Since returning from our cruise, we’ve been going to the home site each day, if only for a short amount of time. There have, of course, been a few more bumps in the road, and I am trying to remind myself that everything is figure-out-able. And maybe some of these challenges are blessings in disguise, even if it doesn’t feel like that.
One major improvement is that the road dried out enough from rains a few weeks back so the gravel base could be poured. This is not the completed road and more construction trucks and cement trucks for the barn will beat it up, but it is a base that can be used to create the final road next spring when the construction wraps up.
Windows and some of the doors have been delivered!
Windows and doors have also been delivered to the home site and the house exterior walls have been wrapped with Tyvek. John commented that he could now get a sense of the rooms and the flow of the house as everything is getting closed in.
The challenges we came home to included an issue with the thickness of the stone we wanted on the exterior chimneys. The stone would require that the living room windows get reframed and moved. Which would in turn mean that pieces of furniture inside the living room could not be placed as designed. Sigh
Living room
Living room
Dining room
Library
Kitchen
Master bedroom
Great room
Laundry room
Finally, we were told the stone on the chimneys above the roofline tends to crack and cause leaks over time. Umm, could someone have told us that back in April when we were getting bids for our house? Seriously…
Soffits going in on the porch
Those challenges aside, the home building has made great progress this week with roofing underlayment installation starting on Friday.
We enjoyed a beautiful sunset from the home site Friday night as we walked around and enjoyed all the progress made.
December 6th, and I’m wearing short sleeves outside! Standing at what will be the kitchen window. Living room and dining room looking over the valley.
Thanks for stopping by! Next I’ll post about the barn progress, as the concrete gets poured at 5 am Monday morning for the barn foundation.
On Saturday John and I caught up via phone with our friends Bob and Julia, and Julia ended the conversation saying, “And put something new on that finery blog!” Yes, ma’am…
Front entryway
This week we had a lot of rain so we think the framing crew got rained out a bit, but I must admit, it rained enough that, with work commitments, John and I didn’t go up to the home site much. Saturday it was beautiful and sunny again, so up the hill we went to find that the crew had begun adding ceiling rafters above the porches and even above the guest rooms, bathrooms, and hallway.
The long porchThe pool porch
While adding this post to WordPress, none of the photos I took on my phone would upload to this post via my iPhone or MacBook Air. What gives? Sigh… Fine, I found a workaround that made the pics much smaller WordPress…
From the master bedroom, looking at the great roomMud room entrance
Our friend Gary came to the homesite with us on Sunday and, as a commercial builder for 20 years, provided some helpful insights into this part of the process. Gary commented that this part of the build is the best and the worst. Why? Well it’s the best because you can really see the house in 3D and can literally walk through the rooms. But it’s the worst because John and I are second guessing everything. Do we want to extend this wall another foot? What would that do to the flow? Is the hallway (shown below) too narrow?
The hallway really feels like a hallway now
Ugh – the reality is that the house is being built based on plans we designed, tweaked, approved, and have lived with for the last 18 months. So we need to quit doing this crazy double guessing of our choices. Having said that, we are meeting with our site supervisor on Tuesday afternoon to discuss a few minor changes.
Looking at the entryway porch
Thanks for stopping by and looking at our progress. I’ll try to get a few more posts up this week including progress on our barn and our new compost pile near the future garden location.
This weekend my friend from middle school and high school, Matthew, came for a short weekend visit. Although I had just visited with Matthew a few weeks ago at a mutual friend’s wedding, it was great to have more time to catch up. And to show him our home site!
master bedroom far wall with French Doors
master bedroom wall with two windows
master bedroom fireplace with two windows
master bathroom shower stall
master bathroom water closet
master bathroom – where the tub will go
small library where John will have an office space
Some things we noticed right away is that the master bedroom and bathroom was fully framed out (above). Yay!
We also had our first cocktail with company on the porch too! Picture by Matthew.
After walking around the property a bit, we took Matthew on a tour of the house. And the windows are all framed out now (except the kitchen windows for some reason).
Great roomliving and dining room Looking into the kitchen – the only room that doesn’t have the windows fully framed out
While visiting the house, Matthew took pictures to send to his mom so she could know what her guest room looks like. 😂
The bracing is up so they can begin to frame out the roof next.
One comment Matthew made (other than, “this does not suck” – praise indeed Matthew), was that he thought house guests would feel like they are at a resort. I think that would be great! That has been part of our goal – we want the house to be very comfortable both for us and for friends and family when they visit.
