bonnydoonstation

[bonnydoonstation]

[bonnydoonstation]

The Mud Pit

You know who loves 3 acres of swamp...the frogs. They are going nuts for it. You can hear them early morning and late at night. I wonder if we should just officially turn this spot into a frog preserve? Get some crocks! Then it will really feel like Australia. 

So the back story on this one...In order to solve my poison oak problem we had the property cleared of all the weeds (they were about 4 ft high for a majority of the property), most of the blackberry bushes pulled and hopefully all the poison oak a long with it. The problem? It turns out everything was sitting in about 4 inches of water. And at this point our driveway has turned into a full blown lake. So swamp land is a fitting description. 

All we can do is just keep clearing shit out of here so we can make sense of it all. First step - finally getting that crazy gas tank removed. Jim called 100 different gas tank companies and its probably taken us 6 months to sort out how to get that thing out of there. 

The next step - pull out that sketchy barbed wire fence. Pull down  the weed growing structures. And try and get rid of the rest of that razor sharp blackberry. 

[bonnydoonstation]

Holy shit it gets cold up here. So cold it froze are pipes...and we almost didn’t have running water for our first Thanksgiving with the Hyman family all in town. 

Luckily the boys re-PVC piped the jurry rigged set-up and that turned out to be one of the quicker projects of the weekend. Compared to the bathroom which still managed to be a really nightmare and eventually required back up from a real deal plumber. The good news is we are live - 2 bedroom and 2 working bathrooms! 

The weekend highlights were family wine tasting at our new favorite spots: Rafanelli, Siani, and Arista. Lots of Whiskey tasting at Alley 6 and X. Of course not until after the house work was done. Beyond the shower, the boys also painted the new pump house and used some power tools for things. I think we made probably 10 runs to Ace Hardware. Solid long weekend. 

And finally Thanksgiving. We got a Healdsburg Turkey Trot, 60 mile ride and dinner at the Morris family residence all into one day. 

[bonnydoonstation]

Oof. Sometimes you get the house and sometimes the house gets you. I got annihilated by the fucking poison oak forest that is Bonney Doon Station. The second time in 1 month. And this time it was brutal. All over my face and behind my ears. Up my legs and way too close to my bikini line. 

I’m not sure what was worse the behind ears itching or the mania from taking shit loads of steroids. I’m going to go ahead and rate this as top 5 worst experiences. And to be honest was considering weather or not we’d need to sell the place. I mean what if I could never do any work outdoors anymore? What if I’m allergic to our house? 

Jim could see my concern and acted swiftly. He’s promised to bring in the big guns (tractors) to get rid of the invasive, spikey blackberry bush and hopefully the poison oak with it. 

From now on it double pants, double shirts, gloves and a lot of washing with technu. 

[bonnydoonstation]

This weekend is exactly what I wanted the house to be. A project that would bring our friends together. Spurlock and Lauren came up to help us build a foundation for the much anticipated Pumphouse. Step 1 to getting drinkable water. 

The project started with our first recycled water adventure. Jim and Spurs picked up a water trailor and filled it up from the recycled water spigget just between our place and town. Then the fun part - watering the area of land we were going to dig up with essentially a fire house. The stuff boys dreams are made of I imagine. 

With the ground properly soaked, we started to dig up and clear the land first thing Saturday morning. Jim had a plan but given none of us had done this before it was a bit of test and learn. We cleared plants, dug up the ground and used the rake to flatten it all out as best as we could. Then we laid the 2x4xs in the ground and drove stakes in to hold them in place. From there we put down so mesh to keep rodents out. Took the new truck down to the landscape supply shop, filled her up with base rock, dumped that into our sand box and tampered it down. Finally step was another run or two to the landscape spot for gravel and boom - we’d built our foundation. 

It was hard work. Plus we had morning bike rides and runs so the avo toast, rooftop cocktails, and pizza were well deserved. Weekends like this I feel grateful for our friends. Spurlock and Lauren crushed the project. We couldn’t have done it without them. Their spirit and energy just makes the station feel even more like a special space. 

I also just felt fucking lucky Healdsburg is in one place. This was our first weekend back post fall fires - which I feel like are going to be an every year thing now. I was absolutely beside myself  imaging all of Healdsburg just being wiped off the map. No more farms. No more vineyards. No more tasting rooms. 

