Inspiration

So I thought I would post the inspiration for our house.  We found this black and white rendering in a house plan book, took it to my grandpa and told him what we wanted and what we wanted changed around and he worked his magic and we came up with what we will be doing.  Later we found the website for the original which had a color rendering and fell in love with it even more.  It will look a little different than this picture, but basically the same feel.  We are really trying to stick to the Colonial Style.  We love the look and the traditional style is something I feel is classic and won't go out of style meaning fewer remodeling projects in the future.  We are sticking with this style both inside and out.

A few things that are different about our house, the biggest thing is it is flipped so the smaller section (which is going to be our garage) is on the right side of the main part. The other main change is the smaller section is a full two stories instead of one and a half.  Thank you Grandpa for suggesting we do that cause it doubled that space and we now have a separate office and a storage area.  There were a few other changes and it seems to be an ongoing thing even now.  So just thought it would be nice for you all to kind of get an idea of what these two "boxes" are headed in the direction of.

Beginning to look kind of like a house.

Some time last week a couple trucks brought in lumber.

The ground was still wet so they had to back all the way down the driveway so they wouldn't get stuck.  Hey, whatever works...

Then it got dumped in the mud and then of course it rained on it.  Loy was not real happy about it, but at least it is here.

Saturday the crew came out, but left shortly after they arrived and said they were going to give it one more day to dry out.  We thought "Oh they will be back first thing Monday morning."  Nope, 7:30 Sunday morning a truck full of workers drove down the drive and started working.  Being Sunday morning we went to church and we arrived home that afternoon this is what we saw from out yard!  I am sure they were taking full advantage of the semi-dry day that we had.  I am sure they were desperate for work as much as we were desperate for work to be done on our house.

This was yesterday late morning just before the rain started.  I really wanted to go see it, but not while there was workers.

It rained lightly from about 9:00 till about 9:30 and they continued to work.  Then it cleared up till about 11 then rained a lot harder.  I heard them working through it at first, then they just hung out.  See truck above?  They tried.

Rain falling on the pond.  Its beautiful on any normal day, but not when you've already had 3 times as much rain than usual and you have workers working on your house.  Then they all packed up about 1:00 and left.  Not sure when they will be back.  Hopefully tomorrow.  There is very little chance of rain for the rest of the week and part of next week.  Oh well...

Here is the garage doors. And our muddy driveway, for now.

Front door.

Family room looking from the kitchen.

Kitchen from the family room.

Back wall of windows and doors.  Its going to be beautiful and our back yard (after a lot of work) is going to be gorgeous.

This is my teeny-tiny kitchen.  The wall on the right is the back wall where the refrigerator and double oven will go.  The two pipes on the back wall is where the sink and dishwasher go.  Then if you can see the pipe sticking up on the left side (its kinda in between the two studs.) that is where the down draft will be for the stove, so that counter area is the other end of the kitchen area.  It is much smaller than I had thought it was going to be.  I hope its bigger than I think, but I thought it looked small now and thats before counters and cabinets. This was the room I was looking forward to the most because in my current kitchen I have not much room to do much of anything and this kitchen is not that much bigger than what I have right now.  It will be nice and new and beautiful, just not very big. 

This is the back of the house from the back yard.  There are going to be more windows in there they are just not cut out yet.

The back corner of the house, that little concrete piece jutting out is where the fireplace will be.

We were probably the coolest parents in the world yesterday cause we let the kids jump in the puddles and play in the mud.  They had an absolute blast, but boy were they messy.

Those are the faces of some extremely happy kiddos.  Pure joy and pure mess! 

"If you want it to rain...

...wash your car.  If you want it to rain A LOT, build a house." - Loy Smith.  This has become a law of nature around here and a new saying.  Here are the statistics of the amount of rain we have gotten in this area since we started building our house.

June 14th was a record breaker for OKC for most rain fall at 7.62 inches in a 24 hour period.  The official rain totals are measured at Will Rogers Airport, but some place in the metro area reported over 12 inches of rain.  There were flooded streets, homes, lost cars, and lots of damage.  The average total rainfall for the whole month of June is 4.3 inches.  But before and after that it rained almost everyday as well.

In July we have had more rainy days than not.  Average rain fall for July is 2.6 inches.  To date we have had WAY more than that with another day just last week of flooding.  I could not find the exact amounts, but its a lot!  Its like spring out there.  Although when it stops raining and the sun comes out it is super humid because well, it is July.  We have just had a mud pit out here and it has been nearly impossible for them to get much work done.  But we do now have the first floor framed and with sheathing on the outside thanks to some really devoted framers.  Actually they were probably desperate for a job with all this rain that they got out here and got as much done as they could.  Pictures coming!

Little steps.

