Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Landscaping!

A family friend is remodeling his backyard to make way for a swimming pool and getting rid of a TON of bushing and flowering plants.  So we took that as an opportunity to get all that we could and transplant them to the house.  We planted most around the exterior of the house and then used the rest around existing trees in the front yard.  We're not sure that they will survive and flourish but we don't have anything to lose!  They are various sizes right now but once they are established we will go back and do some heavy pruning to even things out.  There is an assortment of boxwoods, gardenias, oleander, and yaupon.  This is the only picture I have that actually show the plants...way too tired after digging all those holes to take a picture!

 


Where Things Are Situated

I took this picture the other day to show the view of the house from the highway.

 
You can barely make out the front porch posts in the very center of the picture.  The pond looks quite pretty in this photo but don't let it fool you!  It can be very green and gross looking sometimes!  Hopefully as we work more on this piece of land we can work on cleaning out the ponds (there is a smaller pond to the right of the driveway that is not visible in this picture).

We Have Walls! (Sort of...)

This summer has been BUSY but we have gotten a lot done even in this crazy heat.  Of course we can only work from daylight until 9 or 10 but that is plenty for me!

Since we have to work when we can and can't devote all day every day to construction, we have built all the exterior walls and stacked them on the foundation to be "raised" on a future date.  I know this isn't how most people build houses, but this two-man construction crew works very differently.


We stayed fairly true to the original plans for the house with just a few minor adjustments of doors and windows.  We have 6 foot windows in the living room/dining room area and the bedroom along with 3 foot windows in the kitchen, utility room, and bathroom. 

The original plans also had a door from the bathroom leading outside but we chose to move that to the utility room so that it would be accessible from the carport (yet to be designed).

Most days we built the walls on the foundation and then added them to the large stack that we had already completed and covered with a tarp.  However today we just built the last two walls on top of our stack.  Not 100% sure why, but it sure was easier in my opinion!  A fully constructed 10 foot tall wall is kinda heavy and awkward!



 
 

I wish that we were raising the walls next week but I think Dad wants to wait until we have taken our vacation in a couple of weeks so we're going to start on the interior walls next.  There are only five of those so I'm hoping that will be finished next week.

After that is putting it together and adding ceiling joists and beams and stuff that I don't really understand yet!  You'll learn all about it when I do!