Making Progress...on the house

The rain is holding off again this week. It looks like we may get to pour concrete this week. The new engineer is more creative than the last. He knew how the builder needed to reinforce the front of the garage for a windstorm rating. So now we start moving faster. This was the view behind the house today. It was a nice morning.

You can see the progress. They are getting OSB all around the house. They will wrap with Tyvek and then start putting up the siding. The concrete guys will be back tomorrow to make changes to their layout and steel.

The porch is looking good. Looks like Mark needs to do some serious tree trimming. The rain has really helped them grow.

The back is starting to come together. We need a load of trash removed from the premises.

It was a hot day, but a nice evening.

We got the revised drawings today. This gives an idea of what the street side of the garage will look like.

The side facing the house is shown below.

Destruction Mode

We had a couple of workers out at the jobsite the last two days. The rain has gone...for now. More is predicted for this weekend. We are waiting on approval from an engineer to have the garage plans approved as 'wind storm rated'. It is going to cost us a few bucks more than expected, but not as much as previously thought. While we are waiting to pour the foundation, they have started work on the siding and porch. As you can see from the picture, the house looks pretty bad right now. The brick is all off and most of the vinyl siding is down.












The old wooden siding is looking rough. It is interesting to see how the house has evolved over time. You can tell that the original entry was on the left of the view above. This change must have been made just before adding the vinyl siding. There is also an old window that would look right into the shower if it hadn't been boarded up from the inside and then covered over with siding!


















We knew that we had previous termite damage on the water side of the house. The siding is pretty well eaten up and the porch has some structural issues. If we had waited another year to do the porch portion of the project, we might have been doing it because the porch fell down.

We laid out the spots for the new 4x4 posts to go on the porch. Hopefully, tomorrow they will make repairs to the porch structure, replace the rotten wooden siding (so that they can nail to it) and get the rest of the vinyl siding off the house. They will wrap the house with Tyvek and insulate between nail strips before putting up the Hardee Plank siding. We look forward to turning the corner on this phase of the project. This is simply destruction at this point.

Start of Garage Construction

The construction of our three-car garage apartment was begun last week. They have so far set the forms, although the engineer didn't sign off on the architect's drawing...so they will now need to fill in and dig new trenches for the beams on the outside walls! This change will also cost us around $2,000 and we have only just started the project!

You can see from the picture that the new garage is almost as large as the house! The upstairs will be over the middle stall and will be 360 sqft.

The destruction has also started on our house. We are having the old yellow vinyl siding removed and replaced with Hardy Plank (concrete siding) to match the garage. They are demolishing a brick skirt around the lower four feet of the house at the same time. When they remove the skirt from aroud the porch, they will also remove a hip-high wall and 2x4s and replace with 4x4 posts to open up the porch. We will most likely put in a chair rail later. Mark will be building wodden steps in three locations including the entry below (where there are brick steps now). We have also removed the bushes (pulled them outfrom one side of the back of the house (view above) and from along the entire bay side. They were looking bad and we want a fresh start with the new siding. The rusty, leaking drain pipe below will need to be replaced with PVC and framed in with the new siding. Just one more surprise!




















The brick that they are removing is being piled into the rip rap behind the house. This will help to prevent mishaps like children falling off the bulkhead and into the jagged rocks (yes, this happened--Ella has no permanent damage :-).


We have ongoing drainage issues that need to be worked out. It has been raining here again this week, and Lake Land is getting full again. Will get the drainage issues worked out as our project progresses.



















We are still really excited about our project. We just need to keep our patience and stay positive. This will be really cool when we are finished. There should be plenty of space to do projects, for guests to come and stay and for RV's to hook up (we are putting in a plug on the side of the garage for friends and grandparents!). In the next couple of months, we will be getting things the way we envision that they should be! Then we will be ready for guests.

So much for that boat

Mark's boat was destroyed the day before Father's day. We are not exactly sure what happened, but the end result is that it sank in a squall while it was tied up to a piling behind the house. Mark, Chris and Steve Grissom attempted to get it floating again, but the weather and waves were too rough. While waiting for the tide to go out over night, the boat actually flipped over and was totally destroyed. The lower unit and some accessories were salvaged, but not much else...

We will need to save up for at least a year before getting a new boat (Mark is crying).

Fortunately, Mark went off shore with his friend Oscar last week and they filled the freezer with fish. They caught four Dolphin, two King Mackeral, two Cobia and a Red Snapper. They nearly got stranded over 10 miles off shore when the steering wheel of Oscar's boat broke off! The welds holding the steering wheel in place all broke. They were able to steer the boat by holding their mouths just right. The fishing was great, although the seas were rough for the first couple of hours. The catch of the day was Oscar's Cobia, which weighed 55 lbs. It was a monster that took 30 minutes to land.

With gas prices as high as they are, there are plenty of offers to go fishing--and to split the gas! That will have to get Mark by until he can get his own boat again.

Disney World

Back by Popular Demand!!

While this post will only be a teaser, I will catch you up. This last spring was a busy one. My sister was pregnant and on bed rest and needed much help with her then 2 year old. So every other week me and the girls packed up and headed to Ft. Worth to help. After months of being on edge that the baby would come early, She finally got here right on time. Then 3 days after she was born we held a joint birthday party for Katelyn (my sister's daughter) and Ella (Mine). They were born 1 day apart and so we were celebrating their 3rd birthday. Here are the pictures of the birthday girls and Ava with my sister's new daughter Brooklyn Adeline Harter.

Next we went to Disney over Memorial Weekend and the digital camera got drug thru the sand and no longer works. I had to go buy some disposibles and have not gotten all of them developed. Then my sister and dad came for a visit and two weeks after that we headed to "Ballinger 4th of July". That is my family's big 4th bash and reunion on 120 acres outside of Ballinger. We had a wonderful time and made more memories. My kids are the 3rd generation of kids to grow up runnining the dirt roads of that place and aside from my house it is my favorite place to be. Hopefully, I will have pictures to share.

Finally, we are embarking on a major home renovation. The concrete guys came today to start on the new garage and we are getting ready to remove all the vinyl siding from the house and put up hardiplank. I will try to get some before, during and after pics to show.

Anyhow, I regret the delay in posting but will try to do better. I don't know how some of you blogger folks do it. Cause while I have a full life, I know others are even more full and they still find the time to keep everyone posted :)