I went out to the Big Basin Way place to met a couple of inspectors this morning.  The regular home inspection guy said it mostly looks pretty good.  The electrical panel needs replacing and there are some plumbing issues, but nothing catastrophic.

The guy I brought out to give me a quote on earthquake bracing was a different story.  He poked around the basement and concluded that the foundation and cripple walls are a total wreck.  Here’s the deal:  The typical approach to earthquake bracing would be to bolt the sill of the cripple wall down to the foundation.  This cripple wall has no sill however, so there’s nothing to bolt.  That can be fixed, the board-and-batten basement walls can be replaced with a more modern wall that has a pressure treated sill.  All that has to happen is that you have to jack up the entire house, remove the existing walls and then rebuild them.  Oh and the concrete is old enough that the building department will probably require that it be completely replaced.  So basically everything lower than the floor joists has to go.   Probably looking at thirty to fifty thousand dollars.

Looks like no cabin for me.