Beginning of our modern mediterranean hill country garden...

 

Well here it is, finally a post written by Renata! (Those are my lovely chives that are blossoming!)

A lot of my posts will be focusing on the garden for our new modern home. I have spent my life growing up in the garden, in fact my mother used to put me out in my crib in the yard while she worked in the garden. I have a dim memory of looking up at  the leaves shimmering on our old pecan tree in our backyard. So most of my life I have been learning about gardening at the capable side of my mother, who had very particular ideas of how gardening in Texas should be done (ideas she had learned after decades of gardening here and failing many many times). Our harsh climate and never-ending supply of bugs of all kinds makes gardening very challenging here. I planted my first garden as an adult just five years ago. Here is a not so great pic of it:

I started it when I was just a few weeks pregnant with our daughter, and finished it about 6 months later - when I could no longer bend over to plant anything! It's amazing how much work you can get done when you are waiting for the arrival of a new baby! My mother was there the whole time, advising and obsessing with me over each plant and how we were going to make the perfect native plant garden that wouldn't require too much water and would be lush and green and have lots of purple flowers in it! (We both love purple flowers!) The soil we were working with didn't make things easy as it was very much clay and didn't have too much organic material in it. Luckily the native plants we chose don't mind rocky not-so-great soil and the site was on a slope, so things were well drained. Some of the wonderful plants we used were: Rosemary, Blackfoot Daisy, Ghost Plant, Russian Sage, Lavender, Oregano, Salvia Greggii, Mexican Bush Sage, Indigo Spires, Pevonia - I plan on using most of these again as they all seem to like rocky, un-amended soil -- we have lots of that!

At this site I face new challenges - gardening in the hill country with hardly any soil, lots of rocks, prickly native plants with deep roots, cedar trees everywhere!, rabbits who will want to eat everything, snakes!!, and most of all no mom to advise me. Since her death this January I find that I am very anxious about gardening without her. But at the same time I remind myself that she taught me so much and I know a lot more than I give myself credit for. I am sure she will be there watching over me as I try to make my second garden ever succeed!!

Here is what we are working with in the front yard:

And here is the back yard:

Our goal is to have a Mediterranean-ish garden - olive trees, lemon trees, lavender, lots of rosemary and oregano and mint --  and lots of beautiful crushed granite pathways. Our first step is going to be figuring out this hardscaping -- it is the backbone of your garden and is the hardest part to do - especially when you have what seems like endless acres of land to work with! This is the biggest space David and I have had to plan out and our idea is to lay some garden hoses out and play around with how we want to shape things out. (pictures to come)

We also plan on having a decent-sized raised vegetable garden too (right where that big red dumpster sits!) -- want to get that built in time for planting in August -- so this might very well be the first thing we work on once we are in there in June :)

As you can see it is going to take lots of hard work, lots of base and crushed granite, and lots of determination -- but we are so excited to do this and see our ideas come to fruition!

When I have a better idea of what we are going to do on our vast wilderness I will post it - As of now, it is all sketches and ideas in my head and on Pinterest :)

doors, floors, and other jobsite lore

It's been another action packed month of work on the house.  There's been so much going on that I haven't had much time to blog (excuse my 1st world problems).  I'll give you a quick wrap up of all the things that were, well, wrapped up since the last blog post.  We have gotten all of the city inspections completed for the plumbing, electrical, hvac, and framing.  We also needed inspection approval from our structural engineer which did not come quite as easily.  The engineer wanted additional blocking and supports throughout the house.  It ended up being about two days worth of work for the framers.  We actually welcomed the additions since they only served to reinforce what we felt was already a very sturdy and well framed house.  I took a cue from the engineer and started adding additional blocking myself.  Equiped with a hammer, a handsaw, and a box of nails I used some of the leftover lumber to add a bit of a personal touch to the framing.  I mainly concentrated on areas around the doors and places I thought something substantial might be hung.  So anyway, we were very happy to be able to check those boxes for the inspections.

Speaking of very happy, the doors and windows finally came in.  They were just as we had imagined and well worth the money spent on them.  They definitely have that "commercial grade" feel to them and, more importantly, should fulfill their purpose of properly separating inside and outside life unlike the windows from our previous house which often felt like glass screens.  The four panel sliding French doors that look onto the screened porch are very nice and may turn out to be the single most important "on the fly" design change that was made since construction began.  We originally had a French door with a casement window on each side but had a last minute change of heart and wanted something that would let us feel a little more connected with the screened porch and the outside in general.  We were thinking something along the lines of a Nanawall feel but knew we didn't want to spend 20K+ which is what those things cost.  El found us a few different options and we ended up going with the Milgard 4 panel sliding French doors which gave us everything we were looking for at a fraction of the cost.  We love our windows, all 27 of them!  The lock mechanisms on them are great.  We really didn't want some cheap handcrank mechanism that was going get loose and eventually break a few years in.  The only question with these is the screens which don't get put on until the end.  There's some debate as to how exactly they are going to work.  So far we've determined that we will have to open (or possibly remove) the screens to open the windows.  Apparently it's an issue with some casements that some people cannot get past.  Surely there's a casement/people analogy to be made here but I cannot think of a good one at this moment.

