Six Years and Counting

That’s how long I’ve been entangled in this web that I call The Petch House.

I finished the laundry room, and yesterday I was sort cleaning up all of the tools, while at the same time getting everything out of the remaining half of the butler’s pantry. The butler’s pantry will be the next project. This room had become another one of those collection spots in the house for small things that I’m not sure what to do with.

One of the largest items in the room was the mini fridge I used while I was remodeling the kitchen a few years back. I listed it on Craig’s List (Sold the same day!) and I wanted to get it cleaned up. I pulled it away from the wall and behind it was a copy of the original pest inspection report from when I bought the house 6 years ago.

The report is dated April 1st, 2002, and I remember we had a 30 day escrow because we – the owner and I – were both eager to finish the deal quickly. I don’t remember exactly when escrow closed, but it was towards the end of May, so that makes it 6 years in the next week or two.

The inspection report is not pretty, and I don’t mean because it was behind a fridge for a few years. It goes on for 10 pages (legal size) listing all of the problems with the house. The inspection report only deals with problems of structural, rot, fungus, and infestation. It covers both the house and the 2 apartments over the garage. Fifty seven hundred square feet of living space! If you throw in the garages and walk-up attic it is 8550 sq. ft. of floor space. I read it again yesterday and all I could think was, “What the hell was I thinking when I bought this place”.

To give you some idea of just how bad it was, when we were in escrow the first appraisal was called off by my mortgage broker because the appraiser called her half way through and went on and on about how bad the place was. She called me and told me it wasn’t going well and asked me if I wanted to continue. I told her to give me two weeks. While we were in escrow I went over every day and cleaned up the apartments over the garage so they would at least look rentable. I spent about a $1000 on paint, door replacement, and window repair, and made several dump runs before I even owned the place. The second appraisal went a little better.

The big-ticket items on the pest inspection were the three porches and the two story addition. On the report he suggested replacing all of the porches with Trex Decking and pressure treated wood. Right, on an 1895 Victorian. {roll eyes} I rebuilt 2 of the porches with redwood and fir. The rest of the report lists lots of little things. It is the inspectors job to point out every little problem and he did.

There are also notes of interest on the report. These are things that may fall outside the scope of the inspection, but he felt obligated to mention them. Things like the numerous broken windows, plumbing leaks, piles of debris and garbage in the back yard, peeling vinyl floors and ratty carpets. It was also noted that he was unable to inspect under the house because of the large amount of “broken glass and garbage”. Other areas were inaccessible because of sagging plumbing and unsafe wiring. Again, what the hell was I thinking when I read all of that 6 years ago. I’m not sure, really, but what can I say, love is blind.

On the last page the inspector tallies up the dollar amounts to fix all of the things on the report. This has nothing to do with addressing code issues. Nor does it address any electrical or plumbing problems. No HVAC. Nothing cosmetic in anyway. This has nothing to do with an Occupancy Permit, because they aren’t required here. This is just to repair structural issues that could lead to the house going from really bad to “It needs to be bulldozed”. This is for the bank, basically. The grand total was $20,030.00 + T&M.

I guess the “+T&M” means “Plus Time and Materials”. I never really asked about this at the time, but after reading it now, I would think the $20,030.00 would have included some time and materials. Maybe that is just away to cover his butt because the inspector knows it will most likely go higher. I’m sure at the time, rather than seeing the report as a red flag, I saw it as a bargaining tool when making an offer on the house.

Actually, I used the report more like blunt instrument than a tool. I doubled the value at the bottom of the report and added $10,000 more, subtracted that from the asking price, and that was my offer. I would take the house as-is and the current owner could walk away. Although it wasn’t stated in writing, through my realtor it was intimated that this was not a starting point for negotiations. This was my one and only offer and they had 24 hours to respond. I like playing hardball, and we all know what the answer was.

I was putting a very large down-payment on the house so I could ignore the report. If it worked out the way I planned I would instantly have more than 50% equity in the house. Big woop, right, on a house that is in such bad shape? Really, what this meant was that even if the place did crumble in to the ground, the bank could recoup their stake in the house just on the value of the land. Maybe they don’t actually look at it in those terms, but that is essentially what it meant. My stellar credit rating helped, I’m sure.