I has been a couple weeks since I last blogged, but not a whole lot has happened, well except rain of course.  It seems just about the time we get to the next stage in our building process we get one step forward and then it rains several inches and we have to wait about a week for it to dry out and if we are lucky we will get to do something else before it rains again.  But I am not going to be negative about it because I only want positive thoughts from here on out so we have very little delays.  So here is what we have completed since the flood.

Two days of heat and air...

We didn't realize everything was PVC now and not the metal anymore.

On the second day they brought about 7 or 8 loads of sand to spread before the slab, but then what happened?  They did heat and air on Tuesday and Wednesday and the inspector came out Thursday.  Well, I bet you can guess what happened that weekend.. rain... *sigh*.

But everything at this point has been approved.. the stem wall...

The plumbing...

The electrical ...

And the heat and air, but I forgot to get a picture of that.

Then things dried out and on Friday the crew came out to spread the sand and lay the slab and

Ta-da!! Yippie!  Finally!  And just in time for... MORE RAIN!  It sprinkled Friday evening/night and then rained Saturday morning/afternoon and then again Sunday evening.  I have no idea when the next time is that they will be able to do more work seeing as how there is a chance of rain everyday through Tuesday with the most being on Thursday.  I saw Mark drive up there earlier today, but I am not sure what he was looking at or what he determined.  So we will just have to wait and see what happens.  

More RAIN!!

Late breaking news... ITS RAINING AGAIN!!!!!  Not only is it raining, its FLOODING!  Weather man said this is a historical event.  8-9 inches in 24 hours.  Loy's boss called him to let him and all his coworkers not to come downtown cause it was flooded.  I have heard report of several people stuck on the roads trying to get somewhere, but can't get anywhere cause of the flooding.  I am in the process of packing up to go to Texas to stay with my sister-in-law for the week, but not sure I should even leave for a while because of the roads.  What does that mean for our house?  Not sure yet.  They weren't suppose to come out till Tuesday and Wednesday to do heat and air, but even if it stops raining I am not sure if the will still be able to come out and work.  Mark told us when we started "This is the perfect time to start because it really starts to dry out and we won't have much problems with weather."  Of course this has to be the year of all years of setting all kinds of records and really crazy unpredictable weather.  I guess that is Oklahoma for you though.  C'est la vie!

Pictures added...

The beginning.  Thought it was good.  Pretty close to the road, but still draining well.

Right up to the edge.

Then this and hour later...

Behind the dam.  The overflow.  Never seen it like this before.

Our road...

Another shot of the road.  Just crazy!!!

Overflow pipe working overtime and just not keeping up.

Another shot of our 'river'.

Me standing on our road on the dam.

Our house.  Looks pretty good considering what the pond and and dam.

The first year we lived in this house we got a ton of rain, that was the year it rained 33 days straight, but it was a steady rain, not 10 inches in a few hours.  Now it didn't rain that much here, but it is still alot of rain and they are expecting more.  If you want to see some incredible rescue scenes and something out of a movie check out some of the local news channels online.  www.newsok.com

Now off to pack the car and get out of here!

Man they are fast

It has been a busy week for me and with the house.  We have been busy this week with not only our normal everyday things, but we are having our church gospel meeting with youth activities during the day so we have been doing all that during the day and either working or going to church at night.  Today was the really the first time I have been able to go check out the house stuff this week and they are fast!  So far, they started with the footers Monday...

LOTS of cement.  In fact and cement truck got stuck in the off to the side where he had pushed some dirt over and had to call in the big guns...

Anyway, here they are pouring the cement

The guy in the shorts is Mark our leader.  He was out there ALL day with them from 7:00 am till dark and he was out there all day the next day and the next!  What a great guy he is.

I didn't get out there to take pictures of just the stem wall, which they did yesterday, but you can see them here and these pictures are kinda boring anyway.  They did the plumbing today.

So now it just looks like a concrete box sticking out of the ground and pipes through out.

Then I sat out on our porch and took in the air and view.  I can't wait!

The "porch" where I rested on for a while.

What's next?  Heat and air tomorrow, inspections, then sand (which you can kinda see a pile in the back of this picture), then they will pour the slab.

Woke up to storm clouds.

Well this morning we woke up to storm clouds and thought we were going to have to push gravel day back again, but it cleared up and it didn't even sprinkle here.  Our church is having a gospel meeting this week with kids activities in the afternoon.  When I went to leave this morning about 10:15 a man driving a truck pulling a tractor was pulling into our drive.  When I got home this afternoon we had one load of gravel and the man told me that they were going to be out there at 6:00 in the morning with a semi and if that would bother us.  I told him I didn't care what time they were out there as long as work was getting done.  And seeing as how my kids get up at 6:30 in the morning, not that big of a deal.  We are making progress.