The Skiver House

This is our house in Aloha, Oregon. It was a great place to finish raising the kids. It was huge, 2300 square feet, four bedrooms, huge living and dining rooms and giant master bedroom. The problem was that once the kids were out, it was way too big for just the two of us, and of course, it was on land.

I designed and built this pond for the front yard. I designed it to use an under-gravel filter using a submersible pump in a sump behind the pond, under the waterfall. Later I added a pool filter to keep the water clean all year long. An under-gravel filter works by drawing aerated water through the gravel which promotes the growth of organisms that consume organic contaminates (fish poo) and prevent the buildup of nitrogen compounds which poison the water. One of the advantages of this system is that the pump is hidden and there is no obvious intake for the pump, it's hidden under the gravel. I also placed a motion detector above the pond in the eaves to alert me if a child or racoon got into the pond.

And here is our realtor with the unlikely name of Jett Black proudly posting the Sold sticker on our sign. Jett worked very hard for us, and Wright Christie was the realtor group who got us the house in the first place, in fact it was Dee Wright who found it for us.

And here is one reason we wanted to leave. Our neighbor, a horrid woman from Peru was just a pig. Here we are getting ready to sell our house and this pile of shit sat in her front yard for 4 months. Notice the Christmas lights still hanging on the gutters in August. She was just a nasty rude woman. Realize that we lived in a homeowners association, the rest of the houses and yards were spotless and well kept, but her diversity gave her an excuse to trash her yard and treat us like crap.

She was also intensly stupid, once she showed me a fogged double pane window in her house and complained that no matter how much she scrubbed it, it wouldn't come clean. IQ in the low 90s for sure.