Barometric Pressure

by Greg King

Barometric pressure is the measure of the weight of the atmosphere above us. Barometric pressure varies with altitude; a higher elevation will have less atmosphere above it which exerts less pressure. To keep readings standard across the world, barometric pressure is to be indicated at sea level.

The barometric pressure changes as the weather systems over us change. The pressure differences have a huge effect on the weather. If you know the current air pressure at your home, as well as the pressure trend, you are able to predict certain things about the weather. As a very loose rule, a high-pressure area will be clear, and a low-pressure area will be cloudy and rainy.

Many still opt to have barometers in their homes and monitor them with great regularity. There is no need to understand the complexities of all this since most barometers are marked Stormy, Rain, Change, Fair, and Very Dry but, essentially a falling barometer typically means clouds and rain and a rising barometer typically means clear and sunny.

Many have learned that a falling barometer, for whatever reason, means a shift in their mood. Yes, this could be due to weather, or perhaps, they are one in the same. But, let’s go at this another way. Maybe the weather has nothing to do with anything. Grey, cold, and rainy days can be just as susceptible to the warming influence of enthusiasm as are sunny days.

Even lousy days possess hidden wonder. Days that are expected to be wonderful before they begin turn out to be so much more frequently than days greeted with grumbling. Sometimes you just need an attitude adjustment to shift your perception of an entire afternoon and move forward into a pleasant evening

Home • Island • Lopez Island • Orcas Island • Roche Harbor • San Juan Island • January 5, 2021

Dead of Winter? – Listing your Home

by Greg King

January – the month of new beginnings and cherished memories. It is a fresh start, a new chapter. A time for reflection and resolution.

The first month of our calendar year was named by the Romans after Janus, the god of change, transitions, and beginnings. Janus had two faces – one looking forward, the other backward. He had the ability to watch entrances and exits, but symbolically, it signaled the need to balance our hopes for tomorrow with a keen awareness of what happened yesterday. Think about it…

Many considering selling their homes in the islands assume they should wait until Spring to list when the tourists arrive. Some sellers even opt to take their homes off the market for the Winter months. The thought process includes thinking homes show better in the Spring. Unfortunately, many assume incorrectly that homes do not sell in the Winter. This school of thought makes for low inventory…

However, low inventory is nothing short of fantastic for sellers. Basic economics of supply and demand tells us that most things sell for more money when there is less of them available. It has been proven time and time again this applies to housing. https://www.sanjuansre.com/listfall

Today’s serious buyers look at listings pretty much all day, every day. They have apps on their phone, get listings texted and emailed to them, and simply don’t care about the time of year. In fact, many want to purchase prior to Spring to have time to make their new house a home. Listing in January makes for a captive audience!

Community • Holidays • Island • Lopez Island • Orcas Island • San Juan Island • Winter • December 22, 2020

Holiday Memories

by Greg King

The holidays are upon us and you can feel it in the air in the San Juan Islands. Slowing, surely,
the season’s magical spell has taken hold with the remarkable sense of community. Actively
emerging in early December, a spirited and creative time of year, it is a precious time when
memory and other strands of our lives can come together in powerful and fun ways.

The holidays are a time of sentimental triggers. Holiday memories – we carry them with us all
our lives. While memories may blur and fade, one can almost always recall where one was for
holidays past. This seems especially true in the islands. The holidays in the islands are truly
remarkable – indescribable really – for young and old alike.

December’s gifts – custom, ceremony, celebration, consecration – come to us wrapped up, not in
tissue and ribbon, but in cherished memories. No matter where you live or how old you may be,
holidays from your childhood have a special glow about them.

In this society of ours, which often seems broadly skeptical about the value of tradition, it is a
wonderful thing for families warmly embracing the positive benefits that tradition can actually
carry. This extends uniquely to the holidays.

