Dereliction of Duty

I was surprised to see it has been over two months since my last post. Work on the house hasn't progressed as much as you might think since then. We did get everything we wanted out of the house we bought in Arp. Since then we have moved my son and his family to Kaufman and my daughter and her family to Denver. We volunteered at the Formula 1 race in Austin, had our friend from LA (Lower Alabama) visit for a while and our friends Kent and Heather that we met when we were in the Bahamas came for a long weekend that included T+2 (our Thanksgiving celebration on the Saturday after Turkey Day). We have a neighbor that is clearing some pasture and we've so far cut about three cords of wood. Some of it is split and most of it is stacked. 

On to some pictures of what we have accomplished...

A good bit of our time has been spent trying to get our bedroom door working. It's a bit....   different.

Susan laying bricks for the pad the wood burning stove will sit on

The finished product

The mat for the heated floor in the master bathroom is figured out

The mat is taken up and a cork underlayment is glued down

Then the mat is put on top of the cork

Self leveling compound is poured over the mat

The flagstone that has been sitting in front of the house since forever is starting to be put in place

That's it for now. I'll try to be better about posting. Right, I'm sure I will.

Take care.
Brian

As if we didn't have enough to do

Hi All,
Well...   In Susan's words, we should not be left unattended.

Week before last our neighbor sent us an email about a "living estate" auction in Arp. Arp is a town of 970 about twelve miles from us. So the Friday before the auction we went by to look over what all they had. It was kind of an antique / junk / florist business that the lady had gotten too old to run. The building was originally the office for a lumber yard, we've heard it is the second oldest building in Arp, built somewhere around 1930. The Arp Fire Department had gotten some sort of a grant and had bought the entire block and was going to build a new fire station. Everything had to go. I mean everything.

Walking through the building we noticed at least some of the flooring was wood. We still need some wood for the floors in our house so I thought if I could get it cheap enough, it might be worthwhile.

The auction started at 10:00 Saturday morning, with the big items scheduled to be auctioned off starting at noon. Right at noon they auctioned off some guns, some trailers, a riding lawnmower and then got to the buildings. There was no interest on the 35 x 35 tin shop out back. When they started on the house the auctioneer started at $300. I waited to see what kind of interest there was. Not a single bid. When the auctioneer asked if there was any interest in the building I said I'd give $200. Not a single other bid. I just bought a building in Arp, Texas!

The building either has to be moved by October 31 or they will bulldoze it. So having nothing else to do these days (NOT!), last week we started tearing up carpet and linoleum to see what we had. We found that we had more wood flooring than we thought but the foundation is rotten.

View from the front of the house. Don't you love the color?

View from the side with some of the auctioned items still in the yard.

The backroom with the wood floor that got my attention.

Grady and his son Andrew finding more wood flooring in the front rooms. With Duncan's help.

Behind the walls in the backroom, lots of beadboard.

My brother Gary and I tearing out the beadboard for reuse in our house

So far, after five days, we've got most of the beadboard and most of the flooring. Another day or two and we should be done.

Back to the comment about being left unattended. Anyone have some free time to keep an eye on us?

Brian

A Garage and a few other things

Hi All,
For most of the year we've gone back and forth on when to build our garage / shop. Do it now or put it off until next year? We decided to do it now, we need the storage and work space. So here are a few pictures of how it progressed.

Last Monday at 8:30 AM and the first wall is up

By Tuesday afternoon it is framed, has siding and a roof

Friday spray in foam insulation was done

Besides the garage we did a few things in the house...

The mantle is finally up

We liked the interior brick wall so much we decided to turn the corner and do another

That's all for now. Take care.

Brian

Progress Report

Hi all,
It's past time for me to post on our progress so this should get you caught up.

The kitchen cabinets are all in as well as the appliances. We have a fully functional kitchen! Our countertops are plywood until we figure out what we want. The mudroom is finished and things are starting to take up residence there. The powder room has a door, toilet and a sink, not to mention about half of its walls.  The guest bathroom has a tub / shower with tile. The great room has a ceiling fan, as does the kitchen and the master bedroom. All the ceilings are panted. The back porch (facing the pond) has lights and ceiling fans.

Susan and I have done all the tile work. I run the tile saw and she does all the hard work of putting it down (or up in the case of the guest bath). There is tile around the tub in the guest bath, on the floor of the powder room and the floor of the mudroom. All the rest of the floors are bare concrete at the moment.

On to the pictures...

We moved a bed into the bedroom last weekend so we could start sleeping in the house.

Ceiling fan in the kitchen and great room

Tub / Shower in the guest bathroom

Kitchen appliances are in!

But it is still a construction zone.