Enjoying the view with our friend At Monument Hill on Sunday – another great view!
We love having friends visit – our home is designed for entertaining – and we look forward to other friends and family coming to see our progress as the home builder continues.
On Tuesday we went up to the home site after work and found some of the exterior walls have been put up!!
Holy cow! Walls are going up!
What a difference a day makes! We can finally get a sense of the size of the rooms and how tall 10’ ceilings really are…
Door to nowhere? Actually, it’s from the smallest bathroom out to the pool porch.Here’s the wall just off our entryway going up!
They really made great progress this week and it was fun to visit the site every day after work or on a lunch break to see the walls going up! As a thank you, I made some lemon poppy seed muffins for the crew.
Lemon poppyseed muffins to say thank you to the framing crewWhen I asked Russel if I could take his photo he responded, “it’s up in every post office around here, but sure!”
Now John and I can walk around and really get a sense of the home we have designed! A few notes for those who are curious about our forever home – it is a single story so we don’t have to worry about cooling an upstairs (which can be very expensive in the Texas heat), and it has 10 foot ceilings to make the home more energy efficient during the summer months. Add in the planned ceiling fans in almost every room and the deep covered porches, and you can see how we have thought about the 40+ days of 💯 degree heat we will experience each summer.
Here I am in my future office on November 6th. Yes, I am wearing shorts in November because it was 84 Fahrenheit that day!Guest bedroom and pantry wall going up.
Great room fireplace and built ins
Looking into the great room
South wall of the great room – opposite the fireplace
Small bathroom off the great room
Storage behind the great room
John in the storage room
More walls ready to go upDining room looking into the living room
I finally asked one of the framers why they don’t have the bottoms of the windows framed out. He said they will get all the walls up, make sure they are perfectly square, and then add the lower threshold for the windows. Who knew?
The exterior walls and walls around bathrooms are 2X6 construction while the other interior walls are 2X4.
We’ve had a couple days of rainy, cold weather (well, cold for here), so I’m excited to get back to the site and see what progress has been made. Next comes the roof framing!
Previously I wrote about finding an error of omission while visiting the home site. After arriving home from my latest work trip, John and I went out to the home site to see the progress that had been made and I immediately found another error.
That’s a lot of lumber ya’ll!
John has now nicknamed me “eagle eye”.
In our architect’s drawings, we had a mechanical closet planned near the front door. Originally, it was supposed to be a second, matching coat closet, but when our Illinois-based architect (with whom we had worked during our multiple home remodeling projects) realized that we don’t have basements in Texas, he suggested we turn part of the library (shown above as a sitting area) into into a mechanical closet.
Edited plan with our home builder and site supervisor
Our home builder, however, suggested that we put those mechanical elements up in the attic. Duh – when we remodeled the lake cottage in 2010, we put the new furnace up in the attic. Why didn’t I think of that? Maybe because the architect suggested putting the mechanical closet in there? Hmm. Isn’t it funny how quickly we give our power away because of someone’s title or expertise….
Re-designing your house on the fly is not recommended… We also changed the entrance into the laundry room.
Same thing happened near our laundry room – the architect added a mechanical closet off the mud room and laundry room for cold air return, water heater, etc. Again – all of this can be put up in the attic.
The obviously incorrect closet on the right.
So although our home builder and site supervisor had these small changes on their plans, somehow this did not get translated to Cody’s framing crew.
Where is my red pencil?
When we arrived Monday morning to talk about the issue, the framing crew was great and we made all the corrections on their copy of the house plans.
What mistake?Already fixed!
It also gave us an opportunity to rearrange a slight awkwardness with the laundry room and mud room. Now John will be able to come in from the barn and go straight to the laundry room to drop off dirty work clothing.
Improved laundry room layout
Some aspects of the house are easier to envision once you begin seeing the green-treated lumber laid out on the slab. And that’s when you notice the issues – like how a door is going to open the wrong way.
Thank you to Victor and the other members of the framing crew for fixing these issues so quickly!
Later, we came back after the work day was over and saw that they were beginning to frame up the exterior walls. Wow!