In my heart I know buying this house is a gamble. Healdsburg is just not going to do well with the drought, flooding and fires that will inevitably come from climate change. It feels vulnerable. Humbling. And at the same time there is a sense of resilience and community I’ve never experienced. 

On Friday there was a celebration in the time square that the two didn’t burn down. Bienvenidos Healdsburg - welcome home. The park had a little gratitude wall up where people were writing what they were thankful for (fire fighters) and the kids got a round two of Halloween since everyone was evacuated the weekend before. 

Having this house just brings you so close to the weather, the land, farming and water. I mean we had to go get water to just get the land ready to dig because by mid November its not rained a single day. And we are building this pump house for a well that’s likely to dry up in the near future. All of which won’t matter if the whole place burns down. 

“Don’t worry you have fire insurance” couldn’t be less comforting. Its not about my house burning down. It’s the entire Sonoma economy that’s going to crash. 

In the mean time, I’m enjoying every bit of time we get in Healdsburg and with our friends. And just feeling so lucky everytime I drive down Westside road. There’s something spiritual almost other worldly about it in the fall. The way the sun shines down through the oak trees and across the fields of grape vines turned orange and red for fall. 

[bonnydoonstation]

Jim is relentless. I swear if he had actually lost his eye he’d still be smiling this big the next day. Luckily, it looks worse than it is.

It’s been almost 4 years since I started working at Atlassian. It started off about as bad an experience as you can get…the kind of stuff you hear about being somewhat par for the course at tech companies. But about 6 months in I got a new boss and she cleaned up shop. It felt like us against the world and for 3 years I worked my fucking butt off for her. 15 hour days were normal. Checking email while on vacation was normal. Not taking a vacation was normal. I worked so hard I had to check myself into rehab - a 12 day silent retreat.

Part of buying this house, was for me, a way to recalibrate. To keep myself grounded. Attached to the earth. Connected to something real. And away from my computer, email, slack, meetings and stressed out people.

I don’t know that having the house has helped me balance work any better but it has given me a break on the weekends and sure as hell feels great when you are out here. I think we are about 11 weeks in now. We’ve now got two working bedrooms and bathrooms. Some furniture. And a fully tarped roof. We’ve got electrical, plumbing. drywalling, painting, flooring and deep cleaning skills under our belts. Need to replace a moldy bit of ceiling? No problem, we’ll saw that thing right out.

So this weekend we moved on to what we thought would be the fun stuff - outside work. We put in a sensor light so when you walk outside its not pitch black dark and fixed the gate so it opens and locks with the clicker and a code. And then we decided to forge a trail through the creek so we could see what was down there and pull out all the trash. It was going really well until Jim decided to sawza the home of a bee family. They bombed him hard. First in the eye, then they were in his hair, stuck to his clothes and up his pants. Before I knew it we had run back to the house and he was stripped naked yelling out front. Sometimes we get the station and sometimes the station gets us.

We worked from 9am to 5pm yesterday. Forgot to eat lunch. Up and down ladders. On the roof. Home Depot. Cutting 100 year old rope off the oak tree. Raking piles of leaves and razor sharp blackberry bush. I’ve got blisters on my hands and weird spider bites on my chest. Jim still can’t quite open his eye today.

I didn’t check my email or respond to slack messages. I’m busy out here. Working hard. Enjoying the quiet. Being creative. Being in my body. Not really thinking about anything. Immediate gratification. Challenges. A bit of pain here and there. Not being sure you know how to do something but having the confidence to giving it a go. A supply of first aid stuff just in case someone looses a finger. Jim’s legs always seem to be bleeding. Trying to keep Bruce from putting his nose into a snake whole.

I think I’m just an intense person. I’ve certainly come at this house with the same energy I throw down at Atlassian. And if I’m not careful I’ll burn at both ends. But hopefully this project will tilt me in the right direction. If only it paid better.

And as for Jim and the bees…the sawza is still sticking into the wood out the back in the creek. Retrieving it is certainly a job that needs to be done…but for now we are letting that one wait. 

[bonnydoonstation]

The house came with the roof mostly tarped.  And you can see why when you walk around the house. Aside from the gaping moldy whole in the hallway there are several water stains on the cieling and floors. But we didn’t really know what we were dealing with until this week. 

When the wind blew off the tarp. A ticking time bomb. We checked the weather forecast and figured we had at least a week before it really rained. So instead of finishing the bathroom off or repairing the black mold situation - we set out to tarp our first roof. 

