Footers and plumbing ... starting to look like a building. Lots of progress over the last 7 days, and I mean 7 days, as last Sunday they did the footer wall. I've been traveling all week, so have been unable to get much details. I did come home on Saturday to find the outline of the building complete and our plumbing mainly done. Not sure what it is, but having the outline of the building done in the footers and having things graded makes the whole project look far along to me ... You can see the plumbing for the bathroom in the playroom, the bathroom in the office and the stub for the sink in the outdoor kitchen area. We will be adding a spigot to the equipment "nook" (other side of the kitchen), so that we have water there for anything we need. We will also make this the "connection" point to the dock. This way all dock connections (water and power) will originate from this area. I believe this week they are probably going to pour the slab ... then it will really start looking like a building .

A big thanks ... our deck and contractor Well, I have to give a big thanks to Steve (our contractor) for finishing our deck. I think he either felt sorry for me or Michelle, most likely Michelle. As it probably appeared that I would never finish it . He had a couple of his guys finish it one afternoon. I didn't ask, neither did Michelle ... so a huge thanks to him for doing it. We're now "in" our temporary deck. We'll need some sort of umbrella, as the sun is fairly scorching and there is nowhere to hide from it out there.

Productive week ... concrete and rebar

It's always nice to see continuous progress and I've been very happy to see that every day there is visible progress on the project. I realize that this might not always be the case, but boy, does it make you feel good.

As of this writing, we have a brand new footer poured for the addition, the rebar is in place and the blocks are staged to build a knee wall (I think that's the term). In some areas the footers are extra deep, which isn't needed, but was done to provide more strength in case of flooding ... great idea from Steve (contractor, more on him in another post).

The other impressive thing for us, has been the effort to keep the site clean and to ensure that the backyard (where we swim everyday) is as nice as possible. You see the safety fence, which has proper posts and not just rebar rods holding it up. In some photo's you can see a bunch of the hay that was brought in and spread over the dirt. This keeps the mud out of the way and keeps the blowing dust down as well (at least that's what I think).

When Jaci saw them put up the fence and bring in the hay, she asked when the animal would be arriving for her petting zoo .

I've always believed that you can tell a great deal about a person, in how they deal with diversity and issues. How they react, what they do, etc ... As they were digging out the footers, they cut the electrical feed to our dock. This provides power to our dock and the temporary location for the pool pump. Steve had this repaired within a couple of hours. I was outside talking to him when it happened, no yelling, no being upset, no drama. It was very nice to see.

Taking shape ...

They came over the weekend to do some further painting on the house. We are using the same colors as before, so the house will be bright white and the shutters will remain the same blue. They have done one coat on the house, and are now doing the "detailing". This means, all holes, scratches, gouges, etc ... They have painted the doors as well ... it really is looking so much nicer.

I spent most of Sunday building the temporary deck. Wow, makes you appreciate the manual labor part. In total I probably did about 3 hrs of work, it took me 8 to accomplish that though. I've got the "framing" done, so all that is left is to nail the boards on top ... oh yeah, I have to cut them to size first.

They also started laying out the footers today. The plan is to have footers this week, and possibly start on the slab front.

So far, I am very pleased as to the progress. It was nice to see 8+ people here today.

Our plans ... Well, not exactly plans (I will post those later), this is a model I put together using SketchUp. You can see the new "office", this is the separate building near the seawall. Inside this will be a walk-in closet, and a full bathroom. The bathroom will have access from outside (so it can service the pool) and the room. Our plan is to use this as our work office, and to use it as a guest house when people visit. The large addition to the main house, will be one large playroom. Within it will be a half-bath and a large walk-in closet. This room will have french doors to the garage side and the pool side. The intent is to enclose the area between the playroom and the garage in a bug enclosure, and put "playground" material on the ground. We will make this the "outside" playroom. The other area will be a covered patio, with an outdoor kitchen. That entire space will be under a roofline that is part of the main structure. Between the columns, we will install retractable bug screens. This will allow us to "enclose" the room when the bugs are bad, or leave it wide open. The little nook (9ft), between the office and the playroom (by the half wall) will have an outdoor kitchen with a grill, sink, small fridge and prep area.

More dirt, more windows and paint ... It is so nice to see progress. Upon our return this evening, we find the house has all but 2 windows installed. They are covered up for painting, which has already started in some areas. They have filled all the holes in the walls, fixed all the sills and scraped everything that was loose. They will paint the house the same bright white color, the doors will be white, the shutters will be prepped and painted the blue that was there before. We will replace all our outside doors, with doors that have have large glass in them, this will keep with the contemporary style we want and will allow even more light into the house. They brought in a couple of more trucks of dirt, at the water's side, it's almost a 3 ft difference. We will have to figure out how to landscape this later. I believe that they will start forming the slab for the addition next week. Tomorrow looks like some more dirt and the painting to continue.

Progress ... new windows are coming in Day 2 shows progress, I came home late last night, so I couldn't really see what they had done. I did notice our nice new 150mph hurricane windows. They look much nicer. We're hoping that our cooling bill goes down . The house scraping continues in prep for painting, the windows sills are being repaired and a bunch of new dirt is in. I'm always happy when the land gets higher, especially since the floor of our house is 8ft 6" above the water (I guess the dirt isn't helping that though ).

Here we go again ... this time, major construction.

Well, I'm going to try to keep this on a frequent basis, to show the progress (and I hope lots of it), on our new project.

We have decided to "upgrade" to hacienda 2.0 ... Ok, we want to add a new playroom, an office and an outdoor covered sitting area. At the same time, we will do some maintenance on the house and replace the windows with more energy efficient and hurricane proof ones.

Today marked day 1, well, Day 1 with construction. Plans are drawn (will post later), permits are pulled, contractor is ready. Today was demolition day.

They tore up the old patio deck, cleared the grass and ripped up a bunch of old bushes from the garage side.

Since construction will take 4-6 months, we will need somewhere to sit outside, so you see my layout for a temporary wood deck. I will try to make this over the next couple of days from what I had leftover from my hurricane shutters.