This is the picture window in the living room with the two small windows on either side. Not sure why there is no lower limit for the windows yet. Future doorway into the dining roomButlers pantry and guest room to the left
The crew has been great to work with, but we are again reinforced in our belief that it is important to be onsite and to check on the construction every day. Like the previous error, this was an easy and quick fix because we caught it early. It would have been a bigger pain once the wall studs start going up.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the process in the comment section below. Thanks for stopping by and see you soon!
John and I have really been enjoying visiting our home site since the foundation was poured. It’s been much easier to envision the floor plan of the house with plumbing and electrical stubbing in place.
Entryway
Entryway porch – you can see the outline for the fireplace
Living room – the yellow circle is for a floor outlet
Guest bathrooms – you can see the shower has rain water in the base
Master bathroom – also has rain water in the shower base
Great room – you can see two yellow circles for the floor outlets
Pool porch – the barn will be in the distance from this view
And John has not slowed in his enthusiasm for finding native american artifacts. The car is typically laden with new tooled pieces of every shape and size. But more on that later…
John at dusk
Today prep work began on the barn site. Our ranch home does not have an attached garage – not unusual in the country. In fact, of our family and friends in the country, I cannot think of one that has a garage they can walk into from the interior of the house.
Rolling out the barn location
The garage will be on the southwest side of the house, behind the great room. To access it, we’ll likely leave the house from the mud room, adjacent to the laundry room. This way all that “work in the yard” stuff can stay in one location.
Drive up to the barn site
We debated holding off on the barn/garage, but realized quickly it will be a good location for holding building supplies as well as our our furniture and belongings as soon as we can get another moving truck down from the Midwest.
The barn will also eventually hold a small, 2 bedroom, 1 bath, 600 square foot apartment with a kitchenette (no oven or dishwasher). This will be perfect for those friends and family who want to visit for a week or more, for Spring Break, for example. I won’t be able to take time off from work every time we have weekday visitors, so they can stay in the apartment so we don’t have to feel that we have to entertain constantly.
Framing lumber is delivered – note the water still in our master bath shower base!
The other progress made was two huge truck loads full of lumber for framing. This way everything will be ready for the framers in another week after the foundation is fully cured.
With this delivery, we will also be adding a lock on the gate. This lumber wasn’t free and unfortunately we have heard from our site supervisor of other home building sites being robbed when left open and not attended. What an awful drag that would be!
Sunset on the slab
Actually, I’m considering adding a game camera that could capture the build as it goes as well as provide security for any who might be inclined to trespass or even steal. What do you think? Let me know in the comment below.
First, did you know there is a whole world of concrete memes? I did not and am resisting all of my instincts to post some of the funnier ones here now. Instead, let’s focus on the fact that the most concrete thing we could do was lay a foundation that will cement our steps before we hit the asphalt.
Sorry, I had to…
Walking up the hill before dawn.
John and I were really impressed with the foundation crew – they had lighted barrels to mark the drive entrance for the concrete trucks, huge lights for the workers, and put up red tape across our neighbors driveway to be sure that no construction vehicles used their road.
It was a beautiful October morning in Texas – 65º F pre-dawn with a high around 78º F by noon.
By the time we arrived at 6:30 AM they were on Cement Truck number 22 and pouring for our great room. The local company used is called Lauren concrete – which we thought was fun since that is our daughter’s name!
It’s as though the universe wanted Lauren to be a part of our day!
I tried to stay out of everyone’s way as they poured and leveled the concrete. While we watched and chatted, the sun rose and they were able to turn off the big spotlights.
Selfie pre-dawn at the foundation pour!
Here comes truck #24!
These guys jobs get harder and harder
Incredible attention to detail as they smooth!
We were so grateful that we could be there that morning to see our home’s foundation being poured and to say thank you to everyone! I set out a tray with the cinnamon strudel muffins and whole carton of orange juice when the crew had a chance to take a break.
Breakfast break is ready!
Unfortunately, I had to head back for an 8 AM staff meeting, but John was able to stay and capture a few more shots. The crew was also really nice to him and shared their breakfast tacos wrapped in foil with him.
The sun coming up as we walked back down the hill so I could get to work.
While I worked, John captured the porches being poured. It was really fun to see a particular area “take shape”. Also, they did all of the house interior before doing the exterior porches. Below is a 10 foot deep porch off our master bedroom being poured.
This is the small covered patio off our master bedroom
Here comes the pour!
Getting everything smooth
Done and ready for my lounger for morning coffee!
