During the month of December, 2006, I was looking for a permanent place to call home. I had just returned to my home town of Portland, Oregon after an extended six month sabbatical where I circuitously drove my trusty bread box of a Honda Element from Portland to Panama City and back on the search for surf, sun, SCUBA, and latino cappucinos. It was raining so hard the day I first saw what was soon to be my home that the sewer drains were backed up leaving a largish lake to hop over just to get to the sidewalk. The building was deemed by the City of Portland to be structurally unsound, and was at threat of being torn down. It was leaning twenty plus inches at the Southeast corner of the building, and from the exterior looked as if it had been beaten like a baby harp seal. And a sixty-ish foot tall elm was growing into the basement… And a thirty foot long branch had broken off during a big storm, damaging the roof… The current owner used cardboard to patch the roof… Don’t need to mention the current vermin population, or the fact that the owner was himself an OCD packrat who was compelled to horde garbage, collect the minutae of life, tie & tuck it away in a sanity only he understood.

But it was a Victorian!!! 1891 Victorian to be exact. The original mercantile for the Kerns, Sunnyside, East Buckman, and Laurelhurst neighborhoods before those neighborhoods existed. The upstairs shopkeeper’s quarters were all original, down to the cedar wainscoting, doors, casings, and the “japanned” copper hardware – unbastardized by popcorn drop ceilings, glued on asbestos tile over original hardwood flooring, T1-11 paneling over turn of the century plaster… I had no idea what I was doing, and it took almost three years, but I did it. I have stayed as true to the original intent of the property as possible.

Oblique – the mathematical definition of which is no parallel or perpendicular lines; Take the time to study the lines of the building as you sit inside or out on our side patio, and you will see all the character that time inexorably wrests upon old wood. We’d like to think that the care and consideration we’ve levied toward our home in all it’s infinitesimal variables is the same level of care we’ve put forth to bring our community a small family coffee roasting space rich in Portland history and a family centered place worthy of support.