Day 74 - Different Kinds of Building

Sorry it's been so long between posts........in addition to building the house, we were privileged to witness the building of a new family.......Amanda and Rick's wedding on Galveston Island March 23, 2013!  We had a blast at the wedding!!!!!!

With full permission and cooperation from Amanda, here is the transformation of a beautiful bride.
         Before ..........................................................................................and after

And, of course, you must see the handsome groom.

The Groom, Rick, and Bruce

And the lovely Mother of the Bride.

Mother of the Bride, Kathy, and Nancy

Not to be left out is the ranch crowd slicked up for the occasion.

L to R: John, Jan, Bruce, Nancy. Melinda, Craig, Christie, Jerry, Cindy
(Many thanks to Chelsea for taking photo and therefore not included in shot.)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (do you know how long I have been waiting to use this phrase?????) lots of building of another type has been occurring.

Much progress has been made putting in the plumbing connections on both floors.

Adrian showing the spot for shower head

Pipes to upstairs located at garage ceiling

Need to ask how this will be resolved........

But please don't ask me about all the connections, pipes, brackets, and gizmos in the following pictures.  Right now, I don't have a clue, but intend to get more educated before anything is closed in by insulation and drywall!!

The electricians have been hard at work putting up "blue boxes" and brackets for lighting.

Electrical Contractor - IES

Electricians at Work

REALLY important stuff happened today - a 4.5 hour walk through to discuss all electrical connections and lighting in the house and pool house.  We had a full contingent of experts helping us with the decisions about placement of switches and lights in addition to the types of lighting.  Also discussed were audio, video, safety, and security requirements for the house.  Here's a shot of the crew doing today's walk through - minus our low voltage team.

L to R - Randy, Danny (IES), Bruce, Aaron (M&F), Johnny (Fergusons), Keith (M&F)

We are so fortunate to have such a great team of folks helping us build our house.  These guys know their business and have made many great suggestions to improve our original ideas for the house.

So much has been accomplished in 74 days and we look forward to all the fun ahead of us.

Furry Friends of the Day
While we were working in the house, two of our little bovine friends came to visit.  They got bored with all of the electrical discussion and trotted off to find something more interesting to do with their time.

Day 68 - Short Update

We have a new addition to our Mattern & Fitzgerald team, Aaron Shreve.  We met Aaron at our build site meeting with Keith yesterday and are glad to welcome him to our project.  Aaron has been in the homebuilding business in the San Antonio area for many years.

L to R: Keith, Aaron, Bruce

There wasn't a lot of dramatic action going on at the site yesterday, but the plumbers were diligently working away putting in important pipes and connections.

Master Vanity Plumbing

Garage Plumbing Connections to Second Floor

The pool house exterior is progressing with the addition of some of the wall siding.  This siding will be painted the same color as the main house stucco and the lower part of the wall will be the same rock used on the main house.

We don't have all of the samples of the exterior colors at the job site yet, but you can get an idea of the palette with these shots.  The exterior wood accents will be stained a chestnut color and the metal roof color is medium bronze.

"Griffin" for Fascia

"Nomadic Desert" for Stucco Walls, Paint Grade Soffit

Exterior and interior stone

So, this post is a wrap for the week.  We will be celebrating the wedding of two wonderful young people this weekend........look for a picture or two next week.

Day 66 - Big Silver Snake

Two reasons have contributed to the lack of blog activity since last week.  One, the work at the house has been either too hard to photograph or moving so slow you would fall asleep reading the blog!!!  Two, we have been running back and forth to San Antonio meeting with designers and advisers.

The work on the house includes finishing the HVAC rough installation, starting the plumbing "top up," and gathering up samples of the house exterior colors.

Have you ever gone up in your attic and looked at your duct work?  The air ducts look like big silver snakes slithering through the space overhead.  So, use your imagination when viewing the next several photos.

See the open snake mouth and pointy tongue? 

Slithering over the Foyer 

Snake Nest over the Kitchen 

Attic Snake Curves

The return air registers are important components of the HVAC system.  You want to take out air to be recirculated through the house.  When we did the HVAC walk with our team, we carefully discussed where to place the registers.

Upstairs Return Air Register

Master Bedroom Return Air Register 

Guest Room Hall Return Air Register

All of the duct work, return air registers, and vents carry the air treated by two sets of components located in the attic on opposite ends of the house.  Other parts of the HVAC system will be located on slabs outside of the house.

 

One Set of Attic Components

The plumbers have been busy putting in some the pipes including vents through the roof and walls.  They use a lot of different size components in their work.

Plumbing Materials

Vent Through Roof

Dryer Vent Through Wall

A Washer and Dryer Location

We have samples of a few of the exterior house colors on location now.  We will gather all of them before anything gets put on the house.  Two reasons drive this decision......we want to see them all together and we need approval from the neighborhood architectural control committee.

Exterior Stone Sample

One of the folks we visited in San Antonio was our cabinet maker at Mike Edwards Cabinetry at his incredible shop on the outskirts of San Antonio.  We spent an intense three hours poring over preliminary designs to refine what we want in the house.  Mike is a dynamic guy with many great ideas, years of experience, and boundless energy.  We are really looking forward to seeing the next set of drawings from him. 

Bruce and Mike

Part of Mike's Shop

Today we spent several hours discussing lighting with a couple of folks in San Antonio.  It was a great meeting and more on that later.............

Day 61 - Family & Friends - Inspection Day #1

Today we were so happy to be visited by family and friends who trekked over to see the house  construction progress.  We loved taking them through the structure and showing them where "their" guest rooms are located.

Our first visitors this morning were Nancy's sister, brother-in-law, niece and her husband and daughters. While the adults toured the house, Bruce took the little ones on a Ranger ride (thanks for the loan Melinda).  The girls saw a snake, some deer, wildflowers, and met two of our furry friends and their human Dad.  They were happy campers munching on Snickerdoodles Aunt Nancy made for them this morning.

L to R: Front - Logan, Landry, Shanna
Rear - Bruce, Nancy, Henry, Pam, Ross

Our nephew, Ross, has a very successful Central Texas general contracting and construction management company, so we were interested in his opinion of our project. He was very impressed with the job being done by Mattern & Fitzgerald.

While we were visiting, the framing crew was doing some detail work and the HVAC crew was busy starting the installation of our HVAC infrastructure.

Completed Framing around Guest Room Window

Finishing Tyvek placement at Entry

A large amount of HVAC equipment and supplies was delivered to start the installation process.

In the afternoon, friends who have recently moved back to Texas after a long sojourn out west came to visit.  Jeri and Nancy met as suite mates in a college dormitory wayyyyyyyyy back in 1972 and have been friends and sorority sisters (KΔ) ever since.  It was wonderful to show them our progress and to get Tim's opinion of the construction. (Tim built a majority of the houses in the Las Vegas area.)  He was blown away by the quality of the work.  So, we had a double inspection today and got rave reviews.

L to R: Nancy, Jeri, Tim

A third set of visitors stopped by while we were gone, but we will see them tomorrow since they are spending the weekend in the neighborhood.  We hear they liked the house and will have fun chatting with them later.

L to R: Chris, Charlie, Missy, Reece

So, we had a wonderful day visiting with family and friends and look forward to many more visitors in the future!!!!