The backstory, part 2

I only just realized that, because of the way blogger organizes things (most recent posts first), that this story's getting told backwards... the story starts a the bottom of this page, not the top.

Oh, well.

Where was I? ... right. Renovating the Beach house would've been a pretty nice way to spend the winter, but nothing's ever so simple. Because they have another house. Didn't I mention? The one they just bought. This had come up, earlier, before we'd even met face-to-face.

From one of Jon's earliest e-mails:

"The one you will be working on is one the ocean, a 5 minute walk from a place we just bought which is absolutely georgeous, and on the bay. You can stay there. It is heated, winterized, with a jacuzzi, steam room, etc. We will come out weekly for the weekend. You can remain there, or return to the city if you want to get away.

... In April, we will have more work if you choose to remain, because the house on the bay needs painting, carpeting, electrical work, and grounds maintenance."

So 2 weeks later, when I get off the ferry to come see the Beach House, Jon announces that everything's changed - maybe. Someone's put an offer on the Beach House, they counter-offered, we're waiting to see... but if it sells, I'll be working on the new Bay House instead. And since it's sort of on the way, he's taking me there, first.

All of this delivered while walking at a frantic pace down these boardwalks that weave & wind their way through thickets of bamboo, with these weird gnarly California-looking pine trees above... and all these trippy, trippy houses, strangest mix of little summer-house cottages and ultra-modern beach houses, and everything in between.

And then we get to the end of the walk, and there's this gate, right at the intersection:



The trash cans sorta ruin this shot, but you get the idea... And we go in, and there's a whole little garden, with just the side of the house showing (I didn't get any shots of that) and if you go around, onto the deck that gives out on the Bay, and you turn around, you see this:



As you can see, I couldn't even get the whole house into the picture - almost, but not quite - even standing at the edge of shore. And the scale doesn't really come across - those 3 big windows in the middle? The bottom square of each one is an extra-wide (8ft) sliding patio door. This is the inside of that room:



The whole middle part of the house is just livingroom, part of it elevated with the diningroom and kitchen below. You could comfortably have 100 people in this livingroom - we had about 40 or 50 on New Year's eve, and it was half-empty . In the summer, there's a roof top deck the same size, another deck out front the same size, and a pool deck beyond that that's simply huge...

The house is designed for hosting huge parties and fundraising events, more than for living in. It even has a name: "Solstice", embroidered on all the towels. But it's also in pretty bad shape, from nobody living in it for so long. Leaky roof, flooded basement... more on all that later. There's also a whole other entry's worth of explanation as to how & why & what, but the short version is that This is what I'm spending the winter working on. But right now I'm tired & it's late, so let me stop here...