There is a calming stability in island holiday celebrations and rituals; both the preparation and
celebrations create memories that last a lifetime. Traditions can be sacred or silly, but they
become a strong source of bonding, love, and security. The magic, mystery, decorations,
presents, singing, laughter, and special food of the island holiday season are all part of the
traditions lovingly handed down from generation to generation. Even for those who shun
tradition and ritual the rest of the year, the holidays are a time we often return to the security of
their fold. Holiday traditions resonate with the imprimatur of time; they become our identity,
writing our history, and reflecting cultural heritage.

We may think traditions are carved in stone, but really they adapt beautifully to new
circumstances if we let them. This year is a perfect example of just that. Introducing new festive
rituals as our lives change is how we continually open ourselves to wonder, ensuring that our
future memories of holidays past bring both contentment and renewal. As we seek to put our
own stamp on tradition and imbue celebrations with our own sense of style in a safe fashion, we
discover the irresistible variety of both.

The holidays in the islands are memorable, to be sure…

Home • Island • Lifestyle • Lopez Island • Orcas Island • Roche Harbor • San Juan Island • December 10, 2020

A Place in the Islands

by Greg King

Sacred partnerships arrive in our lives in many forms; sometimes consisting of wood and stone, rather than flesh and bone. There is a deep peace and contentment to be found in the intimate connections with places as well as people.

Every relationship we have – with other people, with our work – reflects in some way our soul’s intimate union with ourselves. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the relationships we have with a home. We deserve to live in a home that welcomes, embraces, nurtures, delights, and inspires.

When we find ourselves there, we recognize it. It is a vision of something we have had in our mind and the discovery, quite often, has the characteristics of an epiphany. We have the feeling of coming home. It wraps itself around us.

The same is true of a getaway – a haven, a retreat, a refuge – a special place that offers a sense of sanctuary. Families, couples, and singles – regardless of gender – share an urge that borders on primal to have what can be called a getaway. Whenever we find this special place, we add a richness to our wondrous, but sometimes hectic, lives by following our vision to create a getaway of our very own.

To live on an island is to experience a life apart. The island home reflects the owner’s reason for escape. Island homeowners are individualistic, socially conscious, and creative with every home fulfilling its owner’s dream of privacy, harmony with the surroundings, and more importantly, providing a chance to take a closer look at the world.

Living at the water’s edge is an almost universal desire. It is different – where two worlds meet; a little piece of infinity. Magic!

Holidays • Home • Lifestyle • San Juan Island • December 18, 2019

The Gift of Food – Holiday Traditions

by Greg King

Even for those who shun tradition and ritual the rest of the year, Christmas is one time we often return to the security of its fold. Holiday traditions resonate with the imprimatur of time; they become a part of our identity, writing out family history and reflecting cultural heritage.

As we seek to put our own stamp on tradition and imbue celebrations with our own sense of style, the irresistible variety of both savory and sweet homemade edible gifts one can lovingly prepare becomes a noteworthy concept. Many in the islands feel that homemade gifts are the best, and edible gifts are the best of all! It is easy to become highly domestic at this time of year as many of the visible tokens of celebration are, in fact, projects that are both relaxing and pleasurable.

It may be wonderful jellies or jams, aromatic breads, cookies and candies, special dressings for salads, a seasoned salt, sugar flavored with vanilla beans, or vinegars seasoned with berries or herbs. There are butters, sauces, condiments, liqueurs, spiced nuts, and cakes. You are limited only by your imagination

A good part of just about anything is the presentation. It is a visual sort of thing. However simple or small the gift, beautiful wrapping makes it just that more special; the packing becomes part of the present. A velvet sack, a simple box, or basket can be both wrapping and gift. Hard to wrap items can be sheathed in fabric, tucked into baskets, or encased in netting.

Why not combine your food gift with another gift? Offer cookies in a jar or seasoned salt in its own shaker. Place a loaf of bread on a breadboard or set muffins in a basket lined with a holiday gift towel. Tie a unique spreader around a crock of apple butter. Give a gift certificate for ice cream with a jar of homemade chocolate sauce!

