Spring Open-Up for San Juan Island Homes

Winterizing is the October job. This is the April one. A house that has been closed since Thanksgiving has spent eight months in the wettest, mossiest, windiest part of the year with nobody looking at it, and the point of an open-up is that somebody walks the whole exterior on purpose, in daylight, with a notepad, before you drive off the ferry with a car full of groceries.

The pattern is consistent enough that I know roughly what I am going to find. Gutters that were clear in November are packed again, because fir and cedar shed through winter and madrona drops leaves at times of year that make no sense to anyone from the mainland. North-facing roof slopes and any shaded stretch of walkway have grown a season of moss and algae. Deck boards that were sound in the fall have one or two that now flex underfoot. Screens that were stacked in the garage need to go back into the windows before the first warm week, and at least one of them has a hole in it. Somewhere there is a gate, a shed door, or a piece of trim that a January southeaster loosened and nobody heard.

The animal side of an open-up matters more than owners expect. A closed house with a dark crawlspace is exactly what a rodent wants in December, and by April the evidence is easy to read if you know where to look: a chewed corner of a vent screen, droppings on the crawlspace plastic, insulation pulled down under a floor bay. Birds get into open soffits and vents. Wasps build in eaves and under railings. Deer will have pushed through any fencing that went slack. All of that is easier to deal with in April than in July with the family in the house.

One boundary, stated plainly because it is the most common request I decline: I do not recommission plumbing. Charging a water system back up, opening a shut-off and standing there watching for leaks, restarting a water heater, or bringing irrigation back online is plumbing work in Washington and it needs a plumbing certification I do not hold. I hold a general contractor registration. What I do is the building envelope, and if the house needs its water brought back up I will get a licensed plumber on the calendar and meet them at the door so you are not coordinating two trades from another state.

What that leaves is still most of the value. The exterior gets walked and photographed. Gutters and downspouts get cleared and run. Moss gets treated. Decks and railings get checked and anything that moves gets flagged or fixed on the spot. Screens go in, doors and windows that swelled through the wet get eased so they latch again, outdoor furniture comes out and gets washed, and any pressure washing the walkways need gets scheduled while there is a dry stretch in the forecast.

The deliverable is a written condition report with photographs. Not a checkmark on a form — a plain list of what I saw, what I handled while I was there, what I think can wait until fall, and what I would spend money on now. If you are reading it in Seattle in March, that list is the whole product. It is also the single best time of year to decide whether the house needs a standing arrangement, because everything an open-up finds is something a scheduled visit would have caught in January. That is what property care is for, and April is when the argument for it is most obvious.

Timing: mid-March through early May is the window, and the earlier end is better. Do it before the moss dries onto the roof and before the first warm weekend brings you and every other owner over on the same sailing.