Another big step for us was having the floors done, no pun intended.  It seemed like a pretty straight forward process but very labor intensive.  We aren't doing any staining just polishing and sealing.  A lot of work had been done on the floors the last couple months with no protection so we didn't really know for sure that they were going to turn out the way we hoped.  There were scratches, stains, marks, measurements written in several colors, nicks, and a great deal of debris on our soon to be floors that would not have any type of flooring to hide any imperfections.  I suppose most of that was only superficial and in the end we felt like they came out great.  The floors have just the right amount of sheen to them and feel industrial but comfortable at the same time.  They were almost immediately covered so we didn't have a great deal of time to admire them but I suspect we will spend quite a bit of time "getting to know the concrete" as Jay Farrar so well put it in an old Son Volt song.

I also forgot to mention earlier when I was talking about additional work done by yours truly that I ran all of the speaker wire and cat 5 cable.  I did such a great job that I actually ran it twice!  Actually the true story would be that I had to run it a second time to avoid a possible huge mistake.  The first time I ran all of the speaker cables, did I mention there's 11 speakers, I ran them right next to the all of the electric wiring and even through the same holes.  After pondering it for a couple of days and searching quite a few forums on Google I decided that I should exercise a little caution and run everything at a proper distance and with proper separation from all electrical wiring.  You know, the way that just about every guide recommends which I chose to momentarily ignore.  I'm almost certain that there would have been a slight buzz in every speaker to remind of the time I took the easy way out when I had the chance to do things right.  Yet another life lesson just begging to be cleverly tied into a metaphor about walls or general construction.  In fact, I passed on the last one so I'll throw something out this go around.   "In the drywall of life chose your texture wisely."  I can't tell you what it means only that it is profound and far beyond understanding in this dimension we currently occupy...............

So things are good.  I can't tell you when we will be moving in and I honestly don't even want to attempt a real guess (why tempt fate).  But things are moving along very nicely.  In the next couple of days I'll give you an update on the spray foam insulation and exterior stucco which are currently underway.  So on hang tight friends as the modernhomesanantone blog roller coaster navigates the treacherous hairpin turns and g-force inducing drops of home building!  Ok, it's not that dramatic but hey, they're delivering our drywall on Monday.  That has to count for something...............

please don't bore me

I just realized it's been just short of a month since the last update.  What can I say, time flies when you try to do something that seems to make no sense to most people but seems very obvious to you.  So let's just dive right in to the updates.  As soon as the framers finished with the grand porch the painters came in shortly after to stain all of the exposed cedar.  We went with an oil based semi transparent stain from Sherwin Williams called Cedar Bark, go figure.  We wanted to accentuate the natural color of the cedar but also give it a decent layer of protection so I think we made a nice choice.  It's got a hint of orange in it, which is something I wanted, but not so orange that onlookers would immediately assume we had vanity plates that read "bevo4ever" or "longhrn lvr."  They did a nice job overall except for carelessly missing a few obvious places.

The next thing was running electric.  I have to say that these guys have been top notch.  Before they got started we did a thorough walk through of the house and made quite a few changes to the original electrical plan.  Most of it was minor such as moving outlets a few feet one way or the other but other things like lighting required a bit more direction.  Lighting was huge for us so we wanted it to get it right.  Most of the major lighting will be on dimmers so overlighting isn't as much of a concern as underlighting.  Short of plugging in a lamp there's really not much you can do about underlighting.  I know this is a concern for any new home but I think it's even more of a priority when you have a certain aesthetic you are trying to achieve.  We absolutely detest fluorescent lighting of any kind and are fairly weary of LED lighting as well.  Renata also envoked a no "Edison Bulb" style lightbulb clause because, even though they look very cool, she says they "burn out her retinas."  Overall, we went with recessed cans for all primary lighting and more of a simple farmhouse/industrial style of lighting for all accent and outdoor lighting.  All outdoor lighting (and some closet lighting) will be Lithonia Vapor Tight Lighting.  The pendant lighting for the dining table and bathrooms will be the vintage barn style lighting.  Pendants for the kitchen sink and stairway haven't been completely decided on but will be something different.  Lighting for the kitchen island will be directional recessed lights.  Like I said, the guys did a great job and the city inspector gave us a green tag on the first go around.

