September, October, November (conclusion)
We moved in to our beautiful new home on September 25. What an exciting day!
The next six weeks were spent organizing, unpacking and looking out the windows every few seconds at the spectacular views we now enjoy daily. After all the planning, decisions and trips to visit the house under construction we can hardly believe that we’re now living here.
Bringing up a few things for the house
The front gate still needed a little work……..
But by a week or so after we moved in, it was finished. We then moved a few of our large barrel cacti to the front of it.
Then we brought in some rocks and gravel to finish it off.
We were able to enjoy the swimming pool for a few weeks before it got too cold. We’ll definitely have to look into having a solar heating system installed in the spring.
For those of you who keep asking for more house photos, here are the latest (you can see we’ve started the landscaping).
Entry gate to front courtyard
Walkway to front door
Breezeway entrance and the ladder to nowhere
Yard entrance gate. Anyone for shoveling rock?
Our favorite view of the house (11/30/08)
This concludes the blog on the building of our house. The site will remain available as a link from the “Curious Naturalist” blog and “The Nest Box” website. From this point on, all posts about the house and our experiences living here will be found on the “Curious Naturalist” blog.
Thanks for visiting!
Published by AR on December 1st, 2008 Tagged Main | Comment now »
August — Almost There
While it seems like move-in day is far in the future, it really isn’t. We should be in the house in a few weeks. Exciting!
August has been a very busy month. All of the tile work, inside and out has been completed. The electricians and plumbers are busy as bees making the final connections. The monsoon is still in full-swing and the grasslands and mountains are lush and green. Our rainwater collection tanks are full to the brim.
In mid-August we had the opportunity to attend the “Blooming Cactus” sale of the Tucson Cactus & Succulent Society. One of the most admirable activities of this volunteer group is to rescue doomed cactus from sites destined for development. Then they stage plant sales with deep discounts. We’ve been waiting all summer for this particular sale and arrived at the site bright and early so we were among the first allowed in to pick the plants we wanted to purchase. We filled the bed of our pick-up!
The next day we drove up to the house and gingerly planted our cactus.
In early August, we visited a stoneyard in Tucson and selected flagstone for our front walk. It took several days for the walkway to be completed and it turned out great.
Meanwhile the vigas were attached to the house. They really give it character.
The last of the Rastra blocks were used to create a front entry at the start of the driveway. A solar-powered gate will be installed once the entry is completed.
At the end of one day, we watched as the setting rays of the sun lit up the west side of the house with the most amazing orange glow. We look forward to the day when we will be able to experience not only sunsets but sunrises and everything in between!
Progress
Okay, we’re not moved in yet, not even close, but as each day passes progress is made. A giant step this week was the painting of the outside of the house. Before I get into that, I wanted to show one last photo taken before the house was transformed into a nice, earthy brown.
This is one of my favorite “pre-paint” shots. Aren’t the clouds and sky beautiful? The skies in this area can be so spectacular.
So the big day was almost here — the many buckets of primer and paint were waiting on the patio.
We visited July 31 to find this.
Front Entrance Gate
After much worrying about what the color we chose would really look like on the house, we were more than pleasantly surprised. We had achieved the earth tone we were striving for. The house blends nicely with the surroundings. Here are a few shots of the freshly painted house. It will be so nice when all of the construction debris is gone so we can start landscaping.
Shop and Backyard View
Backyard
Look what the monsoon rains have brought to the Ranch — wildflowers! Especially beautiful is the abundant poppy-like Arizona Caltrop, Kallstroemia grandiflora, which is not a true poppy but so resembles one that the other common name is Arizona Poppy. True poppies only bloom in the spring and this plant only during the summer monsoons.
A field of Arizona Caltrop at the Ranch
Arizona Caltrop (Kallstroemia grandiflora)
We’re seeing more and more deer lately, both White-tailed and Mule Deer. They’re nice to look at but I hope they stay away from my plants!
Mule Deer
And last but not least, here is a photo of an Ash-throated Flycatcher nest in one of our old bluebird boxes. We eventually watched these birds fledge. Two of the three occupied boxes successfully fledged young.
Ash-throated Flycatcher Nestlings (Myiarchus cinerascens)
Published by AR on August 2nd, 2008 Tagged Main | Comment now »July — The Finish Line is in Sight!
The house is getting closer and closer to completion as you can see from the photos below. The outside will be painted in the coming week — a nice earth tone. Construction of the entry gate at the start of the driveway will also begin soon. There is still quite a bit of finish work going on inside.
The monsoon skies have been brilliant blue with dark gray and billowing white “thunderheads.” They make a perfect background both for the house and Dragoon Mountains.
I’m hoping that my next post will be of the finished house with us living in it!
Published by AR on July 18th, 2008 Tagged Main | Comment now »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.
