome her husband back from the war. Despite the warm welcome, he made a point of regularly breaking down and cleaning his infantry service rifle while sitting on the front porch of their home. Doris was too young to recognize that there were race lines in Berkeley at the time. As a young UC Berkeley student told her as part of a college research project, Doris and her husband were among the first racial block busters in Berkeley. Doris still owns the house on Kains, over 60 years later. She has fond memories of joining her family for holiday dinners and neighborhood cookouts on 62nd Street.

Doris worked for the California Youth Authority and moved to Sacramento for work in 1979. Doris' sister passed away in 1979, her mother passed away in the 1980's and her brother Preston passed away in the early 90's. Doris herself is a cancer survivor, and she has three daughters, living in Berkeley, Fremont and San Jose. Preston's house was left to his son, but after he died shortly after his parents, the house passed to Doris, his nearest living relative.

From that time, the house was mostly empty, except of course when the squatter moved in. Doris finally got him out of the house in 2009, and the house was then purchased by us. So it's quite likely that the Delaney House has only been sold twice - once in 1947 and then in 2009.

Despite the City of Berkeley's shenanigans, we still feel lucky to own the Delaney House - and the Cheney Cottage, still in pieces under tarps in Albany Village. Some day, they'll be together, and the history of both houses will continue to be written.