At lunch I was able to come back and see everyone smoothing out the cement with concrete polishing machines. In all, it took 27 trucks full of concrete to complete our foundation slab. It is supposed to rain tonight, which everyone says is perfect timing. Apparently, the concrete is quite hot as it is poured, so the rain will help to cool and cure the foundation faster.
Pins on along the exterior walls
Winding up…
And the pitch!
Muffins and orange juice were all gone!
Polishing the concrete
Finally, before leaving, John and I inserted a 2019 penny into the foundation on the front porch near the front entry door. We’ve heard lots of stories of people marking their foundations – adding animal prints (one gentleman told us he had shot a deer and used the hooves to make a track across his front porch), adding hand prints or initials, throwing coins across the foundation, etc. We opted for a penny to represent the year when the foundation was poured, to provide good luck (it is heads up) and to represent our years in Illinois, since honest Abe is the face on pennies and Illinois is the Land of Lincoln…
Placing the penny on the entryway porch
Our lucky penny on the front porch!
Close up of our lucky penny
The foundation will now cure for a week or so before the framing begins and the framing lumber is being delivered on Monday, so the plot (and foundation) thickens!
This gentleman was removing the uprights between the porch and the great room. You can see the shape of the great room fireplace!
Had you ever heard of any of these foundation marking rituals? Which would you or have you done? As always, thanks for stopping by!
Thanks so much to Wesley for being there all morning to make sure everything went great!!
John and I returned from a lovely weekend reconnecting with friends in the Midwest and…. wow… things kept moving and grooving while we were gone!
Vapor barrier is in place and will keep the floors from sweating on humid Texas days.
When visiting the home site on Wednesday, we saw that the rebar and vapor barrier were all in place and they were also adding framing to show the porches from the interior of the house. Plumbing was also stubbed out as well!
Laundry room in the foreground with 2 guest baths off to the left.
It was great to see the plumbing stubbed out, because that helped us (me) to see where the rooms are really located in the house.
Master bathroom showerLooking at what will be the front door.
And as I was reviewing all of the work done, I realized that something was MISSING! There was no plumbing stubbed out for the outdoor kitchen. Thankfully, I could get in touch with Wesley, our site supervisor.
As we reviewed the house plan, we realized that the architect’s drawing says, “Final Layout by Others” and doesn’t actually show a sink. Oops.
We caught this in plenty of time so the plumber came back and the electrician also was notified to run conduit to the outdoor island as well. Whew!
Adding the plumbing for the outdoor kitchen sink by the future swimming pool.
This definitely reinforced the importance of being on site as work is being done. If I had not caught that, we would have had to jackhammer the porch floor up to install the sink, which would have been a pain as well as difficult to hide in the newly poured porch floor.
View of Prairie Valley – it isn’t as good from the house site yet as we haven’t trimmed up any trees. But this is why we have a long porch along the living and dining room side of the house.
John and I spoke with Arturo, who has been in charge of the foundation crew, and Donovan, who will be in charge of the concrete pump. The concrete work begins at 3 AM and will be done pumping by 8 or 9 am. Then removing some of the interior framing and final smoothing will take until 12 noon or so.
Looking from the living room towards the dining room and butler’s pantry. Two guest rooms (one will be my office) are beyond the plumbing stub for the butler’s pantry.
At 5 pm, after the foundation crew had left, we met our barn builder on site to discuss that work, which will begin next week. He commented that whoever did our foundation “knew what they were doing”, which is reassuring since I’m not sure I could identify quality work from shoddy work.
I finally had to admit to John that, yes, the front porch is rather “roomy”. And long.
Knowing that everyone has an early morning tomorrow, I decided to make cinnamon muffins for the crew (that was Wesley’s request) the night before. We just want them to know how much we appreciate them working such long hours on our house!
Better Crocker mix for Cinnamon Strudel muffins
So that’s it until tomorrow and the cement trucks begin showing up! Anyone want to guess how many trucks they estimate it will take? 🙂
This week we’ve been very excited to see the foundation framing go up. A crew of four measured and created the frames, then brought in 14 dump trucks of dirt to create part of the foundation.
Outside forms are up!
From there they began creating trenches for the concrete “beams” that will be poured next week, although I want to call them footers for obvious reasons. They seem to run along what will be walls some of the time.
Arturo is the man!The fireplace in our master bedroomLots of “beams” have now been dug!
