6/14/08
The scratch coat of stucco was applied on 6/10 and it greatly improved the appearance of the house even though it’s now “battleship gray.” We’ve been looking at paint chips and are as confused as ever at the choices and how the colors differ depending on the light. We’re aiming for a rich earth tone. It will be a while before the outside paint is applied so we have time to look at more paint samples (the joy!).
Front, southwest end
Back patio
Doug got a nice overall view from the hill. The temperature was hovering around 100 degrees when he took this. As you can see, it’s nearing completion.
We’re also pleased that all three of our “bluebird” nest boxes have been used by Ash-throated Flycatchers. I managed to get a photo of a clutch of four eggs in one of the boxes by using a mirror. The box is too high for me to look directly into. The other two boxes both have 5 eggs (probably young by now).
Ash-throated Flycatcher eggs
This coming week the final grading will be done while inside the main activity has been tile work and lots of it! The tile people are doing a fantastic job of it.
Published by AR on June 22nd, 2008 Tagged Main | Comment now »5/29/08
This would be our last May visit and again, we were overwhelmed and so pleased to see the changes that have taken place both inside and out, but mostly out. We now have a graceful Rastra wall that surrounds most of the house. The front entrance will be accessed from a walkway which will start at the garages and meander to the arched gate which enters the front courtyard area leading to the front entry door.
The inside doors have been installed and the walls await painting. The tile work has also been started. There have been a lot of decisions to make over the past few weeks!
On the “natural” side, I was astounded to find hundreds of Marine Blue butterflies (Leptotes marina) puddling in the small amount of rainwater that accumulated in the pool last week and by a leaking (soon to be fixed!) hose. Many species of butterflies are attracted to mud for its mineral content.
We took a quick peek in one of the Ash-throated Flycatcher nest boxes to find a clutch of 5 eggs. And lastly, we checked the Arizona Rainbow cacti (Echinocereus rigidissimus) growing in the nearby Coronado National forest to see if they were in bloom yet. They were!
5/11/08
Since the main activity around the house now is drywall and it isn’t easy taking interesting photos of that, I’m only showing a few plus some discoveries we’ve made outside.
The big logs (vigas) that were laying on the ground at last report are now installed in the Great Room ceiling. It would have been interesting to see exactly how they got those behemoths up there but we missed that.
Now that most of the building materials have been cleared from the back of the house, you can get a better idea of what the back patio looks like. The pool edge is running along the front of the photo. The inside of the pool and surrounding deck area won’t be finished until after we move in.
Our most exciting news of late is the discovery that two of our nest boxes have Ash-throated Flycatcher nests in them! Here’s a photo of the grass and fur-lined nest.
When Doug was digging the hole for the box we had to take down when they were digging for the electric line, we found this beautiful little hedgehog cactus in full bloom.
4/28/08
It’s easy to envision the finished house now — all of the plumbing, wiring and framing have been completed. Doors and windows are in too. The pool equipment has been installed and the pool is lined with concrete (gunnite) . This is how it will stay until we move in at which point the final coating of Pebble-Tec and edging will be applied. We’ve heard that the drywall is now being hung and we’ll be going up there in the next day or two to see for ourselves. We’ll also be laying out the design for the outer garden walls and my mind has been spinning lately with the thoughts of planting my xeriscape garden. Can hardly wait to start!
The photo shows the back patio area and the large logs laying on the ground will eventually be part of our living room ceiling.
Published by AR on May 6th, 2008 Tagged Main | Comment now »4/10/08
Just had to make another visit today to document the digging of the pool! While they were digging the pool, I was on the Treaty Hill side of our land looking for some suitable rocks to embed poolside along one edge of the pool. Fortunately the excavation crew agreed to dig them out and move them over to the pool area. We never could have managed this ourselves.
4/9/08
Time is flying by and the house changes exponentially each time we visit the site. Beautiful wooden posts have been installed to provide support for the porch roofs. As you can see from this photo, the front entrance porch, the porch off the master bedroom and little breezeway to the garages have been completed. All that remains is the tile that will go on top. We love the look. The other side of the house will have a flat roof over the whole patio. That’s just being started. I don’t know how they manage to get those large, heavy beams in place! Tomorrow the pool will be excavated and I will be there to take more photos.