The mud room

Powder room with walls from a barn we tore down in LA (Lower Alabama)

From across the lake at night

That's all for now. Take care.

Brian

We have air conditioning!

Hi All!
This post will be short and sweet. The big news today is we have air conditioning! We sure do need it. Other recent developments are the kitchen cabinets are installed (they are beautiful) and the porch roofs are going on.

Feels like 116, this is why we needed air conditioning

Kitchen cabinets are in and look fantastic, clear coat going on now

Porch roof should be done by the end of the week

The view of the house from across the lake this morning

That's all for now.
Take care.

Brian

Moving Along

Hi All,
I'm trying to do better about posting a bit more often. This time there is a good bit of progress in a short timeframe. Two things before I get to the house.

There is a private road that runs along the eastern boundary of our property. Since we bought the property we have been trying to get the county to take it over and maintain it. There are five landowners that had to agree to deed some right of way to the county in order to make it happen. Between getting a survey and getting all the effected landowners to have documents signed and notarized it has taken every bit of six months to get this done. Working with the county has been by far the easiest part of the ordeal. On Tuesday, June 5th, Susan and I attended the Rusk County Commissioners Court and saw all our work come to fruition. Welcome to County Road (CR) 1114 D! Once the East Texas 911 office gives us a street number we'll be official and be able to change our address to our final one.

On the way to Commissioners Court we got some much needed rain. What we didn't need was to be quite so close to a lightening strike, about 100 feet by my estimation, Wow! It shook us both up a bit. I'd be very happy to never again be close enough to see the orange ball of flame that is at the end of those white streaks in the sky.

On to the house. All the siding is up and it's 90% painted. The HVAC ducts are all in. This was by far the worst job of any Susan and I have done on the house. The spray foam insulation is in and where there is going to be drywall, it has been hung. So here are the pictures...

Clapboard siding for the back side gable end. From left to right; Grady, Brian, Amber (Scott's daughter) and Scott.

Spraying Kilz as the first layer

Finished with the Kilz

After the Kilz, brown paint. Of course it has a much fancier name than "brown".

The final coat and we're done, I told you we weren't going to leave it yellow.

Spray foan insulation is in. The roof part isn't finished in this picture.

The drywall is up. This is the master closet.

That's all for now. Take care!
Brian

Late May Update

Hi All,
Things are still moving along with the house. Since my last post we've gotten a roof on. Yeehaa! Power and water is into the house, all the wiring and plumbing is installed, just the wires and pex, not all the fixtures. Almost all the siding is up, including the bark we put on the gable on the front of the house.

It's already getting hot here, it's in the 90's. The forecast for the first five days of June is 100+.  Hopefully we'll have air conditioning soon and be able to work inside.

Here are some pictures to show you how things are looking...

Grady and I hooking up power to the house

Ain't it pretty!?

Cold water manifold so we can shut water off to individual rooms

The guest bathtub is installed and plumbed

Installed a ceiling fan to help cool off the inside

The roof is on! The roof is on! And Susan doing her pyromaniac thing. Scrap lumber doesn't hang around long.

Bark siding going up

Exactly the look we were going for (there will be a porch roof and the siding will be painted)

That's it for now. Take care.
Brian

Wow!

It's been an entire  month since I last posted. Talk about being a slacker! Trust me, we haven't been slacking off on working, just posting. Besides the work on the house we've put up a rain water catching system on the barn, harvested some veggies out of the garden, just about completed the hen house and changed out several hydraulic hoses on the skid steer, not to mention pulling the hydraulic pump off the backhoe.

Since our last post a fair bit has been accomplished on the house. Last week we had some friends take vacation time to come help us work on the house. It was great to see Jay and Carol again and their help was very much appreciated. Jay spent most of his time up in the rafters installing can lights or running wire while Carol worked on clear coating our doors and windows. Thanks you two! Only two disappointments with their visit. They didn't stay long enough and we didn't get any pictures with them. How did that happen?

But what you really want is to see pictures, so here they are...

As our OSHA safety officer, Susan is falling down on the job. A ladder on scaffolding in the rain. 

Ricardo, our stonemason, finished our "accent" brick wall.

The heater / air handler is in

The front of the house has some siding. It won't be staying yellow.

The deck, which faces the pond

The great room with fireplace and two sets of french doors on to the deck

Susan up in the rafters cutting a hole for an A/C boot

Electrical wiring is coming along

A wood stove we bought, pretty much where it's going to sit.

Some of Jay's handy work in the rafters

Some new neighbors moved in down the road. Their oldest son did a little fishing in our pond.

Hopefully tomorrow some roofers will show up and start putting metal on our roof. I hope, I hope, I hope!

That's all for now. Take care!

Brian