It was a good risk for the bank and a bad risk for me. I took every last cent I had ever saved in my life and dumped it in to a house that seemed to need more work than I could ever do myself and could never afford to pay to have done. I don’t remember exactly, but at the close of escrow I had something like $300 to my name. This could have ended up being very, very bad. And since its not over yet, I guess it still could.

Below is the short list of what I’ve done in the last 6 years. All work needing it, is done with permits, inspected, and meets code.

• Remodeled 2 apartments over the garage, and I have great tenants
• Removed 3 bathrooms and 3 kitchens (rentals)
• Removed 2 story addition
• Rebuilt 2 porches
• All new wiring from the poll on, with new sub-panels and main disconnect
• All new copper water lines from the curb on and several new drains
• All new phone lines, CATV, and coaxial from the poles on (work in progress)
• Restored kitchen and bathrooms, including building my own cabinets
• Stripped off asbestos siding and restored exterior detail
• Had all of the missing interior and exterior trim remilled out of salvaged old-growth redwood.
• Stripped exterior to bare wood and repainted
• Built a laundry room
• Stripped all of the wallpaper and old flooring back to bare plaster and original floors
• Stripped all of the paint out of 4 rooms – all with LOTS of woodwork
• Removed all of the 1920s partitions and rebuilt walls
• Cleaned a “shooting gallery” out of the attic
• Purchased antique lighting for the entire house (mostly rewired and installed)
• Purchased antique tile for the 2 fireplace hearths
• Purchased antique doorknobs, mortise locks, and hinges for all of the doors
• Purchased antique Eastlake doors for the entire house
• Plus 1.4 zillion other little things

The last 6 years have been a blur, but really a lot of fun. To date my total debt is $9,000 on a $20,000 home equity line of credit. Four thousand of the $9,000 debt went for dental work and taxes 2 years ago. My 2 credit cards carry a zero balance. There are a lot of things about my life that I’m not proud of, but boy, this is not one of those.

There are still 1.2 zillion little things left to do and there are some big jobs left, as well. I need to rebuild 2 chimneys. I need to replace all of the sidewalk around the house and build fences. I need to insulate the attic and put in some type of heating system. And the next thing I’m doing – the one that makes me the most nervous – is to rebuild the missing cabinets in the dining room. After that, the rest is financially minor, cosmetic stuff.

Stay tuned, the next six years are to be a nail-biter.

A Chronicle for The Chronicle

The Petch House in late 2006


I thought I’d do a little recap for any new readers that came to The Petch House blog by way of the article in the April 14th edition of The San Francisco Chronicle. Also, this month happens to be my 2 year anniversary for the blog, and next month is my 5 year anniversary for owning The Petch House, so a recap seemed in order anyway.

The basic plot is this: The house is a 3000 sq ft, 1895 Queen Anne Victorian in Eureka, CA (Remember us, way up north?). The Petch family were the original owners of the house in 1895. Hence the name, The Petch House. Thomas Petch was an electrician and ran The Eureka Lighting Company, which was a subsidiary of a SF company. At one point he also operated the local coal-gas plant and the electric power plant, which were located at the foot of H St here in Eureka.

From the 1898 City Directory


The Petch family fell on hard times in the mid teens and there was a nasty divorce. By the 1920s PG&E was running the show in town and the Petch Family Lighting business was no where to be found. I suspect there were hired goons from PG&E involoved. They probably rolled in to town with a lead pipe and a sack full of doorknobs and strongly suggested that Thomas Petch give up his position. He ended up in Santa Clara, living with his sister and running the power plant there.

The house went to Phyllis Petch, the wife, and she turned the home in to a respectable boarding house. There is evidence that she took up residence in the dining room and rented out the 4 bedrooms to young couples and retirees.

Ca. 2002 with Asbestos siding. Yuck!


Phyllis sold the house in 1919. At some point in the early 1920s the house was officially cut up in to 4 apartments, and a 2 story addition was added to create two new kitchens and bathrooms for the house. You can see the addition on far left, near the back, in the picture above.



In 1926 the carriage house was unceremoniously ripped down and a Mission Revival structure (see above) was built in it’s place. This building had 2 apartments on the second floor, and 6 Model T sized garages on the first floor. The property now had 6 apartments for tenants, and 6 garages for those noisy horseless carriages.