I think in general roof tarping is pretty straightforward. But in this house - I’m pretty sure a good chunk of the roof won’t actually hold your weight, none of the lines are straight and there are several roof lines / connection points from all the additions they built. 

But like with all the other projects we did our Home Depot run and then set off to just figure it out. LB and Damon came up with little Oscar to help. We drilled the tarp into 1x2s, pulled it as tight as we could and then got a load of sandbags up there to hold it down. 

I’m looking out the window now and it’s just started to mist. Come on tarp job! 

[bonnydoonstation]

This is Dad’s “what the shit!?” face. I think the bathroom was thinking the same thing. Within an hour or two Dad had ripped out the bathroom toilet, vanity, sinc, shower and flooring. 

To be fair - I thought this bathroom was fully condemned. It was seriously disgusting. I wouldn’t even go in there. The floor was covered in mud, the toilet didn’t work, the shower was falling off the wall and covered in mold and backed up drain gunk. The walls were painted gray with a layer of sparkle that sort of looked like nail polish glitter. Sink and vanity were holding on by a thread.

As is typically with this house - things below the surface were a bit wonky as well. The shower drain wasn’t the standard distance from the wall so the previous owner cut out the bottom of the floor and slid the shower tray under the wall. The result? Rotted through floor boards. Those puppies had to be totally ripped out.   

So the job of the weekend? About 15 trips to Home Depot. Power tools. Plumbing. Floorboards. New vinyl. New toilet. Strapping the water heater to the wall (safety?). Painting (3 coats to cover the glitter). New shower. New sinc. New vanity. And voila. Bathroom #2 is online. 

But not without a little scope creep. To be fair weren’t supposed to replace the shower this weekend but who could resist. The real scope creep is when Dad had me pull the piece of wood off the ceiling in the hallway to reveal some good old black mold where a leak in the roof clearly rotted all the way through. Lovely. 

Weekend Roundup 

Before 

During 

After

[bonnydoonstation]

You know your house is a home when:

Jim says: when your love bugs are there.

Jess says: when you don’t want to leave. 

[bonnydoonstation]

This is what a long weekend with the full Hyman crew looks like. Dad outlasted both the boys. Maybe that’s because he got to spend the weekend at the drafting table. 

The weekend started off chill. We drove almost all the way across the city before realizing we’d left the drawings at the house. Critical mistake. So by the time we got to Healdsburg, the right thing to do was really just have a glass of wine and then head over to the Michilen starred dinner Dad had booked for us. 

Old Healdsburg meets new Healdsburg. The rooftop bar had a full garden and gorgeous view of the rolling hills. Jim had forgotten his sunglasses and the waiter quickly offered him a selection of them. The toilets were heated. 4 hours later we had eaten and drank away the pre design charette jitters. 

And those jitters weren’t for not. The problem with having an architect over to your house is that they see everything. Every outlet without a plate. Every whole that needs patching. Every door that’s missing. Or window without a screen. Shiny paint instead of mat. Entire walls that aren’t touching the ceiling. Cords running to nowhere. Places where the wood is rotting and ceiling is likely leaking...ok so a lot of this is unique to Bonny Doon Station but you get the point. 

Jim and I already have a new normal. I’d covered the floor of bedroom 2 with a tarp because after pulling the carpet up I realized we had a small bit of asbestos tile under there + about an inch of dirt and who knows what else. The original plan was to get someone in there to do the official California asbestos removal but the guy never showed so we opted for option 2: seal it up. I put on a hazmat suit and gas mask. Got the shop vac out. And sucked up all the dirt and dust and rat pellets. Then we covered the floor with the cheapest vinyl home depot sells, duct taped it to the wall so no asbestos particles could come out and carpeted the damn thing. Throw in a wall clean + paint job + incense and boom - new room! 

Throughout the weekend there was a bit of scope creep. Like when Dad decided we needed to fix the leaking toilet. It started out with a simple Home depot run and inner toilet replacement parts but quickly escalated to needing a sawza. 

The other addition that was desperately needed was Kelly’s organizational skills. While I was using the kitchen cupboards to store our growing arsenal of cleaning supplies and tools, Jim was determined to have everything on the table where he could see them. Kelly solved the problem with propper racks and buckets and vuajla! We have structure to the chaos. Also. This woman hustles. I got out painted and out cleaned by her all weekend! 

My highlight was the drawings Dad did. We had a temporary drafting table set up on saw horses that got the job done. By the end of the weekend Dad had drawn the existing floor plan...which actually doesn’t look so bad on paper, the pumphouse site...if only we had clean water coming out of the well, and a vision for what the house wants to be. A little visioning certainly helps keep the momentum up. 