 

 

The A/C guys have also been great to work with.  After running a Manual J calculation for heat loss/heat gain it was determined that we only needed a two and a half ton AC unit.  This was a bit of a surprise to me since i was expecting more for a 2000+ sqft house with some fairly high ceilings.  Apparently spray in foam insulation is a "game changer."  The guys had to explain it to us a few times and reassure us that the calculations were correct.  We had some specific concerns about not having any ac vents in the hallway and adjoining bathroom.  But the guys once again insisted that the airflow would be more than enough to keep things comfortable.  We actually have a hybrid sort of system.  It's a two and a half ton ac unit with a three ton air handler.  It suppose to push out a bit more air.  We shall see.  I thought that we would get to test the system at some point but I was told otherwise, that the unit isn't actually powered on until things are basically done.  So that's a nice little leap of faith.  We can only hope that the answer in not "blowin in the wind" or, worse than that, by the wind.  We also had a Nexia thermostat installed which is a "smart" thermostat/home controller.  You can control the thermostat remotely through wifi and also things like security cameras, door locks, and a bunch of other things.  Not sure how much of that we will use but it wasn't much to put it in.  A quick note about the wood stove.  Apparently no one puts them in...............unless you buy from them.  Well, since I already ordered and received our wood stove this was a problem.  I called over 10 different places in town and none of them would do it.  I did finally find someone to come out and give me an estimate on the job but then I asked our AC guy and he said he would do it.  Still waiting on the estimate but I have high hopes.

Some of the fastest work that has been done on the house so far has been the roofing.  The guys showed up unexpectedly (to me at least) and before I knew it had over half the roof put on.  In about two days worth of work the roof was on and I have to say it looks pretty good.  The roofers used 24 gauge galvalume and ran it though some machine (that cost 48K) to shape and cut the panels to fit.  It's a fairly long and large roof and i was worried that you might be able to see unwanted kinks or dents because of the length.  But, not to worry,  everything looks good.  The funny thing is that you cannot actually see any part of the roof from the front.  The only thing you can see is the metal lip that overhangs just over the cedar rafters.  The roof could be made of fruit roll up shingles and passersby would never know.  Hmmmm, maybe I should have priced that out........."made with real fruit, packed with vitamin C, and displays amazing heat reflective properties!"

 

 

Ok, so now onto the plumbers.  What else can I say about these guys except they are pretty terrible.  Everyone keeps telling us what great work this particular plumber does but I'm just not seeing it.  As this is being written the plumbing sits on the site half done and untouched in the last week.  No one can actually get a hold of the plumber or has any idea when he's coming back.  I'm not exactly sure what "good plumbing" entails but I am certain that this is not it.  We've expressed our concerns and there is talk of possibly bringing someone else in to finish the work.  I'll leave this alone for now but I promise to get back to it with some funfilled, colorful, and highly expressive thoughts on the matter.  We have many unanswered questions for the plumber.  One of them is a quote on running natural gas lines through the house which brings me to my next topic.

Somehow, and we are really really unsure how this slipped by, no one was aware that the house needed natural gas.  When I say "no one" I mean everyone except for Renata and myself.  We asked questions about it early on and brought up the subject more than once but somehow it didn't stick.  Luckily, it's not something that can't be done in this stage of the game.  We're just trying to chalk this one up as one of those things and hope that no other major details were missed.  Now we just have to wait on the "plumber of the year" to get back with us on the quote.  Another semi-major development in the natural gas realm of things is that it turns out CPS is not our gas supplier.  This was actually good news until we found out that the nearest main line is across the street.  This means that if we want natural gas, and we do, we will have to pay Grey Forest Utilities to bore underneath the street to our property.  We are still waiting on the cost but it's going to be somewhere in the range of $3500-$5000.  Not great news but not one that we were not prepared for.

So all in all things are good.  The windows and doors are scheduled to come in Feb 2 and once they are in we can push forward with the stucco, the insulation, and the drywall.  The floors may or may not be done before the windows and doors get here.  I'm really curious about how they will turn out since there has been constant unprotected actvity on them since they were poured (no, teenagers have not been sneaking in).  Looking at the structure that is currently standing before us, we are really happy with it all.  So many small decisions that have been made by the workers have been good ones.  I'm talking about decisions and details that are not neccessarily in the plans but are just left up to their interpretation and expertise.  I would say we are definitely past the halfway mark and most definitely beyond the point of no return if there ever was such a point..................I really don't think there ever was for us ;)