Not Much to Show This Week -- Wk 65, 9/21 -27/08

As might be expected, we hit a few hurdles this week. We have been pretty laid back about how long this is taking, but now I'm getting a little concerned. In order to lock in our loan rate, we have to have a certificate of occupancy by mid-October. We can't get that until we go over the hurdles.

The major hurdle is the grading. It didn't pass inspection by the county this week. We are going to have to do some more erosion control work on the east side of the house. The other inspections can't be done until the grading is completed and approved.

We decided along with our builder, Dave, and the grading guy, Cisco, to do whatever is required to pass inspection, but not go any farther into landscaping that area because we have a plan for that coming from ZonaGardens. So Cisco will do the 3:1 slope grading where possible and use rip rap where we want to save some trees so the bank will have to be more vertical. It works out to about 50 feet of rip rap. The link goes to a picture of a combination of rip rap and gravel. The rip rap is the larger rocks to the right.

The parts without rip rap will have to be revegetated with a native plant seed appropriate to the area. That grade number means that for every foot of vertical bank, we have to slope out 3 feet to flat. So for most of the east side of the main driveway, the slope will have to extend out 9 feet.

So what can I show you this week? Well, the parapet cap got done.

This picture shows it and the house that's being built behind us. We took a looksee inside it this week. They have tile and carpet on their floors and huge rooms. The house is much bigger than ours and their covered back porch you can see here is enormous. They also have 3 fireplaces, one in the great room, one in the master bedroom and one on the back porch.

This is facing south from the deck.
And this is facing northwest from the deck.
This is the area over the back porch roof.
I just had to take this shot of going up the stairs through all the protective covering. The masons did a great job of cleaning up after themselves and keeping things as neat as they possibly could. Walking through this as the plastic was fluttering in the wind was fun.
Here's what it was like going back down after they finished. The final painting will include the doors in this area. Trout decided he wants his doors painted blue. Shall we do this garage door blue, too? Or should it be red or green?

This is the stairwell with the parapet cap finished. The mural was grouted, but hasn't been cleaned up yet.
This is the intersection of the shop wall and the garage wall.
They grouted this mural, too, but it also hasn't been wiped clean.
This is the great room from the kitchen sink.
They installed the shop bath light bar. It doesn't look very bright here, but it lights up that whole little room.

The master shower is almost done. This looks good.
The pebble floor has been wiped clean but not sealed yet. When it's sealed it will take on a shiny look. This also shows the "rough" edge of it.
It looks like the pebbles are spilling out onto the floor.
One major accomplishment of the week was that the window and door company came out to install the screens, adjust the doors, etc. They hoped to finish in one day, but when we were there on Saturday we could see that they still had a little work to do.
Someone asked what the inside of the sink was like, so I took this picture to show the short divider between the disposal side and the sink side. It really functions like one big undivided sink.

Now for the new pet. These are pictures from a website I recently discovered, Reptiles and Amphibians of Arizona. When we were out there on Wednesday, the place was a beehive of activity with all kinds of people working all over the place. The one grouting the front porch mural noticed something coming out from under some cardboard laying on the ground. I was so fascinated, I neglected to take a picture, but they said it was a kingsnake. This is the picture from that website.

It had its little head sticking out from under the edge of the cardboard and raised up above the ground about 10 inches. Our neighbors said they had never seen any rattlesnakes in the immediate area. If there are some these guys around, that's probably why. This is what the link says: This is a powerful constrictor that preys on snakes (including rattlesnakes), mice, rats, lizards, amphibians, reptile eggs, small turtles, and birds. One of the guys took a long tube, moved the cardboard and Wilbur (as I dubbed him) slithered off to the south into the terrain. By the way, kingsnakes are not venomous.

