March 2023 – New House

Cabinet install!

Things are really moving. We constantly have multiple vehicles parked in our front yard. The trades are working in parallel in order to keep things moving. For example, the tile guys did the tile floor grout in the kitchen first so the cabinet installer could come in and work.

Let’s start with a video I shot last Sunday.

Since then the tile floor is almost all in. They installers are down to the fussy parts now, all the little cuts they have to make. And it turns out the installers were short of tile, about 12 boxes short. So yesterday the hubby and I offered to drive down to El Paso and pick it up. That was our good deed for the day! It keeps the progress going.

The gray coat of stucco was finished up yesterday morning. Yay!!!! We aren’t sure when the elastomeric spray goes on. When it does, the RV is outta here! No over-spray for us.

Finally, the gray coat (the first coat!) of stucco has been totally troweled on.

This morning the cabinet installer showed up.

The cabinets are being moved the the rooms that they go into. The far wall in the kitchen gets the white cabinets. The gray cabinets make up the island. We opted for all drawers on the bottom. I’m getting too old to climb in black hole type spaces below the counter top.

The tile is also going in the shower and around the tub. I don’t have a picture of that yet, I don’t want to get in the installer’s way. But this is what the tile looks like.

The tile will be installed vertically and the shower floor will be hexagon tiles to match.

I’ll leave you with a picture of this morning’s sunrise. The day started out beautifully…let’s hope things continue that way!

Paint, Stucco and Floor Tile

Things have been happening this week. The painters came in and primed and painted all the walls.

All painted. Now we have to decide what surface to put on the fireplace surround.

All the doors were hauled out to the RV garage and painted.

And the door frames were painted inside the house.

I see some over spray onto the walls. They must touch up the wall paint later.

After painting, the floor tile started going in. Woohoo!

The guest bathroom on the left and on the right, my sewing space.

The tile continues into the great room and kitchen. You have to start somewhere!

Things are happening outside the house too. The stucco gray coat is going on! After the gray coat, we get a sprayed on elastomeric coating (the RV will get moved for that…don’t need it coated too!). Then there will be a final troweled on coating of stucco.

In the morning sun, you can tell where the gray coat of stucco is applied and where it isn’t. When the stucco is wet, it almost looks like the tar paper! It dries much lighter. The Jeep is parked where it is to keep construction thieves from stealing the cement mixed (behind the Jeep). Typically the stucco crew takes their mixer home with them every night, but with us on site they feel comfortable leaving it. Same goes for the painter’s trailer…it’s parked right next to the RV (hard to see in this shot).

We have been picking out paint colors and stone, one of my least favorite things to do in the world.

The red arrow points to the color of the house stucco. The stacked stone is what will go onto the architectural posts on the house front and the chimney.

Now we are trying to decide what color to make the overhangs. Decisions, decisions!

The neighbors who let us park in their driveway had us over to sit on their rooftop deck at sunset last night. It had reached 80 degrees during the day, so the evening was fairly warm.

Drywall done, paint started.

Things have really been moving along on the house! The drywall crew finished putting on the textured surface and sanding on Friday. Yay!

I took this picture as the sun was setting Friday evening.

On Saturday the garage door installer showed up to finished the rails on the very tall RV garage door. Yay! We now have three working garage doors.

This morning, we went up onto the garage roof deck and had our cup of coffee as the sun came up. We are definitely going to love our perch up there.

The weather is finally improving to the point where we can sit outside in the early morning. We are going up to 75 degrees today! 7 days ago we were seeing snow flurries. Go figure.

I took a couple of minutes to shoot this video as the came down from the deck. You can see some of the interior progress.

We have a target finish date of mid April. We’ll see!