The first few weeks of the project of finishing the house seemed to be an exercise in "2 steps forward, 3 back". There were many false starts, problems with schedules and workers. We were blessed though with good weather and after a few weeks, we had hit on a group of people who were very dependable and eager to do a good job. This group enabled us to do multiple tasks at the same time, some inside and some outside. With the walls finally in good shape, we spent most of our time doing the flooring and fixing up various things outside with a Bobcat as well as getting the water supply in better shape.
While maybe it would seem minor except when you're living in a camping trailer and relying on family and friends to help out with laundry, a major event occurred when the tile layers finished the laundry room and I was able to move in the washer and dryer I had found locally via Craig's List. To be able to do my own laundry and any time I wanted seemed like a major luxury.
As another major milestone, the cabinets we had specified were delivered by the cabinets for the kitchen and laundry room. Now we have our work cut out for us as the entire "big room" is full of cabinets that need to be hung, painted and finished.
We're now around the end of March - the initial self-imposed milestone I had when I came to Texas. I wanted to have the house livable by now and, honestly, we're pretty close to being able to move in. However, the furniture is arriving very soon and I need to take time to move the camper from the garage up to its permanent home. This means getting a large trench dug for the electricity and wiring - about 200' of trench - and then connecting everything. This will take 2-3 days out of the schedule. I do have a pretty good crew doing a lot of the trim work and they've done some good work on the vaulted ceiling and wainscoting so that we can hang the cabinets. Also, they're busy building a large pantry off the kitchen so that we'll have a place to store all of the canned food products we'll be developing in our gardens the next few years.
On the subject of gardens, because we've been so busy from February through probably late April or early May just getting the house livable, I've had no time to put in the gardens, even though I have quite a bit of treated material for raised beds. Probably after Julie gets here, we'll take some time to use the existing large planters around the large porch to plant (very late for South Texas) our tomatoes, peppers, squash and other vegetables we will have for the first summer.
Now - with the camper trailer on its new and permanent home:
And with the garage now full of household goods instead of the camper trailer:
I'm ready to get back to the trim work, painting and other finishing work that will enable me to start moving furniture and household goods into the house and finally move out of the trailer after two months. The trailer has provided me an excellent home - complete with kitchen, very good bed and bathroom, but sharing it with two cats plus the confined quarters is getting a bit old, so I'm eager and motivated to get the house usable and I probably have about three weeks before Julie arrives, so I'd better get busy,
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