10-26-11 - The Eight Month Cruise

If you're buying a home in Seattle, you should always try to do so in early spring. This will give you a few months of wetness to see any problems, and then you'll have the whole summer to deal with them before the wet sets in again. (it also lets you see the homes during rains, which lets you look for water incursions while you shop). I tried to time it that way, but the home shopping took too long and I didn't wind up buying until late summer.

The problem with Seattle is that once it starts raining (around Oct 1 pretty reliably) it literally does not stop for the next 8 months. Sure maybe it stops for a day or two, but never long enough for the whole house to dry out and then give you a big chunk of dry days to do something like replace the roof or paint the exterior.

Fortunately I don't have any problem so large as that, but even for minor things it's damn annoying. For example some time around September I realized that I really need to get a coat of waterproofer on all my decking. Oh well, it's gonna have to wait 8 months. There's a couple of spots I need to touch up exterior paint, but you can't really do a good job of painting without a solid 5 days of dry and decent warmth.

It's almost like our houses are boats, and we go on an 8 month aquatic voyage every year. You really need to use those 4 months as a chance to get your boat up on dry dock, scrub off the moss, dig out the dry rot, apply epoxy, sand and paint, etc.