John, ever the treasure seeker, has loved searching through the dirt that they have trenched out to find arrowheads and other native american artifacts. He promises to add a blog post showcasing some of his finds.
The hunter at work
Maybe it is obvious to everyone else, but I had to ask why they brought the dirt in. By compacting the dirt, they will use less concrete on top. And dirt is, of course, much cheaper than concrete…
It’s challenging to get a sense of scale. Aspects of it seem huge and other areas don’t feel that large. The foundation is much larger than the house interior because we have lots of covered porches designed into our house. The idea is that you can (almost always) sit outside on one side of the house or the other, depending upon where the sun is and whether you want to be in the sun or shaded from it.
The view into the courtyard from the kitchen – I think…
Hopefully we earned some brownie points with our foundation guys. Arturo is supposed to be the best (as our road guy told us) and everyone wants his crew to do their house. I brought a bag of homemade Pumpkin Spice muffins to the site for the crew as a thank you for working on our house. It was a Trader Joe’s Gluten Free mix, but they don’t need to know all that… Next week when they begin pouring the concrete, I will have to come up with another treat to say thank you.
Trader Joe’s makes some good stuff.
While we were at the home site, taking pictures (me) and searching for treasures (John), our first big rig with materials arrived. Rebar! The rest of this week and early next week will be creating the rebar structure and plumbing in the “beams”. We also found a good site downhill and away from the beautiful oak trees for the septic system to run. Ahh, the joys of building in the country.
Alas, we must pull ourselves away from the home site for a few days as we travel back North for the weekend, so it will be exciting to see these materials in place in the foundation of the house.
So let me know if you’ve ever built a house (we certainly have not) – was this part of the process easy or not? And did you bring treats to your crews? I need ideas for treats and ways to say thank you to them. As John says, for them, it’s just another job, but for us – it’s our forever home! Thanks for stopping by and would love to see your ideas for treats!
Building on family land that hasn’t been “improved” has many challenges – including the basic and early step of actually getting to it!
What still needs to be cleared. The whole road bed looked like this.
It’s a complicated situation – how John’s grandfather’s land was divided in the 1990’s – but the portion that my late mother-in-law inherited has a 40 foot wide deeded strip of land that connects the rest of the 177 acres to the state highway. Without this 1.1 acres of land, this property would be landlocked. And it has never been cleared in the 24 years I’ve been with John. Until now.
As we prepare for backhoes, bulldozers, concrete trucks and trucks heavy with timber and other materials, we needed our own road to get the materials to our home site (we were previously using a neighbor’s road that is adjacent to our property, but they didn’t want those heavy trucks beating up their road).
Hence the clearing has begun so groundbreaking can begin soon.
I was really happy when I saw the work! First – I cannot believe how fast the crew is at clearing – all of this was done in just one day! And I love how many trees they left – I was really concerned it would look like “scorched earth” with everything decimated.
Our new “road” headed to the state highway. On the right is the neighbor’s road, which is OK for cars, but not for big cement trucks.
Now the final 1/3 needs to be cleared out to the road. I think there may be some heavy rock laid down so the trucks don’t get stuck in mud, but I’m not positive. Thankfully John has been in charge of this part of the process!
This has definitely been part of what is different building out in the country, versus building on a lot you purchased in a neighborhood. We have to do all of the infrastructure ourselves, but in the end we know it will be worth it!
Have you ever built a house or needed to bring in infrastructure? Would love to hear your thoughts and thanks for stopping by!
Hello and welcome to Farm and Finery. This website is all about our journey from life in a mid-sized college town to life on a 44 acre farm. Except it isn’t a farm – yet.
We are breaking ground (I hope) in October 2019. This was supposed to occur in July 2019, then August, then September… But I think we finally have all the many, many moving pieces in place. The land has been separated from the rest of my mother in law’s estate and deeded in our name. After meeting, interviewing, and vetting 5 home builders, we’ve selected the one for us and after shopping around for construction loans from 4 lending institutions, we’ve crunched the numbers and are ready to close on our construction loan.
This blog will document this journey, both for us and for family and friends who are interested in following along. I’ll also highlight some of my adventures as I travel for work – a lot.
Let me know in the comments below if there is anything in particular you would like covered as we get our blog up and running. I’m very open to suggestions as neither John nor I have ever done anything like this! To continue following the journey from the beginning, scroll down and click on the name of the next blog post under “next”. And thanks so much for stopping by!