One day Trout decided to drive past our turnoff toward Kitt Peak. We got to a point on the edge of a hill where we could look back to see where we're building. My camera isn't quite up to this long a view, but I cropped this picture so you could see our house smack dab in the middle. You can see the red shop and the big door. The colors make a big impact close up, but from this distance, the light colored houses and roofs seem to provide the greater visual pollution.
And here's what our little development looks like from that hill without the cropping. Our house is off to the right of center. That's a dust devil in the foreground.
So, at this point, barring any further delays, I think we will be moved in by the end of November. That means one more Halloween here at our rental and probably the last time we'll have any Trick or Treaters for a long while.

Barely Visible Progress -- Wk 64, September 14 - 20, 2008

I keep hoping I can take some pictures of a totally completed room or view and show at least one area of the house where we are ready to move in, but not yet. So some of these will be totally new and some will be what you've seen before with some barely visible refinements.

This is the mural in the courtyard. It's on the stairwell wall.

This closeup shows that it hasn't been grouted yet.
This kitchen island is pretty close to done. After some trial and error, the dishwasher is positioned just the way Trout wanted it.
These pictures were taken late in the afternoon. This one is facing the back porch.
And this one is facing east.
My vanity is looking good. The lights haven't been reinstalled yet and the sink isn't grouted in, but it works.

The too tall linen closet door is gone now from next to Trout's vanity and he's working on another piece of tin for the right size one that will go here.
His sink isn't grouted in yet either, but his vanity is looking good, too.
He had me take some panorama pictures for inspiration for that tin. These are from the viewing deck. The pointed peak to the left of center here is Baboquivari.
And if you click on this one, you can get a better view of Kitt Peak's telescopes in the right of this one. In the winter the sun sets to the left of Kitt Peak.

These raggedy tops are just to the right of Kitt Peak.
And this is the highest part of the range from our viewpoint. In the summer the sun sets in the valley to the right.
One of the most obvious bits of progress this week was that the bricklayers started the parapet cap. Here are some of the adobes sitting on the floor of the viewing deck.
These are sitting on the garage roof.
Here are some of the guys laying them. For all you women out there, the guy in the blue shirt was a real hottie. He came inside to admire the house and said it looked like Michoacan. I'm guessing that's where he's from originally.

These adobes are stacked on top of the highest part of the shop roof.
Here's what the cap looks like above the garage doors.
Here it is on the courtyard side.
And this shows both the front of the garage (farthest away), the courtyard wall (green) and the intersection of the house. That blue wall to the right is actually on the outside of the master bath.
The other noticeable change this week was some refinement to the grading. You may remember the pictures of the puddles from previous posts. Here Fred, our neighbor who is building the house to the east of us, uses his Bobcat to work on the grading on the west side of the house.

He's heading down the Cinnabar driveway here.
He already did the courtyard. And that AC does work, now although it really hasn't been used except to test it.
Fred already did some work on the area in front of the garage and shop.
And in front of the front porch of the house.
This week's delaying issues:

1. Our builder discovered that the roofers hadn't decked the top of the porch roofs with plywood. They just did the tongue and groove that shows underneath and tarpapered over the top. So he will have to have plywood put on top, more tarpaper and then the corrugated tin can be installed.

2. The company who did the bid and was going to install the scuppers and downspouts had some major malfunction and backed out of the contract. They had already built the scuppers and had installed some boxes over the back porch on the west that you can see in the 1st Bobcat picture. They said they wouldn't charge for that or for the scuppers they already built because they could use them elsewhere. Dave and Vicki found another local company to do the work for the same price and Dave said he actually thought their scuppers were a little nicer, so I guess it all worked out for the best. We'll find out when they are finally installed.

Work Begins -- Week 1

If we ever get to it, part of our landscaping will include a display of our flags. Since the first dirt was turned on the 4th of July, I prepared a "banner" with them on it. You can see the edge of Trout under the shade of a palo verde for this picture.

That's us with the banner & the backhoe. We were there for most of the action. It didn't take very long for them to prepare the preliminary pad for the house. Dave, the builder, said we would go through stages where the place looked enormous, then small, then big again. This day it looked enormous.

These other backhoe pictures also show some of the land & the views. The first one shows some hills to the south.

Those white dots at the top of these mountains to the west are the telescopes at Kitt Peak Observatory.