There were also great breaks for beer. Like the live music we caught at my favorite brewery...until Bruce tried to bit some lady and got us kicked out. And you can always count on a weekend ending at Mcrostie to seal the deal. 

We left absolutely wrecked. I had to take the next week off of everything. Slept 11 hours a night the next 4 days. And then it was time to turn it back around and head back up! 

This time with our first friends Rowin and Vick + baby Frankie sleepover. That’s how you know you’re really making progress! It was nice having Frankie to slow us down a bit. With the four of us we got through a serious daddy long leg / cob web / wasp nest (inside...seriously) clean out + painted the biggest and tallest wall in the house. Plus we hung some shower curtains up where doors should be and had the electrician ground the box that was waiting to kill us all. The biggest improvement was Jim’s demanding we put custom window screens in. I thought the $500 was a huge waste of money and was I wrong. Holy shit. No more wasps in the house! Screens are amazing. 

Thank god for the wineries. There is nothing better than getting after it all day, taking a shower (with your mouth closed so you don’t get ecoli) and then bouncing over to yet another gorgeous vineyard with your crew for a lightly chilled pinot noir. 

It was all I need to head into this week guns blazing. I got my spreadsheet out and began the GC hunt. Researched about 10 of them, emailed 8, interviewed 4 and we are on our way to a shortlist. My current panic attack is the $700 - $2000 a square foot quote they are all giving me which is making this whole idea seem totally unrealistic. 

On the other hand, things are starting to come together. The money in escrow for electrical is now spent and requirements checked off the list. We’ve got drawings for the pumphouse with the surveyor coming out to mark property boundaries and concrete contractor coming to give us quote. 

Even the well situation is becoming more interesting. On the plus side the water geologist reviewed historical drill sites and suspects we may have alternative well sites. Next step is to test soil. Also we likely have a spring under the big grass bump in the paddock...which Jim thinks he can drill out with an Ore?  Water is the new gold. The down side is we can’t dredge the well because there is an oak tree root clogging it...which Jim thinks he can cut out with a log cutter thing that goes 25 ft down. If Jim keeps all 10 fingers and toes by the end of this project I’ll consider it a win. The saga continues. 

My biggest take away this week is the more we can do ourselves throughout this whole process the more fun we are going to have. I’m also getting more practice with ambiguity and trying not to react to every high and low because its all constantly changing. 

The biggest moment of joy I had was feeling so happy to see Jim totally in his element. I’ve never seen him wanting to learn like he’s wanting to right now. This project brings out what I love best about him. His independent spirit, I can do anything confidence, and eternal optimism. I’d buy this house again just to give space and time to nurture that. 

[bonnydoonstation]

I love sharks...I love looking at pictures and reading about them. I’ve scuba dived and surfed with them. And all that curiosity means I’m not that afraid of them. I mean I know the Sharky spots and still surf there because its my favorite wave (looking at you Australia). 

But you put me in a tent, pretty much anywhere, and I’m convinced I’ll be eaten by a bear or a pack of coyotes. So the first night at the Station was a bit tumultuous...ie I didn’t sleep. Even Bruce was up barking at sounds on and off all night. A little critter in the roof that I named Sirus. A hawk. A ghost. Who knows. 

The neighbor warned me about rattlesnakes, wildbore, wild turkey, coyote and mountain lions that cruise down from the forest above us onto our property. The last owner had a gun he’d shoot  snakes with when they got close to his dogs. What the fuck. I have no defense tools. 

So my plan was to just keep Bruce in at night and make sure he stayed around the house during the day. All was going fine until Jim and I took a break in our 8 hour day clean / paint fest to check on him. Bruce!? Bruce!? No Bruce. Where the fuck did he go? Jim goes up to the back of the property with a machete to see if Bruce got stuck somewhere in the bush. I run down to the front to see if Bruce went out the gate. No Bruce. My heart is racing. I can hear the neighbors voice in my head - don’t let your dog run around...Shit, isn’t that why we bought this place so Bruce could be free? Fuck, where did he go? We’ve killed our dog only two weeks in! Bruce!? Bruce!? Why don’t I have a tracker on him? Oh my god an animal probably got him. I wouldn’t even know how to protect him if something big came after him. Bruce!? It felt like eternity. My body was shaking with fear. 

