Spring Flowers and Some Nice Touches

It's been three months since we've been to the barndominium and it'll be about six months until we're there again, but that doesn't mean nothing is happening.  Some work continues on the electrical and we've ordered a couple of nice things for the new place.  The first is a "Christie" medallion for the front gate (yet to be constructed).  There's a manual, locked gate there now but ultimately will be a nice, stone automatic gate and this emblem will be part of the new gate.

And while on a business trip to NYC right after our working visit to Texas, Julie bought a nice chandelier.  In previous blogs, you could see the vaulted ceiling in the main kitchen, dining and living area.  The chandelier will probably go over the area for the main dining table.

And this Spring, given the amount of rain they've had in Texas the past few months (after 2 years of terrible drought), we finally have vegetation and wild flowers on the property again.  You can see the pump house on the right side of the picture as well as my old Ford 8N tractor in the middle.  The propane tank has pretty well disappeared in the vegetation (or could be just slightly to the right of the frame).  Either way, it's really nice to see the wild flowers and vegatation on the property again after two years of virtually nothing growing.  I hope the trees have profited from the rain and I'm sure that much of the rain is making its way down to replenish the aquifer.  Let's hope the rains continue.

Above is a very nice shot across the width of the property showing the vegetation this Spring, the wild flowers and the barndominium in the background.  Wish we were there, but we'll be there soon enough and there's a lot of work we'll hopefully get done between now and then, so when we have some new progress and pictures, we'll post again.

And as a final post for this session of blogging, here's a nice shot of Ivy and Jude running through the wildflowers.  Thanks to Bob Denson for the photo.  We appreciate Bob's willingness to be our "eyes" when we're not there.

Outside Work January 2012

The previous blog shows the progress made during our recent holiday to the US.  The inside is coming along nice, but the outside is really coming along so I thought a few pictures would be fun to see.  First, here's a picture of the completed pump house (see the framing in the prior blog) along with the propane tank.  All the dogs are accompanying Bob when he took these pictures.

The next picture is taken from about the same spot the previous picture was taken.  THe first picture is looking to the northeast and the picture below is looking to the southwest.  You can see the new retaining wall that was just built in the foreground and the large planter near the porch.  In the middle, the "front yard" has been nicely leveled and a new Italian-style fountain placed in the middle of the front yard - our first bit of exterior decoration.

The following picture is taken from the far west corner of the porch - in the opening to the front yard you can see in the middle right of the picture above.  You can clearly see the new retaining wall, the leveled yard and the new fountain (along with the pump house, propane tank and electrical service.  You can see that we've aggregated all of our "utilities" in one area to make maintenance and other activities easier.

To get the gas and water lines from the propane tank and the pump house down to the barndominium, we had to dig some pretty serious trenches.  Heavy equipment will be running across this area from time to time as it's all along the easy side of the house where we plan to put the rain and grey water collection systems.  Thus, we wanted to bury the pipes 3-4' down.  Fortunately the land is pretty sandy so digging deep isn't much of a problem except for the large number of tree roots in the way.  Here's a picture of me and Dave installing the water pipes.

Finally, since we've been gone, we had someone come in and put more road base (a heavy clay base - required in this area since the soil in the area is so sandy that you need to put down a heavy road base material so vehicles don't sink in the sand) on the road, on the approach to the garages and the parking areas.  We had noticed this last trip that the previous road base had become a bit worn (quite a few heavy contstruction trucks caused that) and had sunk a bit into the sand so another god coating was in order.  Ultimately (once we're done with construction), we'll put other road base materials on the top of this base coat.  But until we're closer to being done, this material will be our road - kind of a orange-red color quite similar to the color you'll see in the red center of Australia.

This first picture is the approach area to the garages (west of the barndominium looking east).  This area had too much slope for my liking (especially to back the trailer in and out) so we had it built up and as you can see, it is much flatter now.

And here's a hot back toward the main road showing the additional material on the road.  This part of the road had gotten pretty "wavy" from the larger trucks bringing materials to the job site.

And one more good look back at the road and approach to the garages.  At gentle slope around the turn but it should be fine now assuming it all settles nicely in the rains of late winter and spring.

Christmas 2011 and January 2012

There was a lot of activity at the Texas homestead during the Christmas holidays.  We came to the US in mid-December, spending a few days in California before coming to Texas.  We also had company - Julie's mother Barbara came out to spend about ten days with us and to see the property and activity.  It was a very hectic time.  We made a couple of trips to Austin to see Jodi and the kids as well as seeing the kids with family next door.  Nonetheless, we did get a lot done as you'll see in this and the next blog.

First, here's the progress on the interior:  the framing is virtually complete (there will be a couple of things to finish up once the electrical is completely done).  The plumbing is in (rough version) and the electrical is well along.  Also, the air conditioning system has been installed and the ducting run.

Most of the work has been conducted by (or at least supervised by) our contractor Ray Rau and his team and subcontractors.  Here's a picture of me and Ray on the front porch during one of the work days:

Here's some pictures of the framing:

As you can see, the front part of the house will have a very nice vaulted ceiling.  All the ceilings are 10' ceilings but the entire front half of the house (kitchen, dining and living areas) will have a 14' vault.  In the next picture, you'll see that even the pump house got framed and finished.

One of the features of the barndominium is easy access to the deck area above the living area.  Not only is this a place to gain easy access to the wiring and plumbing, it's also a great area to store things and to put the air conditioning, hot water heater, etc.  The following picture shows the large set of steps that has been built to take things up and down, and the entire area will be enclosed for safety and cleanliness.  We'll have the air conditioning provide some cooling to the area so things we store up there won't be "cooked" in the heat of the summer.  Also, the "plenum" will provide a somewhat cooled blanket of air over the top of the house so that the cooling requirement in the house will be reduced.  We'll put lots of insulation between the house and the outside walls (R38 in most places) and will put at least that much insulation between the attic area and the outside walls..