We-B-Saints My New Home

We're all moved in!... well... sorta...

March 31, 2005

OK... there are still boxes everywhere... and I haven't finished the planter beds yet... and the firepit isn't put together yet... but we're living here and we've even had our first big event (Easter). A lot has happened since I last updated this page, so I'll try to cover as much as possible without boring you to tears.

I got the CO back on Feb 11th and the first thing I did after getting the keys was hold a painting party. LeElla and I spent the Friday night taping up as many walls as we could. On Saturday, we had a whole group of folks over, everyone with either a paintbrush or roller in their hand. Everyone, that is, except for Kenny ("Mr. Taller Than Everyone Else") who spent most of the day at the top of ladder taping off my 10-14 foot ceilings. Actually, Kenny did do some painting... he painted the walls where the ceiling reached up to 14 feet. We weren't able to actually finish everything that weekend, but we got a lot done. Everyone helped during the rest of the week, and by Friday, all of the walls that I wanted painted were painted (except for the Media Room, which is going to take a little longer).

Here are some of the more colorful rooms...

I chose the solid green because I thought it was a good, old-fashioned color that goes well with the old-fashioned furniture. The pieces in this room are made of a dark wood, so the contrast between the dark brown and the bright green is effective (in my opinion, of course). BTW, the dining room furniture belonged to my grandparents (my Dad's parents)... they purchased the set when they hosted the rehearsal dinner for my parents' wedding.
You can see the turqoise blue of the office from just about any distance. This color goes really well with the light wood of the floor and blinds. BTW, the ladder in this picture was a life-saver while doing all of this painting... especially when I had to get up to the 15 ft. cathedral ceilings in the family room.
This seems to be everyone's favorite room. I wasn't expecting the purple to be such a dark purple ("bunchberry" is the official color name), but I think it works well with the bright white of the fixtures and dark black of the mirror. Note the unique shape of the mirror.
This is what the family room looked like while I was still in the middle of faux painting. The bottom half shows the base coat, while the top half shows the finished product. Notice that I didn't paint all the walls... I kind of went with the "every-other-wall" pattern.

After the painting and before the big move, one of the major features of the house was delivered -- the pool table. This table was a Christmas gift from all of my brothers and sisters. Every year, my parents give us all a week at the beach for our Christmas gift (the infamous "Beach Week"). This year, everyone volunteered to forego Beach Week, and my parents instead spent the money on the pool table. It was an extremely generous gift, so I was most anxious to get it installed. It was an amazing process that took 3 men a good hour to do. Fortunately, they let me take pictures...

	First, the table is brought in... fortunately, I had the big french doors in the back that provided enough room for the table to fit. I was also fortunate that the family room floor was level, so they didn't have to use any shims under the feet. Then, the slate is brought in... the slate is 1 in. thick and it's so heavy that it came in 3 pieces.
Because the slate comes in 3 pieces, they need to seal the seams... I'm not really sure what they used, but it had to be heated over the seams and then carefully smoothed out.
	The next step was laying down the cloth. I got an upgraded cloth that Chuck insisted on... and they applied several coats of a special stain resistant chemical.
Once the cloth was laid out and stapled tight to the sides, they trimmed off the extra and made sure it was a nice, tight fit.
	The last step was to attach the side rails with the pockets. I chose the pockets separate from the table, so I was a little concerned that they wouldn't go together. But I lucked out and they go together perfectly!
Finally, the table was ready to go... of course, they had to make a nice presentation with the cue sticks and balls.

The weekend following the painting party, we had a "moving party"... OK.. it wasn't really a party, but if you've got to do something that's a lot of work, you might as well try to have fun with it. Everyone pitched in once again to help with the moving. We had 4 locations from which to get stuff.... LeElla's storage, Chuck's apartment, my storage, and Mom & Dad's house (where I've been living for the last 2 1/2 years). We had to split everyone up into 2 groups... one group took the U-Haul and the big guys, and they went around to pick up the big pieces of furniture. Everyone else piled into the pick-up trucks and took several loads to the new house. Amazingly, we finished the move before it got dark.

Here's a couple of pictures of the chaos after the move:

The kitchen doesn't look nearly as bad now as it does here... really... I've cleaned it up... honestly!

Notice the orange wall in the background? That's one of 3 walls I faux-painted in the family room.

OK... the garage is still a mess... though the mess is no longer all my stuff... I had to clean out my stuff so that Chuck could move in his stuff. Fortunately, Chuck got a bigger storage room, so he'll be putting most of his stuff into the storage room and then there'll be a lot less stuff in the garage... though, it'll once again be mostly my stuff.