Since Arizona only has rear license plates, we are free to do what we want up front so I ordered this custom plate. Mine reflect the mountains that we will look at and be in awe of, daily. Doug has one too — his says Cochise. We are deep in Cochise territory and there is much history about Cochise and the Apaches where we will live. It’s also the name of our county.
3/20/08
We can hardly believe our eyes each time we visit the construction site. Not only is the house taking shape, but some of the decorative work has been started which will give the house that “southwest” look. The crew is mainly working on getting the roof trusses in place now and we spent most of our time with the electrician and plumber going over exactly where we want outlets, hose bibs and such. It’s so nice to be able to put everything just where you want it. The problem, of course, is trying to envision exactly where you want these things to go but we think we did a pretty good job. It also helped to have extremely competent people giving us good advice. We continue to be very pleased with our choice of contractor, Brad Cooper, MC2 Construction in Benson.
We discovered that the septic tank was in and the drain field dug. There are a lot more “holes’ coming up — burying two 1500 gallon rainwater tanks, a 500 gallon propane tank and the biggest hole of all — the swimming pool. The well should be functioning soon too.
Published by AR on March 21st, 2008 Tagged Main | Comment now »3/11/08
I’ve been remiss about keeping this blog up-to-date, so I’ll do some catching up now. The Rastra walls have been completed for the house and the windows framed in. The yard walls will also be built from these blocks but a lot has to be done before they can go up. In the meantime, the inside framing is well on its way to completion and this week work is being done to get the roof trusses in place. A few weeks ago the concrete was poured for the patios and front entry. On Friday we’ll have a walk-through with the builder, electrician, and plumber to ensure all of the outlets and hose bibs are put in the best places. Soon we’ll have to be making a lot more decisions — floor tiles, cabinets, counter tops, etc. Hope it doesn’t get too overwhelming.
Moving Right Along
This week I’m house/pet-sitting for some future neighbors at the Ranch so I’m able to keep an eye on the progress that’s taking place on our house. Earlier this week the foundation was poured and as soon as it was set, a whirlwind of activity began on the house construction. The concrete was scored to prevent cracking and chalk marks snapped in to mark the location of the walls. Yesterday the Rastra blocks were moved over to the house site and as of this morning some of them are already in place and up to 6′ high! It’s really a thrill to watch the house going up. We keep recalling the contract we signed for our Maryland house construction where the builder stipulated that you could only visit the building site twice during construction. Makes you wonder what he was trying to slip in for building materials!
The First Big Step…
All of a sudden things have started happening. To recap what’s been going on in the past several months……just after the New Year began we finalized (for the most part) the plans for the house and the blueprints (or what ever you call them these days) were drawn up. We were presented with a large stack of plans showing the various “layers” of building stages that will occur. In between several meetings with both the builder and the draftsman the soil test for the septic had to be passed and arrangements were made for the underground electric to be brought in to the building site. We also had to get architectural approval from the Home Owner’s Association. All done.
Now we’re feeling pretty good about all that when we get a call from the builder last week saying that he was going to get a team out there to start the grading of the building site the next day! Yikes — only one day’s notice!
We had planned to spend some time scouring the area digging up small cacti and other small native plants well before any grading occurred but that didn’t happen. So we arrived about an hour before the trucks with the heavy equipment and salvaged a few things but, fortunately, the site itself was mostly just grasses and a few agave plants. Because it was nearly level, there was very little earth moving to do so there was not a whole lot of impact to the land. It was very exciting to see something finally happening. We trudged up the side of our hill which rises about 300′ above the building site and took some photos which show the building site and the fantastic view of the Dragoons we’ll have from it.
By the end of the week, the Rastra building blocks were delivered. The future walls of our house!
Next step — putting in the forms for the foundation and laying out the plumbing.
Published by AR on February 5th, 2008 Tagged Main | Comment now »