Sometime in the 1940s or 50s the house was Eisenhowered a bit. Some of the gingerbread was stripped off and the house was covered in hideous asbestos siding. Then nothing happened for a very, very long time.

The house remained a pleaceful place to live for many decades. I've met people who lived here in the 1960s and the 80s and both had fond memories of the place. Then in the 1990s the house was taken over by a rental management company. They filled the home with Section 8 drug addicts, prostitutes, and an axe wielding Nazi. The third floor, walk-up attic became a full-on shooting gallery. It was by far the worst house in an otherwise nice neighborhood.

For some silly reason, which I can’t quite remember at the moment, I thought it would be a good idea to buy the place and turn it back in to a single family home. Despite the history, much of the interior grandeur of the house remained intact. With the exception of the two High-Victorian oak fireplace mantles, and some fir decking on the porches, the house is made entirely of old-growth redwood. The grand staircase, all of the mill work, floors, ceilings, doors, windows, joists, studs, casing, siding…..everything. It’s all redwood. If nothing else, this means the house can withstand a lot of abuse and neglect with out rotting and falling apart. Which it did, and it didn’t.

The only upgrade done to the place between 1926 and 2001 was the addition of the charming electrical conduit installed in 1951 that snaked through the house to give outlets to every room. For the most part, when I bought the place in 2002 the house was still using the original 1895 wiring and plumbing, which had been extended in the 1920s during the apartment renovation. Each apartment got one electrical outlet. It’s a wonder the place didn’t burn down. Also untouched were the 1895 and 1920s bathrooms and kitchens.

Working on a shoe-string budget, and doing all of the work myself, I’ve completely replaced all of the wiring, plumbing, and natural gas lines. I took some classes to learn residential wiring, and a neighbor - a master plumber - has given me technical know-how and much more, so I was able to do the plumbing and gas myself. I removed the 2 story addition, all of the asbestos siding, and restored all of the gingerbread.

Last summer I finally painted the house after stripping all of the siding to bare wood (First picture at the top). The original siding, with octagon and fish-scale shingles, and horizontal shiplap siding, was in great shape under the asbestos siding. The house had only been painted twice in more than 100 years. The last time was in the 1920s when the addition was added. In some places you could rub your hand on the siding and be to bare wood in a few seconds.

The 2 story addition was made of old-growth redwood and I was able to salvage about 80% of the wood. This was used to recreate some of the exterior gingerbread, to rebuild missing parts of the interior of the house, make kitchen and bathroom cabinets, and reproduce some damaged millwork. The interior is still very much a work in progress.

During the apartment phase, they didn’t go to great lengths to move walls around. For the most part, getting the house back to it’s original floor plan was not too difficult. With very few exceptions, the house now is as it was in 1895. I’ve been able to use the wood from the addition to do all of the rebuilding, so not only will it look the same on the outside, but the parts you don’t see are also built with historically accurate building materials. Nobody will know this but me, but no matter, I think it’s cool.

I work with salvage and used materials extensively, not only because I think it’s the right thing to do, but also because I really don’t have the money to be running down to the lumberyard or home center every time I need something. Dumpster diving, scavenging, and swinging deals with local shops is all part of the fun. It just makes sense. To date, on the interior, I’ve completed the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom. I’m currently working on the downstairs bathroom. At all times I look to the past for inspiration and design, while thinking about the future and modern necessities on upgrades.

Living in Eureka has made some aspects of the restoration difficult, and other aspects easier. The weather is very similar to The Bay Area, especially the peninsula. The big difference is that Eureka only has about 30,000 people. It’s a lot less crowded and things are more affordable, of course, but there aren’t as many services or resources.

Eureka is a nice town with some amazing architecture, but it does have it’s problems. Even at only 30,000 people, it’s still the Big City for the area. Northern California, and especially Humboldt County are unbelievably beautiful. People often use the term Living Behind The Redwood Curtain, as if we’re cut off from the world by what’s left of the ancient redwood forests. It really does feel that way at times.

Eventually, this place will become The State Capital, so word will get out about just how nice it is up here. Until then, I’ll just keep plugging away at The Petch House, while living in a fantasy world. I’m not sure I’ll ever finish.