Progress made

Plumber has been here since Monday working on all the stub ups, peatraps and drains.  Lots of progress has been made and hes a great guy.

If you look close at this picture you can see 4 pieces of rebar.  Those represent the drain lines for the guest bath.  We had a meeting yesterday about this bathroom.  I had just enough architecture classes in college to make me dangerous!  So even though I thought I'd drawn things to scale I hadn't and because I want a particular shower and a separate tub in here we had to draw it all out on paper several times to get it right.  And we did and I'm very happy.  But for the life of me now I cannot tell you how it all goes.  

This is mud room where washer, dryer, small utility sink, water heater, water conditioner, breaker box, spare fridge and spare freezer goes.  Seems like a lot in this room but breaker box goes recessed in the wall.  Water heater is an on demand system so it's a small unit mounted on the wall.  Water Conditioner fits under the water heater, washer, dryer and utility sink on a wall and other wall is for fridge and freezer.  

Looking from the back wall of the house past the kitchen and toward the master bedroom bath at the corner.

Drain in master shower.

Front left corner of the house where our bedroom will be, then master closet and master bath.

Right corner of house where 2 bedrooms, a guest bath, a fly tying room for Bob, the pantry and mud room will be.  

Just another shot from right front angle to back left of house.

Plumber thinks he will finish up today provided he gets the specs for the water conditioner.  Hopefully sometime this morning.  After he does that then he can smooth top, and put on plastic.  After that the concrete guys come and place and tie rebar and then pour.  No date on that yet we have to wait until plumber is finished.

Good help is so hard to find!

Today is Wednesday, plumber was supposed to be here on Monday but got held up by another job.  No biggie...it happens.  And then Tuesday but was held up again but I did meet with the electrician who has to run a line to the island in the kitchen for plugs and the freezer/ refrigerator drawers.  And to mark where breaker box will be in the mud room.  

Electrician was back this morning to do his thing and plumbers helper did not show up so tomorrow.....is what I'm being told.  I think after that is plastic, re-bar and pour but dont quote me...

This is for island in the kitchen.

This is stub up for breaker box in the mud room.  

Trenches, trenches and more trenches.

As you can see we have a couple more trenches.

This is for the plumbing...grey and black water lines.  Grey water is water from showers, sinks and washing machine.  Black water is from toilets usually combined with one sink line to help everything go into the septic tank.

While we wait for the plumber to return we (Bob and I got busy with the last of the water line from temp quarters to new house and electric from meter to down to where new house will be built.  

The black and white wires are the power.  The smaller green wire is the ground wire.  

All three wires are taped together along with the end of the muletape that was already pulled through and I'll stay up here and make sure that when Bob starts pulling at the other end the spools don't over roll.  It went really smoothly.  But we are not done yet, we need to pull from this end over to where the wire will hook into the existing power.  We wont do the actual hooking up...that's for the electrician but we need to get it over there.

So if you look closely and enlarge the picture just a bit you can see just to the right of the Bobcat where this wire needs to go.  And if you look down at the bottom of this picture you can see the pipe on the right...that's what this wire needs to go in in order to reach that spot on the other side.  

So this little black piece of foam is called a " mouse".  Tied onto it is a piece of string.  We will use a vacuum cleaner on blow to blow the mouse with the string through to the power grid.  Then onto to string we will tie the muletape and taped on the muletape will be the wires....got that!  

TaDa!  Just like that...took about 10 seconds.  

And there's the wire.  

And this is muletape.  It's a flat nylon rope.  Bob used it in the phone company and we bought a couple spools of it when we found it on line.  The stuff is great.  We always have some in every vehicle that we own as well as the Kawasaki Mule and of course it's in the shop and well house.  You never know when you are gonna need it and it lasts forever...well maybe not forever but certainly a long time.  

Here we go!

The crew came out and placed these stakes for the corners.

So they dig the parameter first and the shoot a string line to find what is level.  We thought this area was fairly level but theres about 2 feet difference from one side to the other.

So heres what it looks like before they start framing it out.

And here it is framed.  You can see on the left side there are more boards than on the right side.  Looks caddiewompus but that absolutely level from side to side, front to back.  

There is a trench that spans the length of the house and there are 2 trenches that intersect this trench.  The trenches have several jobs.  This is where some plumbing will run in conduit and also electric lines in conduit also.  The electric in this particular home is not much because I only have one line that needs to go in the middle of the floor.  It's actually for some plugs in my island in the kitchen.  It's also for a dedicated plug for my freezer drawers that are also in the island.  The rest of the electric will be strung through the walls.  

That's it for today.  I met with the plumber this morning to go over the rough in.  Hes supposed to be back on friday to start the rough in.  Then I think maybe the electrician comes to do his small part just for this stage.  Then comes I believe the plastic and rebar.  

Getting into position

That big Live Oak right there will be at the back right of the patio.  If you look real close you can see a bit of orange...that's the back corner right of the house.  The front door would be just to my left and looking out toward the opposite way.

Fill has arrived.  This is ( for those who dont know how a home is built) for the slab.  This helps level up the ground and build up areas that are low.  It's also where your plumbing sits...most people think plumbing is in the slab...its not, its actually in this fill in trenches.  It leaves space for stuff like pea traps etc.  Gotta have those if you want your water to drain.  

Surprise,  surprise, surprise.  Tin for house has arrived...early.  was supposed to be here on Monday but it came today.  Lots to do before it can be put on but its here.  

I had hoped to post pictures of the fill being spread and the forming up for the slab.  But as with all things eagerly anticipated we have been delayed.  Not sure of exactly why other than the crew did not finish up with the job preceding ours so hopefully tomorrow which is Monday March 22.  

