Gay House Movers:
The Rockhead and Quarry Story

A lot of work has happened at the Kenney Cottage.

As I mentioned in June, our friend Kazu came out to work on the house. He did an amazing job, clearing the lot of debris, then working on getting the house ready to disassemble. He cleared out tons of junk, and labelled most of the boards so that we can reassemble the house once we find a site.

While Kazu was here, we made a surprise purchase: a 27 foot semi trailer. We found a 1965 Reliance Trailer, formerly owned by Emporium Capwell, and hauled it over to the Kenney Cottage lot. The trailer will be the new home of the Kenney Cottage, at least for now, once it is disassembled. When everything is safe inside, we will pull the trailer down to a storage lot in Oakland, and the Kenney Cottage will be safe and dry until we find its new home.

Kazu had to go back to Japan, and so we have hired a crew to take on the job. The leader of that group, Luis, is working hard on getting the house dismantled. They have made incredible progress.

Inside the Kenney Cottage, many of the walls were covered with layer upon layer of wallpaper and paint. The living room in particular was awful: wallpaper had been covered over with plaster, which was then painted. The original redwood walls were hidden, but also, the planks of the walls could not be removed until the wallpaper was off, so each plank could be separated. This is what the rooms looked like:

Luis and his crew have been removing wallpaper, and today we went over to see the incredible results.  We have always known that the Kenney Cottage was going to be beautiful, once the old-growth redwood walls were again visible - here are the first indications of how beautiful it will be.
Once the house is brought to a new location, the various boards can be refinished before being put back in place. But even unfinished, it is possible to see the depth and beauty of the incredible redwood.

So, more progress. And the other houses are moving forward too. More soon.

There is a lot to do to get the Kenney Cottage ready to move.  So we imported help.

Our friend Kazu from Japan has come to help us get the house ready, and then to dismantle it. Kazu is a very meticulous person, and we know he'll do an excellent job. He is here for a month, working on the Kenney Cottage.

The first step was clearing the lot. Because of all the construction (taking off the roof, lowering the house, etc), the overgrown plants have to be removed. So Kazu's first job was removing all the brush, weeds and blackberry vines. He did an incredible job - the lot is really clean.




Now that we can get in, the next step was dismantling the front porch. Tom and I did that today, stripping off layers of roofing, and taking the porch down. The porch columns have been saved to be put back when the house is rebuilt, but the rest of the wood on the porch was too rotten to preserve.


On Monday, Phil Joy comes to lower the house, and on Thursday, the roofers come to strip off the old roofs. Then the dismantling of the rest of the house will begin in earnest.

Tom and I do not see well.

I'm not talking about the fact that I'm legally blind, I'm talking about our inability to see a house as it is. We look at a house, and we see what it was, and what it can be. We see how the house will be when we finish restoring it. We see the potential, we see how it was built, and we see the future.

On Friday, May 25th, we took possession of the Kenney Cottage. Although we have done a lot of work on it earlier (caring for the lot, removing stucco, etc), it was not actually our house. We had a handshake agreement with Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA), but we didn't actually own the house until Friday. But on Friday, we paid one dollar for the house, and it became our property.



Today, we spent several hours clearing the lot of all the growth, and getting it ready for its next incarnation: the Kenney Cottage is going to be dismantled and put in storage until we can find a suitable location for it.

As part of the clean up, I went inside and reconnoitered. I know many people have been wanting to see the inside of the house, but to refresh your memory, here is the outside:

Here are some photos of the interior, taken today:








Beautiful, right? But it's not only us: everyone who has been in it has been struck by its simple charm - even in its current dilapidated state, the Kenney Cottage is clearly a diamond in the rough. And when it arrives at its new location, and is reassembled and restored, it's going to be beautiful.

The plan is to lower the house down, and remove the roofing shingles. Then the various pieces of the house will be labelled, and we will begin dismantling the house, putting it onto a storage container. Once done, the container will be hauled to a secure location, where it will wait until we find a lot.

Ultimately, the Kenney Cottage will be on a new foundation, with a full basement below (probably a second unit), and it will have new wiring, plumbing, and heating. Many of the existing add-ons will be removed (such as the drop ceiling in the kitchen and dining room, the loft in the back bedroom, and the weird low wall around the front porch).  The house will have a wide set of stairs that leads up to the restored front door and porch, and yes, bathrooms will be added (the house currently does not have a bathroom.)

And the duplex and sixplex, and the Hercules Victorian, are all moving forward as well. More stories to come.

Here's another strip from May 1, 1932.

I think we can all agree that the Chronicle's comic page is lacking a good story about a dirigible.  I especially love the line "To lose control of a dirigible is a serious matter - especially when your gas is low and you're many miles from land."  Words to live by.

Another comic strip from May 1, 1932, "The van Swaggers."