Visiting and Packing

We had a delightful weekend at my sister's place at Lake Buchanan: my younger nephew and his wife were there with 3 of their friends, my sister's friend from Las Vegas was there with a friend of hers from Austin, and I got to visit with my cousin and his daughter from Alaska as well as another cousin I haven't seen since Christmas.

Yesterday we met my sister, brother-in-law, and friend from Las Vegas in Gruene for lunch and shopping.

Then it was time to start packing for our 11-day trip to the Davis Mountain (we're leaving tomorrow). This is not as easy as it sounds as we need to pack tools (always a need for construction and repair out there), clothes for hot and cool weather plus clothes for painting and other dirty work, plants to spruce up the cabin, books to read, household items (mops, etc.), food, and a variety of other odd items.

We'll be gone until Monday night, August 11 and I'll be off the blogwaves until then.

More Foundation Progress

This past week, the plumber and electrician added their entrances to the foundation prior to the installation of steel rebar. Bug-A-Meister, the termite man, followed up with treatment around the newly-installed drains.

The day after the plumber finished, Hurricane Dolly hit the coast of Texas about 300 miles south of us. Storm clouds began forming so the contractor quickly came in and lay plastic tarp over the base fill. He said that they wanted to prevent any washing away, but more important was preventing excessive settling of the fill. If the fill settles then it means more concrete would have to be poured. We had a couple of days of good rain, which was very much needed because of the drought.

The steel has been ordered and installation should begin next week, followed by the concrete pour. Soon we will be seeing a real foundation!

Playing Catch Up

We learned on Wednesday that Carl's best friend's sister died; on Thursday we drove to Kilgore in far east Texas and drove back home on Friday after the funeral. Even though I was born in Texas and lived here my entire life (except for two years in Oregon), I know very little about the eastern part of the state. We drove through country I'd never been to so it was a lovely, but long (7 hours each way), trip.

On Saturday my sister, brother-in-law, and a friend of theirs from Las Vegas came down and we took a kayak trip. It was relaxing and uneventful until I turned over going through a chute and lost my kayak, my paddle, and my shoes. Everything was recovered and I suffered only minor cuts and bruises. We ended the day enjoying a shrimp boil at our friends' house.

As far as progress on the house: we now have foundation entrances for electrical and plumbing; we expect the foundation steel to be delivered in the next couple of day and the concrete to be poured this weekend.

Until later. . .

Foundation Progress!

Well, in the last couple of days, amazing progress has been made. On Saturday we went by to see what had been done and saw that they had begun "bagging" for the concrete beams in the center of the foundation.


This is a view from outside the garage, down the length of the house.

We went back on the property on Monday, but all that had been done was that seven or eight more loads of base fill had been delivered.

Today (Tuesday) we visited and were amazed at what had been accomplished. Seven workers were making bricks out of plastic sheets while another guy brought in more fill with a front loader. We watched for about 15 minutes while they built about three feet of beam walls.















Later in the day we went back and they had nearly finished all of the beams. There is just a little more to do in the garage area, and then the plumbing and electric entrances will be laid.


Here's what it looks like now after about a full day's work.

Kayaking on the Guadalupe -- Pictorial Version

More Foundation News

We are getting to the point in our foundation that we actually believe it will be level at the end! We had a surveyor come out to place the forms for the house foundation on the survey that was submitted to our lender. Once that is received, we'll be able to get the money for the work that's been completed.

Kayaking on the Guadalupe

My nephew and niece-in-law came up yesterday and the four of us enjoyed a relaxing kayak trip on the beautiful Guadalupe river, and then a fun afternoon in Gruene.

This was the maiden voyage of Carl's and my kayaks; we bought them a couple of years ago when we moved down here -- the first summer the river was so low it was practically dry and last summer the river was closed to kayaking because it was so high! Feast or famine for the water sport industry around here. . .

Pictures will be on another post as soon as I get them from Bekki. . .

4th of July -- Round Top Style

This post is a week late but I wanted to learn how to include a slide show of the Independence Day parade we attended.

Our cousins invited us to come to Round Top for the 4th of July Celebration; we enjoy their company and had nothing else to do, so we went. Round Top has a population of 81 so we expected a quaint, small-town celebration with a parade of 10 or so vehicles and a few booths set up around town. Imagine our surprise when we couldn't find a parking place when we got to town! The celebration started with entertainment by the Round Top Brass Band -- a group of 10 - 12 musicians. This was followed by speeches by the mayor and county judge, an original essay presented by the Class of '08's valedictorian, music sung by a local, VERY talented musician, and a shot from a real canon. The parade had over 100 entries and we enjoyed it very much. We learned that Round Top has the oldest, continuous Independence Day celebration west of the Mississippi -- this was the 158th celebration!

Below is a selection of the wonderful entries of floats, longhorns, vintage and antique cars, old fire engines, etc.

Enjoy!

Round Top 4th of July Parade

Some More Foundation Progress

We went up to the land today (July 9th) to see what has been done in the last two days. Not as much progress as we had hope, but at least a lot of new fill had been delivered.



We hope that we can get the rough-in plumbing and steel laid within a couple of weeks, so we can begin the concrete pour. Ohhhhhh! We have waited so long!

But time marches on...

Foundation Update

Work continues with the tall, back wall of forms being more strongly reinforced and braced. They still have more bracing to do, as seven and a half feet of concrete is pretty heavy.

This week hordes of workers came in to begin laying the inside portion of the wall forms. This is done by placing thick-mil plastic down, packing it with fill and then rolling it back away from the outside form so that it acts as a "brick" that is held in place by more fill. This way the inside part of the form becomes a part of the fill and does not have to be removed.
We are amazed at the amount of fill that has been removed from our driveway, and yet we still have such a long way to go to complete the forms.