The heart of Christmas is giving. We may bemoan the commercialism of the holidays, but generosity still underlies the essence of the season. We recognize the pleasure in choosing a gift we hope will delight the recipient and take joy in bestowing it. Homemade gifts are invested with thoughtfulness. Perhaps both making and giving is the true spirit of the season…

Lifestyle • Lopez Island • Orcas Island • San Juan Island • Travel • December 2, 2019

Our Commute – Island Life Living

by Greg King

Given that our team works all the islands in the San Juan archipelago, we are often on the inter-island ferry. Sometimes when showing property on one of the outer islands, we pause to ponder just how extraordinary this commute really is, yet how very typical of island life. We view this commute as a mini road trip – an adventure!

When you live and work in these dreamy green islands, the inter-island ferry really can be a fun thing and especially in the off season. There are many familiar faces and actually, most of us know each other as we often ride this boat for work.

Once boarded and underway, one by one, we make our way upstairs to the passenger deck where groups of islanders are discussing the topic of the day and solo riders are engrossed with their laptops or reading or just staring at the breathtaking scenery that we never quite seem to take for granted. There are jigsaw puzzles for our entertainment pleasure and indeed, many become obsessed with these going back to them over and over to do just one more piece of the puzzle. There are women in the ladies room applying make-up and sometimes even drying their hair. Every so often there are scheduled meetings in progress as this is an efficient manner in which to gather participants from all the islands in one central location.

On a recent trip from Lopez back to Friday Harbor at the end of the day, one of our team members had reason to return a call to a client in southern California while gliding by Flat Point. The client was sitting in traffic on I-5 in Los Angeles grumbling about the congestion. Our team member almost felt guilty when explaining that she was commuting by ferry on a dazzling Winter day…

Home • Home repair • Interior Design • Lifestyle • San Juan Island • November 18, 2019

The Barn – Saving a Part of the Past

by Greg King

The word barn derives from combining the word barley with the Old English ern, which meant place of. For centuries the word was bern; it has been barn since the Late Middle Ages. Over the centuries a barn’s uses have expanded way beyond barley storage. Today, a barn can also be a place of tools and seedling, cars and carpentry, hay and animals, play and puttering. Or, once you clean them up, sheathe them, and add a few comforts for creatures of a very different kind, barns can actually make great houses.

Renovating a barn to a living space may not be all that complicated, but creating modern homes from fallow barns involves a lot more than just hauling out the rusty junk, brushing aside some cobwebs and cow manure, and hanging drywall. Still, despite their often derelict condition, there is truly a romance to these rustic structures that makes one yearn to reinvent them as habitable homes.

It is not difficult to see why old barns inspire the imagination. The high-peaked timber shaped beams and the rich patina of centuries-old boards have a quintessentially American feeling, connecting us to our pioneer roots. The appeal of soaring spaces.

Whether you plan to use your barn to keep animals, make a work-shop, or just add storage space for the stuff that has been accumulating in your yard, one general-purpose design can fit many of these varied uses.

An elaborate and rather rigid system for building structures has evolved in our society. All of us who would build are almost obliged to adopt this system as our own. The more obedient to the system we become, the less variety is available, the less creativity is expressed, the less we are able to change with changing times.

Break from the system — use your brains and not your billfolds to create structures that are affordable, individual, and even safer and more efficient than the mass-produced mundanities of the established construction industry.

Take one old barn and call it home!

Community • History • Lifestyle • Lopez Island • November 12, 2019

The Friendly Isle – Lopez Island

by Greg King

Lopez Island is truly a magical place, eliciting in many an almost ethereal response to its sheer beauty, its substance, and its peace. It is a different way of life: the pace is slower, the world quieter, the people approachable. Many from near and far have discovered Lopez and found it irresistible.

A rural patchwork quilt of fields and pastures, interrupted by sections of velvety forest rolling down to the edge of the sea, with its quiet pace, reminiscent of days gone by, Lopez boasts a well-developed sense of community. To understand the present, you need to understand the past – understand the island’s history.

