Proud mama

Lexi and Maddie are still finding their way, with kind of an Israel/Palestine level of comfort with each other.

Typically, Maddie hangs out in the bathroom and closet, while Lexi spends time in her Cookie Monster bed (which is clearly made for a smaller dog, but I thought it was adorable, hee). Not a lot of cohabitating.

BUT! Today! Both pets. On one bed. At the same time. Glad I had my camera...this may never happen again.

A very, very, very fine house

We closed, barely. We've been moving and unpacking and making dozens of trips to Walmart, and I am seriously exhausted. But, we have a house! More details later. In the meantime, here's a picture of my sweet new puppy, Lexi. Maddie is not amused by the dog at all, but J and I love her.

OMG we almost have a house!

We have walls and tile and countertops and cabinets.....not very much left to do to finish this house up. Next week should be little stuff, like light switches and ceiling fans. Then we need flooring and landscaping, and we're pretty much done!

Here is the kitchen:




The little dark spots are metal accent pieces. Here's a closeup:

And the house is BLUE. I'm not sure if I love it, so we may repaint. I don't know....it kind of grows on me every time we're out there. Strikes me as very coastal, very Carolinas. We're still missing shutters, porch railing and a front door. And a sidewalk. And grass. Minor details.

Back on track

Progress! The copper is back, insulation is in, walls are complete, and we now have stonework and trim done.

Next week the cabinets should go in, the exterior should get painted, and the tile work should start.

Copper thieves and hot neighbors

By yesterday, we were supposed to have all the insulation and drywall up, and the cabinets would be almost ready to be installed. When we visited, however, nothing had happened. It seems that while waiting for the City of Dallas to inspect our electrical and plumbing systems, some enterprising citizens drove up in the middle of the night and stripped all of the copper out of our house. They also stole 36 windows from another house. So, we're actually delayed a little bit. All of the electrical has to be re-done, and re-inspected, THEN we'll get walls.

In happier news, we have various new neighbors moving in. Most interestingly, a college women's soccer team will be living about a block away. Some nice parents bought a house for their daughter and teammates to move into. Should be interesting....

Not too many changes this weekend. The roof is on, and we picked the color blue we want the siding to be painted. The rock is on order, so it might be up by next weekend.

In more interesting news, while we were outside, a GORGEOUS flock of birds flew in formation into our neighborhood and landed in the yard of the house across the street from us. They were just stunning - we watched them for a while. They looked kind of coastal, maybe like a crane?

Ideas?

Technology of the Future (Robin is easily impressed)

Today we got a roof and the rest of our windows. Also, some siding. Pretty much all that's left to do on the outside is paint the siding and put on the rock, which I think is happening next week. Everywhere that doesn't have siding on it is going to be rock (both chimneys and the bottom couple of feet of the house).


The front still needs a little siding and some shingles - I forgive them for stopping work because there was some serious lightning this afternoon in Dallas. I would not want to be the guy on top of a house on top of a hill holding a hammer and nails in a lightning storm.

Notice all of these pictures are taken drive-by style from our car? J thought we would freak out the workers if we walked up and took pictures. I think they were more freaked out by the weirdos in the SUV who kept driving by with a paparazzo camera hanging out the window.

We also met with the guy who handles our wiring for security, speakers, internet, cable, etc, etc. I'm very impressed with how fancy our house's wiring will be. The neighborhood gets Verizon Fios, which is apparently some super swanky cable and internet. And somehow I have the ability to choose on a whim if I want our phone jacks to be internet jacks, and vice versa. I don't understand how they can be both and can switch back and forth, but whatever. I am technologically slow, so I'm hoping J caught all the details of this. There's a big master wiring center and I can control which switches do what and what speakers are connected to what TV and whatnot from the box. Again, hoping J caught the details of all that....it seemed very futuristic. OH! And the best part - we can record a show in one room and watch it from any of the other rooms, or pause a show in one room, and pick it up on any other TV. What smart person invented this?

Looks like a real house!

So here's the front of the house. It was exciting to walk through the front door of something that actually bears a resemblance to our final house! Yay!


Here's the back of the house. The four upstairs windows are the gameroom, which will basically be a J's man cave. Many happy hours of Guitar Hero will be played here. Just below the game room is the patio. On the right is the fireplace. This would be an ideal place for cigar smoking, if anyone were so inclined.

Wednesday we meet with the guy who does all the wiring for speakers, internet, security system, etc. This is going so fast!

A Bad Housing Market Makes for Quick Construction

So with the housing market being all weird, there are bunches of guys ready and willing to work. In the span of 48 hours, our house went from concrete slab to this:

Still a lot of framing to do, but the first floor is basically done and the upstairs is underway. Oh, and somebody took the time to pour us a ghetto little sidewalk. I'm impressed.

Here's the house from a little further away. Obviously, big chunks of roof are missing. Still, great progress for two days.

Did I mention that T.D. Jake's mega-church is near the neighborhood? And is somehow involved in the development? And apparently choose all the street names? We live on Patience Boulevard. There's also Kingdom Drive, Prayer Way, Truth Drive, Samaritan Road, you get the idea. I think we lucked out with Patience. Doesn't scream "I am affiliated with a televangelist."

Our view from the second floor. As a small town girl, I appreciate the open space:

Foundation!

So this is what the inside of a foundation looks like. Lots of trash bag covered piles of dirt and cables. Not too pretty, but it apparently gets the job done.

Then, big trucks full of concrete show up....
You end up with this! How exciting. We have a foundation. This makes my commitment to our mortgage lender seem much more real. And kind of scary.

Obligatory carving into the concrete...

And obligatory cutesy photo of obligatory carving into concrete:)

Apparently we are very into earth tones...

We're building a house! More details to the right in the handy links, and I'm sure you'll be seeing many, many pictures over the next few months.


Mom, as promised, here are pictures of the materials we're using:
The first picture is kitchen stuff...white cabinets, granite, small tiles and accent pieces for the backsplash...

Same story, second verse, but you can also see the wood floors.

Obligatory pic of our empty lot. Can you tell which half of my family is a sharp dresser? Can you tell which half is still wearing a sweatshirt from college?

Finally, bathroom stuff. The big tile goes pretty much everywhere in the master bath, and the little accent strip goes in the shower. There's also a coordinating floor tile thing (technical term) that you can see here: http://www.daltileproducts.com/large_items.cfm?itemID=1939&itemtype=1