Bye bye big city!

86LK said:

mud room with laundry equipment with door to outside? seating bench by a door so you can sit and swap from shoes to Crocs inside the house without tracking dirt all over (also has coat hooks and storage bins for gloves/hats/raincoats) ?stained concrete slab instead of carpet/flooring?

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Sorry, I overlooked responding to this post. Thanks for the suggestions. There is a powder room, or half bath off of the patio. It will serve as the place to go change when getting out of the pool. Beyond it is a small mud room opposite of the laundry room. It does have a small bench and there will be hooks to hang stuff up. Mud rooms like what are common up north are not really a thing here in Houston. Most of the house will be tile that looks like wood. Most of the bedrooms will have carpet. Mine won't.

86LK said:

I see you have outside gang outlets at the shop. Are they going to be 120 or 220? if not 220 you may want to consider that

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The three outlets we put outside the shop are 120V duplex. I have a 240V outlet just inside the big door, in case we want/need to weld outside.

Supercharged111 said:

Yep, that's way nicer than what we'll be building. What's with the plywood/OSB combo on the bottom of the exterior shop walls? The OSB seems like a lame way to cheap out considering the rest of the build. Or maybe they ran out of plywood that day?

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Lame way to cheap out? Thanks. It's just how our builder does the houses he builds. It's not cost effective to sheath an entire house in ground contact treated plywood. He installs that for the bottom two feet and then does the rest in OSB. He just did the same on the shop. Admittedly, we could have done all plywood for something like $500, which at this point, doesn't really move the needle. Still, it's overkill, and we already have plenty enough of that to go around. Like I said before, in the building process, you have to make a lot of decisions. It's impossible to get all of them right. We're trying to get as many right as we can and keep the cost under control. We're losing the battle on the latter. In hindsight, I'd prefer to have the bottom 4' to be all plywood but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. The plywood/OSB is just there for the brick ties to fasten to and to serve as a backer for the spray foam on the inside. If there's a moisture problem, it will be at the bottom where we have the ground contact rated treated plywood. I don't have doubt for a second that barring a disaster, the building will outlive me.

Wow. It's been another month. Time is going fast. I have updates:

Current house we live in:
We're about ready to have the pictures taken to put it up for sale. We've recently had all the windows cleaned inside and out, along with the screens and solar screens. We had the carpet in the house cleaned and also had some carpet stretched. It turned out surprisingly well. My brother has done a ton of touch up paint. We're pretty well done with de-cluttering for the pictures. We anticipate putting it on the market towards the end of next month.

New house:
Painting inside and outside is done, except for final touch ups. The inside of the house has been given over to the crew that does the countertops and sinks, hardware and all of the tile. Countertops and sinks are done. Tile in the bathrooms and showers is ongoing. Cabinet and door hardware is coming soon. When they get done with the tile in the bathrooms, they move to floor tile throughout the house (most of the bedrooms will have carpet).

Some Pics in the house:

Countertop fabrication taking place in the garage:



Shower tile and tile accent wall in Master Bathroom going in...



Completed paint in kitchen (never mind poor alignment on cabinet doors - painters roughly installed them and the cabinet maker will come back and fix them and install hardware....





Stone completed on fireplace:



Floor tile going in, in my bathroom. Paint is complete and countertop is in...



The pool company has come back and started working on coping, brick and tile:





Shop:

Plumbing rough in was completed 1/6. It's pretty basic. Hot and cold in the shop for a utility sink and two hot and cold hose bibs outside. 40 gallon electric hot water heater. Spray foam went in on 1/7....


We had the shed insulated with batt insulation to quiet down the air compressor....





The shop has water!





The interior sheathing in the shop got installed the week of 1/13-1/17....







Brick is going on the shop....










Some recent pics of the outside of the house....







We met with the fence contractor the week before last. He's getting scheduled to do the fences and gate/gate columns. Before he does, we have a little site work to do to clean up some grading and remove some trees that will be too close to the fence or are on the property line and aren't worth saving. Last Friday, we met with our Land Clearing guy to get him lined up for that work. The same day we met with the Landscape guy to get him lined out on what we want and more importantly, what we have to have in place to pass our final inspection with the POA. He's working on a landscape plan and proposal.

In anticipation of the upcoming site work and fencing, my colleague and I went out there yesterday and set stakes along the east and west property lines to get a good look at what will be in conflict so we can make final decision on what trees will be removed and what trees we'll route the fence around. We also set the stakes for the benefit of the land clearing guy so he knows right where the fence will be going. The underbrushing and site work has gone a bit outside the bounds of our lot and we want to make sure this work gets done where it's supposed to. While we were out there, I had him tie features that had been constructed since the last time we were out there surveying (pool, septic tanks, shop, etc.)....





I guess that's it for now. It's looking like it will all be done by mid-March and we'll be moving then or early April. It's pretty hectic at this point but the end is in sight. Thanks for the interest and best to everyone.