Moving forward

I guess I haven't quite kept up with the house progress here like I planned. Building a house, everyday family, and a full time job are to blame - or at least are my excuse. I will, however, pat myself on the back for keeping up with a fairly decent photo diary on my Flickr.com site.

Satterwhite did their part and left in mid October. Since then we've had the roof put on, the plumbing done, AC installed, built a pumphouse (still needs work), done most of the electrical wiring, had really cool insulation installed, stained much of the cedar and logs, dug and filled trenches, and a whole lot more. It feels like a ton of work, but we still have so much left to do. Once the electrical wiring and some simple framing carpentry is completed, we will be ready to hang the drywall. We're hoping that things will really move fast after that is completed. Our goal was to be in the house by Christmas. That then became by the new year. Neither are going to happen, but hopefully it won't be long afterward. We have until the end of July, but please say a prayer that it won't take that long!

Moving fast!

Living Room
Originally uploaded by tkdubs

It's been a wild weekend! Tim Whitfield Construction from Longview, TX arrived and *attacked* the homesite with his crew. As of this afternoon, the "stacking" logs should be finished. I can't express enough how efficient these guys are. They really know what they're doing, and it's obvious they have done it MANY times before. Next up is the interior framing and then the trusses. More to come......

Foundation and well

We finally have the beginnings of a foundation and water well. Hill Country Water Well in Briggs, TX has drilled our well to a depth of 580 feet. It's cased and ready to have the pump and tanks installed! Satterwhite returned yesterday to finish digging the footings, and then 3 trucks delivered 30 yards of concrete to fill them in. A & W Well and Water from Bertram, TX is beginning work on installing the well storage and pressure tanks and the pump. Next up....the septic! Still waiting to hear when construction on the foundation and everything above it will begin -- hopefully next week!

An adventure begins

I created this blog with no real purpose initially, and of course it has sat unattended for a few years now. It now has a purpose! This will become the log/diary of the adventure of my family building our first home. Not just any home...a LOG home, which has our dream home for many years now. After researching and visiting a handful of builders all across the great state of Texas, we settled on Satterwhite Log Homes. Today I was reminded of why we chose them. Yesterday was the first day of construction, and they ran into trouble with rocks. Just in case you don't know, Interstate Highway 35 in central TX forms a boundary between coastal plains (farmland) to the East, and the very rocky Hill Country to the West. Long story short is that the rocks were an unforeseen problem that almost threw a wrench ($$$) into what was supposed to be finalized pricing. Today Satterwhite stepped up to the plate and is going to make everything right. The "warm fuzzy" feelings my wife and I got, which helped us decide to choose them as our home builder, are still there. They are good people, and so far, good to their word.

Blogger posting via FTP

So we're working with White Whale Web Services to redesign the Southwestern University web site, and in a discussion with them yesterday I learned that you can use FTP to publish a Blogger site to a different server. Cool!