And then the little shit comes running out of the shed right next to the house with a big smile on his face. Must have been after a mouse or something. Jesus fucking christ. I’m terrified of bush animals. 

Put me in the ocean. I know how to do the stingray shuffle, I know how to look out for Jellies and which ones sting vs kill you (again, looking at you Australia) and I’m totally at peace with the sharks. But mountain lions, rattle snakes, and critters in the roof...this is going to take some getting used to. 

[bonnydoonstation]

So day 1. Holy shit. This is possibly the dirties house I’ve ever been into. The spiders have overtaken it. The mud has overtaken it. The mold is beginning to overtake it.  Even the house cleaner who came to help for our first day is overwhelmed. I don’t know where to start. 

I’m not really country. And it may be too late to have just realised that about myself. I mean, there were a couple of years in college where I got into cowboy boots and line dancing but I think that’s because that’s what you did at the only bar in town that let you in at 18. Garth Brooks. Willie Nelson. Wide Open Spaces. Not the same as an 1870s farmhouse house. 

Here’s what I’m realising. We are kind of on our own as far as the basics go (water and poop baby) which wouldn’t be a huge deal except for that climate change is most certainly going to fuck us up. The drought and fire risks I spend all day at work talking about suddenly get very real. Can you tell the panic is starting to set it? WHAT DID WE DO!?

Ooof. And...I know we are going to figure this out. We are going to throw everything we know at it and most importantly learn from our community. Jim set us up with the Water Commissioner. We did a tour of the water treatment facility to see what turning poop into water looks like at scale.  I mean...ew.

Oh, and our water tested positive for E Coli. So its bottled water and closing your mouth when you shower until we get things sorted. In the meantime - I’m gutting the place as best I can so I can scrub it down to its bones. Carpet, blinds, and molded shit...all out in the first, of what will probably be many, shitka piles. 

*PS: lesson learned from this week: always wear a mask when pulling up carpet. you never know what’s under it. like in this case...I found asbestos vinyl tiles and rat poison. So ya, I probably shouldn’t have been breathing that. Again...ew.  

After

[bonnydoonstation]

Dog Beach was my first spot. I’d ride my red beach cruiser 1/2 a mile down Sea Point to PCH, cross the road, leave my bike leaned up against the trash bin and sit my bum on a piece of driftwood. I knew the sunset times all summer. How’d they’d get later and later and the wind would start to pick up. Whipping my hair around as fall krept in.  I would sit there by myself (+ my dog Lake) and just feel the wide openness of the horizon. A sense that just everything must be possible with that much space. Since then, there is truly nothing that has brought me a sense of calm like that view.

A decade later, San Francisco has certainly fed the everything must be possible in me. I moved here right after a summer internship at the UN in Germany. The economy had just collapsed but I landed a job at Business for Social Responsibility where I got a 7 year education in the intersection of business and Sustainability. When I left BSR for Atlassian I promised myself I’d start Atlassian’s sustainability program. And 4 years in, I’ve done it.

Somewhere along the journey though I lost my sense of Dog Beach calm. It got lost in the tech hustle. Or the cold weather.  Or not having a piece of driftwood to post up on. I tried all kinds of things to get it back. Less friends. More alone time. Less working. More exersize. Less exersize. A dog. More volunteering. Less volunteering. More planning my time. No commitments. Calendars on calendars. More vacations. Less traveling. House plants. Cooking. Until this spring where I decided to really take a risk and do a 12 day silent meditation retreat. To say it was “off brand” would be an understatement. 

What I learned is that I need to be out in nature to get the calm back. I could sit among the pine trees at my retreat and watch the sun flicker through the leaves the same way I could watch a sunset. Or listen to the birds the same way I listened to the waves. I just needed fewer people. No people actually. No one else's vibes - just mine. Which it turns out - are chill.

About 3 weeks later I’d just come back from a seriously hectic trip to India and was escaping to Timber Cover (beach + forest = ideal calm). On the way, Jim and I stopped to check out a property in Healdsburg that looked interesting. About 3 acres. Right outside town but pretty much off grid (on well and septic). On a whimsical weekend, it sounded fun to check out. 

We pulled up the long driveway and stepped out of the car. The sun drenched through the giant oak tree above me. I looked out across the property. Just a bunch of vineyards and some rolling hills. A place where I could hear the sound of the birds again. And actually feel the warmth of summer. I knew instantly this was my calm place. My Dog Beach 2.0.