In the beginning, Northwest Coastal Indians spent Winters in cedar-planked loghouses and used the warmer months for hunting, fishing, and cultivating/gathering plants. Later people came to Lopez for a variety of reasons – prospectors returning from various gold rushes and passing through the islands, relatives and friends of residents, respondents to advertising – those hoping for a better life.

As people moved to the islands, three main communities formed: Port Stanley, Richardson, and Lopez Village. These communities all boasted steamer service, a store, and a post office. A smaller area known as Mud Bay also had a post office and a school. People were, by necessity, self-sufficient. Survival depended upon community; they bartered and shared. And now, as then, the best way to make a living on Lopez is to wrest it from the land or from the sea.

The story of Lopez is the story of community. Living self-reliant lives while helping friends, neighbors, and newcomers. Lopezians created a unique community character that abides today. It is this which has shaped the island’s history, far more powerfully and significantly than we may realize. The island continues to echo those early times.

Home • Kitchen • Orcas Island • Organization • San Juan Island • October 1, 2019

Island Life

by Greg King

The secret weapon for living life on an island is a well organized pantry. A planned reserve of foodstuffs and sundries for everyday life, a pantry saves time, money, and stress. Tap the pantry for unexpected meals and reduce trips to the mainland or even the grocery store. Stock it with frugal finds to lower grocery costs. Set aside supplies for unexpected entertaining. This is the place for those fun specialty items to add that festive touch transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary! Properly managed, the pantry is an integral part of island living.

You may be thinking you don’t have a pantry. Sure you do! It may not be what one would traditionally envision as a pantry and it may be a closet, shelving in the garage, or even a large trunk, but a pantry it is! Don’t confuse storage space with the reality of the pantry principle. Certainly it is helpful to have designated cabinet space for pantry goods, but that is not a pantry. Think of the pantry as a reservoir of consumable goods which may be stored most anywhere in your home. The goal of establishing and maintaining a pantry is actually two-fold: convenience and protection against unexpected events. A well-planned pantry means you will never run out of commonly used products. Even the smallest home can include a pantry. A pantry is not a place – it is an attitude!

Disorganized pantries slow an otherwise productive person. They can be a nightmare if not meticulously organized and maintained. Putting away groceries could take twice as long as necessary, not to mention trying to find ingredients to prepare a meal when circumstances may not be ideal.

When stocking your pantry, keep in mind what you use on a regular basis. Efficiency is the issue here and simplicity is key, but organization is critical. Keeping your recipe repertoire in mind, decide which items you really need, then embellish your basics with some homemade treats. You will be glad you did later!

Holidays • Home cleaning tips • Home repair • Orcas Island • San Juan Island • December 20, 2018

Are you ready?

by Greg King

With the holidays fast approaching, you may be expecting guests in your home perhaps just for a meal or a party or – maybe for a lengthy stay. We all know our homes are never cleaner than when we are expecting guests, but you might want to consider taking it to the next level, preparing your home to avoid any annoying disturbances.

Let’s start with the refrigerator. Even if your thermostat is set to under 40°, it may not be cold enough to keep the contents safely chilled if your condenser coils are dirty. Located at the back or bottom of the appliance, unplug the refrigerator and clean the coils with a coil brush (available at hardware stores).

You also might want to prevent clogs by cleaning the P trap under the kitchen sink. Place a bucket under the trap, unscrew the nuts at both ends to remove it, and dump out the contents. Wash out the trap in another sink, then reattach it.

While you are at it, you might want to clean the grinder in the garbage disposal. Dump two cups of ice and one cup of coarse salt down the drain, fill the sink halfway with cold water, and run the disposal until the water is gone. If there is an odor, throw in some lemon peels to freshen it up.

Okay, now for the oven. Get rid of excess grease by mixing water with baking soda to create a paste. Spread it on interior oven surfaces, let it sit overnight, then wipe it clean. This is less toxic than commercial cleaners and as for self-cleaning ovens, you really shouldn’t use the self-cleaning cycle right before doing a lot of cooking.

Are you ready now?