The picture above shows the corner of the shop.  In the middle of the picture is part of a bucket that we buried to show us where we made a junction for the electric wire and the water line for the house.

this is the trench that will carry the electric line, water and possibly coaxial cable for the internet.  Our antenna is here at the shop and we dont want to move it because if we should ever have long term guests then they can stay in temp quarters and have TV and internet.

I think if you blow up this last picture you can see the end of the trench and just beyond that will be the house.

This white pipe will carry our water from the well to the house.  The larger pipe will serve as a protective covering for the electric line and coaxial cable.  You cannot direct bury that kind of stuff in the ground as it can erode and then youd have to dig the whole line up to find out where your trouble spots are.  Probably against some code somewhere as well.  

This is the electric line that goes from the meter all the way down to the house.  

Here it is all spaced out and ready to have a piece of mule tape threaded through before we glue it up and then pull the wire.

All glued up and in the trench for now.  Cows walk through here and we dont want them stepping on the pipe.  All caught up now on progress till we get guys in to spread fill and start framing.  Fingers crossed it's this week.  Although now weather report says tomorrow is 50% chance of rain....

House Sold

 We  had several offers on our home.  The first 2 were way below asking and because it was very early in the process we felt comfortable turning them down.  We then got 2 offers literally 5 minutes apart.  The first one was for full ask  and the second one was for 25K over ask.  We of course jumped at the full ask and then the other offer came in so we signed a back up contract on it.

Of course then comes the inspection, survey, and appraisal.  Finger biting time for sure.  We weren't really worried about the appraisal.  We knew that we had a unique property and there were really no comps anywhere.  Our best guess turned out to be just exactly what we thought it was worth.  Lucky guess I'm sure and we were just stubborn enough to stick by our guns.

So the closing is literally a month away and we keep getting peppered with questions about the house.  And I'm thinking that this is all very good signs  that they really want this house.  So it's right before Thanksgiving and we are supposed to close the next week.  I get a call from the realtor and an email with the inspection report.  This is where the buyers want to dicker about the price.  This is wrong, this is wrong and so we think the house is now worth x amount of dollars. I told the realtor that I would get back to them because I had to talk to Bob.  So I talk to Bob and he says....They offered full ask and we should hold them to it because we have another offer for 25K over.  So I get back to the realtor and she calls their realtor and then calls me back and says "We have a deal".  Bob decides to go to Menard, TX to hunt with some buddies.  Then on Sunday I call the realtor and ask if I have to get all the rest of the furniture out of the house before we close...we are supposed to close on Tuesday.  Yes, she says....shit...we still have all the furniture that we left in the house to stage it.  It needs to be out she says.  Bob is 150 miles away so I call a friend who lives in Georgetown and has a trailer and I call my Brother In Law who is a gem of a guy and will always help out in a pinch.  I'd say we got 95% of the stuff out and Bob was coming home in the morning and we could get the rest of the stuff before we signed closing papers on Tuesday.

Bob gets home about noon and we head into Georgetown to get the rest of the stuff.  We are just about finished loading and I get a phone call from the realtor.  The buyers have backed out.  And to add insult to injury they want us to release the earnest money.  

I admit what I know about real estate could fit on the head of a pin but don't you get the earnest money back if your buyer walks ????  Well apparently no, no you don't.  Because we had a back up deal the buyer didn't think that we were harmed by them walking out and if we didn't release the earnest money they could hold up our other deal.  So we released the earnest money.  Back up contract immediately went into effect and so there was another month to wait until we closed.  There were no surprises with this one, no dickering about the money or repairs and they ended up having to use the same appraiser that did the first appraisal.  It all went off like clockwork.  Kinda anti climantic for all the drama that we endured with the first deal.  

Now we are just waiting to visit with the home builder again.  We've already spoken with him once and we were supposed to meet with him this past week but we had snow.....so I'm guessing that he was delayed.  

I'll just leave you with pictures of the snow. 

4 Months in

 We ended up moving in around the 2nd or 3rd week of June.  Our dog Bonnie passed away on May 22.  We had hoped that she would pass in the night or on the porch of the home in Georgetown or up here while she was resting on her bed and looking out at the pasture.  That didn't happen and we had to make the difficult decision to euthanize her.  Our Vet was kind enough to allow us to have her pass away in our truck when she spent her happiest days with Bob.  It was a devastating loss to both Bob and I because she was just 14 years old.  We have been very fortunate to have some very long lived dogs...17, 18 and even 19 years old...so to lose her, our very best dog, at 14 was extremely heart wrenching.  We had decided to bury her out here at the new place.  So she is buried under a huge live oak tree just a stones throw from where we will build the new house.  It's still very sad and when we pass by her grave going from one pasture to another we will wave and blow a kiss.  She was our last dog.  We had decided that when our Pepper died in 2012.  We had 40 wonderful years with dogs and gave them the best lives possible.  They were all loved beyond measure but at this stage in our lives we are just tired of having to say goodby.  It hurts far too much.  I do not miss the anxious feeling I would get when she wasn't eating properly.  Or when I knew in my heart that we needed to make another trip to the Vet.  I do not miss the expense of her medication although we would have spent a fortune to get her well if possible.  I think we all reach a point where we know no matter what we do....she is still going to die.  I miss having a dog around....40 years of habit do not disappear overnight.  I still get a feeling that I'm missing something when I get in the car to go grocery shopping or if Bob and I happen to be out late and I think we need to get back so that we can let the dog out to do her business.  It will pass.  Time will heal but it does take time.  

This is Bonnies final resting place.

She lies deep underneath this stone.  We placed it over her grave because we have a real problem with feral hogs.  They can root up the ground like a rototiller and even though Bonnie is no longer living....to have her rooted up and eaten would have been sacrilege.   She is safe in her internment and I think that both Bob and I will have our ashes scattered here when it's our time.  Rest in Peace our Ms. B.