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- Come On Down!!!
You're the next contestant on the Erwin House Guess Our Massive August Electric... - Flipping Out
Technically speaking, I am not against flipping. David and I have posted about it before,... - Happy Father's Day Indeed!
Baby Erwin was born at home, 4:27am Saturday June 17th, 2006. 8 pounds 3 ounces (give...
- Come On Down!!!
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May 2006
May
30
2006
5The mosquitoes have claimed our yard. As of about 3 or 4 weeks ago, the kids have stopped going outside, and Mom and Dad have become hyperactive about the door being open for more than 5 seconds. "Close the door. Close the door! CLOSE THE DOOR!"
We have a nearby neighbor that does not mow, and has a V8 engine hanging from...
May
29
2006
1Misleading title. Actually waiting for the baby is the hardest part. The house has been progressing so swiftly it's making our heads spin.
Monday. Prep for drywall and dry wall in the downstairs bathroom. We last minute redesigned the master bathroom. Christiane wants to put a piece of furniture where one of the sinks...
May
24
2006
3We have walls!!!!!
I'm verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves...
May
23
2006
0Sometimes all I need is a few feet of drywall hung or a key to the construction deadbolts that now seal the entrances to feel like something much bigger has been accomplished. These things don't really make for fancy pictures, but they sure do tickle MY fancy.
P.S. Rumor has it that we will be moving in within no more...
May
22
2006
6
Pocket Door?
Originally uploaded by daviderwin.
What do ya'll think of this door?
We've got a pocket door that goes in the kitchen (leads to the pantry), and I had envisioned something with frosted or ribbed glass. This has the best of both worlds! It may come out of our pockets, though, since we didn't spec...
May
20
2006
5
Arrivals
Originally uploaded by daviderwin.
No, not the baby--the tile! That's right, the ModWalls custom blend we ordered came in, a whole boxfull, and it is gorgeous.
I swear, I could do the whole house in this stuff, it is just so pretty.
I have to admit, it is kind of weird having the tile. It means...
May
19
2006
1Monday: Electricians fixed for code, but they mixed up the lights in the kitchen. I caught Ace at the house and got a walk-through. Concrete company built the mold for front and back steps. We had an odd code violation with a doorknob in an upstairs closet aimed right at an upstairs window. Have to put "safety glazing"...
May
19
2006
2Ya'll really think I can climb stairs at this point?? Don't be silly--David snapped this shot for me.
Once the framing was inspected and approved (!) we found out that no time would be wasted installing the insulation and floating the drywall. I can't even imagine how awesome-ly low our energy bills will be. It was a complete...
May
19
2006
0(apologies to Christiane for stealing her line)
The concrete crew finally came by this morning. From the looks of it, they are knocking out our little job on their way to the real one. At 7:45am, (when this photo was taken) they looked to be more than half-way done.
May
18
2006
1Happiness is trucks in front of the house. This is one of the better moments.
May
17
2006
6Well, someone finally built the daylight application I had always wanted to build. (Not as pretty of course, and upside-down.) You can put in any latitude, longitude, and time of day and get the exact angle of the sun. And it graphically shows the sunrise and sunset times for every day of the year.
So I plugged in the coordinates...
May
16
2006
0As we hit the pre-inspection mode, we started to accumulate advertisements inside the house. Business cards and flyers were nailed, screwed, and stapled to various studs inside the house.
I guess normally, a house at this state would belong to a builder, and they may be interested in hiring eager sub-contractors. But this...
May
14
2006
1In the last two weeks we got a roof, and the house was painted. The prep for paint took a few days, and was delayed some by rain, but most of it was done in two exciting days. The color turned out perfect, exactly the way I wanted it.
Simulation on the left, reality on the right.
There were rumors that the porch would...
May
14
2006
10People who see our house seem to assume that we got permits just before the moratorium and that our house would otherwise be an outlaw. Far from it. We are building about 2200 sqft. Under the moratorium rules, we could have build about 3800 sqft.
This week the TF (Task Force) has fired another shot across our gable. Angled...
May
12
2006
0
Purple!
Originally uploaded by daviderwin.
Emergency officials asked locals not to panic after an Austin home spontaneously broke out in a strange and inexplicable case of Purple yesterday, frightening passersby and perplexing area homeowners.
"We don't know what caused it," said a gentleman found on the property...
May
10
2006
2The fed raised rates again. Aside from the more obvious deadline of the baby, there is the cost of renting each additional month, getting building materials before they go to Louisiana and Mississippi, and the race to get the house done before interest rates go up too much. We are on a construction loan, so our actual mortgage...
May
10
2006
4
Tub Shelf Idea
Originally uploaded by daviderwin.
After college, my first apartment on my own was a veritable dream. It was an oversized one bedroom with a study, around 900 enormous square feet. It had one very long, large bathroom with a non-jetted garden tub.
At the foot of the tub was a shelf, about 12-18in...
May
8
2006
0(from Saturday night, off-line)
A thunderstorm knocked out our power on Thursday night. I was telling Christiane a story about my old Buick backfiring. At the precise moment I clapped my hands and said "bang!" the power went out. Two more thunderstorms have come through, each delaying repairs and causing even more outages....
May
7
2006
0Yesterday's Violet Crown Festival was the best ever. It was packed to the brim with cool people, great music, tasty eats, and talented artists showcasing their work. Don't forget the kids' events: plenty to do this year from balloon jousting and bouncy castles to giant chess and rock climbing!
While there, I made sure...
May
7
2006
4On Thursday, our front porch was showered with more than raindrops. Our IKEA shipment arrived with all of the supplements for our kitchen redo: the new sink, the faucet, the garbage and recycling bins and pull-out tray, the under-cabinet lighting.
Part of me thought that this point in the project would always seem very...
May
5
2006
0I've been a little worried about the particular shade of purple we picked out. It has to be right, or we're going to have to live with it wrong. "Oh, you're the people with the Barney house!" or "You mean the big lavender wedge on Grover?"
I took a couple more trips to the paint store, and consulted with my wife, and my three-year-old....
May
4
2006
2... done.
Big, big sigh of relief for a house that can no longer be soaked to the bones by a big Texas thunder storm.
May
3
2006
0We're slow to update around here these days. My body is definitely sending me clear messages: baby trumps house. Got it, lady? Baby trumps house.
So, I've mostly been prepping for the other new addition. I've been cooking up a storm, I've washed all the clothes and diapers, I've ordered the birth kit and tub liner....
May
2
2006
4We are doing one interior wall in stone. I haven't been able to find stone selection on the net anywhere except Owens Corning, of all places. The stuff looks beautiful (online), but it's fake. I don't know if it's better or worse on any attribute; aesthetics, quality, price. But I sure could pick it out and be done with...
May
1
2006
0The house is becoming a machine. This month has been all plumbing, air and electricity. None of it quite done.
We have bathtubs. They look great.
We have stairs, no railing yet. They are gorgeous. All ipe. The boys went upstairs and checked out their new rooms for the first time.
The siding has been done for almost a month,...