Sunday, September 18, 2011

Forever House #7

...our journey to rent free living, all the entertainment minus the headaches.

I think my two favorite things about our forever house will be no rats and the plumbing. I will post about the no rats thing later and all that we are doing to insure that. For now the first part of the plumbing is finished! 

I think my boys build better structures out of their mega blocks than our current rental home was built. The people who built this thing had no idea what they were doing. Everything was done wrong and unfortunately you pay for it every day. I really feel sorry for the owners. I think they are going to be very disappointed when they move in. 

The plumbing is probably the worse part of it. It something that is harder to fix. For example our toilet still flushes into our shower. That shouldn't be possible. The drain isn't the lowest point either, so before you shower you get to sweep all the water out and then clean it. We have come to the conclusion that an avocado must have fallen into the vent pipe from the septic tank. Also there are no air traps on anything, so our kitchen sink, and shower reek. Being pregnant I can smell it now more than ever. I hold my nose most of the time walking through my house and pray for rain. Both doors open when it rains is the only thing that seems to freshen things up. 
The sewer lines are installed... by a plumber. One who knew what he was doing! These will be in our floors. Jimmy is going this week to check everything one last time before the floors are poured. This photo is of our kids' bathroom. It is a jack and jill style one behind our 2 kids' rooms. The boys will probably always share a room, but we might have girls one day! This is the bathroom that will have a bathtub for the boys... yay! 
The masons have been focusing on the other side of the house, so its walls are lower. We hope to finish one side with the roof and floor so that Jimmy can start working on shelves in our pantry and the carpenters can put the drawers in our kitchen before the skeleton of our entire house is finished. We hope to be starting on the roof for that side in 2 weeks! 
This is the gravel that will fill in the floors before the concrete is poured. 
The sad part is the gravel is where our okra plants used to be. I miss them! We have a gardener coming with a tractor to level our our land before we do more landscaping. He was suppose to come 2 weeks ago. That's the way things work here. We really like him though when he shows up. 
This is our finished leach field! Soon it will be covered with green grass for our boys to run and play on. You know the grass is always greener... over the leach field!
As far as landscaping Jimmy has planted a couple things. He put 3 palms in the back corner of the yard for us to hang hammocks on to sit and watch the boys play! They were just replanted, so they will perk up soon.
He also planted a couple of palms in the front yard. You can see the taller walls in this picture and it was taken about 2 weeks ago. Our yard is a mess right now. 
Unfortunately we decided to cut down several trees that were along our front wall. We were thinking we would save them. When we first bought the property they were covered in light pink flowers. For the majority of the year, they just look like naked scrawny trees. 
Old picture, but you can see some of the trees
They are used as fence posts to tree off properties here. You can just stick a branch in the ground and they grow really fast. I hate cutting down trees, but they were ugly. We have twice as many plants and trees that will go in their place. 

Without the trees blocking the sun our ivy is finally starting to grow!

The conduit is in place for our wiring.

Here is an update on our creepy hallway. As the walls get taller, it gets creepier!

Since the floors aren't filled in yet, it is hard to get photos of the taller side of the house. You have to climb up and down makeshift wooden ladders to get in and out of rooms right now. This is one room I got to though. It is the little mudroom off of our carport entry. It will have a little half bath in it for guests. Before we even mentioned it to the plumber he suggested that we should put a drain in the floor for friends who are not used to using a flushable toilet. We have learned that from experience. We had our entire office flood and had to throw away our rug. That is the whole point for this bathroom.

A salesman stopped by our land the other day (which happens a lot since there is construction going on) and asked if he could leave some stucco samples. We wanted to have white stucco, but were concerned that once you mix the white chalk into the sand it would make it weaker and wouldn't be even throughout all the batches. Well this stuff comes already white in premixed bags, so the ratio is always the same. Each part of the wall won't look different depending on who mixed that batch of stucco. The one in the photo above is a textured finish that we have chosen for the outside of our house.
The one on the far left in the photo above is chalkboard smooth and for now this will be the walls inside our house. I think the textured would look beautiful inside, but I might appreciate the smooth walls more over time. Now when we run into our walls it can really scratch you up. The nice part is we don't have to paint right away or ever if we decide we like the simplicity of the white walls. If they get chipped a little they are white underneath. Also if we need to patch a hole, the consistency will be the same since it is already premixed. We were thrilled about this product. 

CUTE ITEM OF THE DAY: On one of our trips to our forever house Silas saw a pile of wet concrete and a shovel and knew exactly what to do! He went to work mixing it. He must have been watching Lico and the other workers all the other times we have been there. Lico thought it was great! 

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the update on your forever house. Know you are really anxious to have it completed and move in.

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  2. Lots of really good information here. Thanks for sharing!

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  3. LOL! That shot of Silas reminds me so much of Dante. He was always out with the builders, working away. He used to mix up mud and then smooth it out with a trowel and stack bits of concrete on it, too. They learn so fast. :)

    I highly agree with smooth walls inside. We have the bumpy stucco in our room and just sleeping, I will bloody my knuckles by throwing my hand against the wall. ouch.

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