A couple finds 'home' in restoring a decrepit cottage

"WHY ARE you here?" asked our new Waitsburg neighbor. He had just spotted us piling up big pieces of carpet on our battered front porch. "If you'd stop cutting that carpet into such little pieces," he continued, "I'd be happy to have it."

Mrs. G and I had just begun cleaning and clearing our new purchase, a 1,000-square-foot, rundown cottage. After years of searching the western side of the state for a second home, we'd hit upon the idea of looking in Eastern Washington, where the grapes are grown and most of the wineries are. Duh!

Months of looking around Walla Walla had turned up nothing. "I was here in 1986," I grumbled. "Back then I could have bought a cute farmhouse on 10 acres." No longer; the town had run clean out of cute farmhouses, and we weren't in the market for a big house with "vineyard potential." Feeling our pain, some friends invited us to join them for dinner at a new restaurant, the Whoopemup Café.

"Where's that?" we inquired.

"Waitsburg."

"Oh . . . where's that?"

We drove the 18 miles up the Middle Waitsburg road, through gently rolling hills of wheat — not a billboard, traffic light or stop sign in sight. Just as the golden light of sunset hit, we pulled into Waitsburg.

How had we missed this place?

Once named Delta, it is circled by rivers and streams, an oasis of big trees and small houses at the eastern end of the Touchet Valley. Downtown is all of two blocks, lined with 100-year-old brick buildings; then Main Street turns residential. A few of the large homes from the town's more prosperous years are still standing.

Over the next few weeks, we scouted every home for sale in Waitsburg — population 1,212 — and one sunny July day, sat parked in front of the worst one. A tumbledown cottage, originally built around 1875, it had suffered a series of unfortunate additions over the decades and a great deal of neglect. The yard, I thought, was equally unpromising: a third of an acre covered with two barely upright outbuildings, a withered cornfield and piles of junk.

"Let's buy it!" said Mrs. G brightly. It was her birthday, and the place was going to be hers to fix up any way she wanted, so I put up little resistance. It cost about as much as a decent SUV. By the time the neighbor came around we had been working on the interior, pulling up carpets, scrubbing down walls and wondering what it was really going to take to make the place comfortable.

Why were we here?

We'd both lived most of our lives in cities, primarily Seattle, and we didn't want to abandon the city life. But we wanted a place that was entirely different, to get away from the traffic, the noise, the stress. A place to do our work (wine writer, filmmaker) in relative peace; and to recharge the creative batteries.

We had our wish list: small-town community, fixer-upper cottage with room for a big garden, a clear view of the night sky, quiet surroundings. Waitsburg didn't instantly fit the dream, but it had a certain indefinable pull. We called it the Vortex. We felt at home even before we knew anyone. People in small towns pitch in as a matter of course. A neighbor with a backhoe graded the yard. Architect Jon Campbell, who has built many fine homes and wineries in Walla Walla, graciously took on our little project. Builder Alan Ketelsen introduced us to Mike Needham, his right-hand man, who agreed to do our "light remodel" over the quiet winter months. Bart Baxter, now a Waitsburg city councilman, signed on to do the lion's share of the finish work.

As remodels do, this assumed a life of its own. Campbell's elegant solutions to seemingly intractable problems — the odd roofline, the tiny rooms, the crumbling porch — quickly ramped up the budget. New electric, heating, cooling, plumbing, windows, doors, roof, insulation . . .Unrepentant serial remodeler that I am, I began to enjoy his and Mrs. G's ambitious dreaming. Then, just as Needham was ready to begin demo-ing, he called us in for the really bad news.

"Your house has no foundation," he explained. "There's no point in doing anything else until you pour one."

Nine concrete pours, a complete interior renovation and five summers of hard yard work later, we are settled (not done — never done).

We live here half of each month, reveling in the summer heat, the winter clarity, the star-dappled night sky, the neighbors who always have time for a chat. We will always be newcomers in Waitsburg. But we know beyond a shadow of a doubt exactly why we are here.

Paul Gregutt is the author of "Washington Wines & Wineries." Ken Lambert is a Seattle Times staff photographer.