And here's what my bedroom looked like after I straightened it out some. Essentially, during the move, there were two default places to put boxes... the first was the garage, and the second was my bedroom.

Unfortunately, though I've been through what seems like hundreds of boxes, my room still doesn't look much better than it does here. Many of the boxes that were in the garage got moved into my bedroom to make room for Chuck's boxes.

OK, so the first weekend I have a painting party... then the next weekend, I have a moving party... you'd think people would learn to avoid my "parties". But they showed up once more for the third weekend when I had a "sodding" party... yes, we spent the third weekend laying sod all around the house. Before putting down the sod, I wanted to define the borders so that I'd know where to put the sidewalk and the planter beds. Then, on Thursday, a large truck carrying 12 pallets (4800 sq. ft.) of Floritam sod arrived and placed the pallets around the house. LeElla and I got the first patch sodded on Friday evening, and on Saturday morning, everyone showed up once more and we had grass surrounding the house by about 3:00pm... and we even took a break for lunch! It's amazing how different (and better) the house looks with some greenery around it.

Here's what 12 pallets of sod looks like after its been laid out...

My next step was to put down the pavers for the sidewalk and then the planter beds. I had 8 pallets of pavers and a large pile of sand delivered, and with a lot of help from Diane, I've finished the sidewalk and am now working on the planters. I've also had 2 loads of rock/shell delivered and Danny and Tommy spread it all over the driveway area so it won't be so mucky during a rain and also to provide some extra, much needed, parking areas. Danny also spent most of Saturday and Sunday morning clearing away this huge pile of rocks mixed in with a bunch of pepper trees... it's amazing how different it looks!

Here's some pictures of the sidewalk in progress...

	The first step was to get the small area in the front of the house. I thought it was important to get this area as straight as possible since it's the first thing you see when you walk out the front door.
The next step was to take the sidewalk around the front to the side. This was where the challenge began since there was only a small straight section and the rest of it was curved. Diane and I completed the straight section and then, for the curved section, we put in the borders and filled in the interior with as many pavers as we could without having to make any cuts.
	And then I filled in the holes by cutting pavers to fit. This was the first time I've ever used a paver cutter, and it ended being very cool to work with. The "brick saw" was a large table saw that piped water through the diamond tipped blade which made cutting the pavers like cutting butter.
The next weekend, Diane and I continued with laying out the rest of the sidewalk. Since the paver cutter is fairly expensive to rent, we laid out as many of the pavers that we could and then left the rest of the curved area for another day that I could dedicate to cutting. I put the plastic over the unfinished areas because we were expecting a lot of rain and I didn't want the rain to mess up the sand that had already been leveled.
	And here's the final product. There was a bit of a lump at the curve that I had to go back and adjust, but the rest of it was fairly level. Though it's not perfect, I'm pretty happy with the job. The pavers you see behind the sidewalk are being used to make the garden beds. We laid them out to get an idea of how the beds would look, and I'm now in the process of installing and leveling these pavers. The beds in the back will actually be raised, creating a tiered look to the garden.

The place was in good enough shape to have everyone over for Easter brunch. Chuck and I got up at 6:30 to put the ham in the oven, and LeElla helped decorate the house with what Easter decorations we could find. Diane came over early and prepared the potato casserole and eggs (just because I own a house doesn't mean I can cook). Before brunch, we had to have our annual Easter Egg Hunt... Angel and Laura were the only young-uns this year, but the bigger kids seemed to enjoy the hunt as much as the girls. I enjoyed it because Kimberly and Brian took over the job of hiding the eggs, so Chuck and I could enjoy the morning inside the cool, air-conditioned house.

Overall, I think Easter was a success. I still need to figure out better seating arrangements for eating, and I forgot to use my folding table as the buffet, so it got a bit crowded around the kitchen island. But everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and the pool table was almost always in use.

The next event is the "We're Pooped! Let's Party!" open house. We're inviting everyone we know... and some folks we don't know... to come and join us for a day-long, pool-playing, movie-watching, ping-pong-playing, karaoke-ing, bonfire-ing party. So, of course, we're all working double-time getting the place in shape.

I'm pretty sure we'll make it.

History

Here are my notes for previous dates...

Overview

My new house is a custom home being built by Richardson Homes, Inc. on a 2 1/2 acre lot in unincorporated Lee County. The lot is located in an area of Lee County that's really a notch in the northern part of Cape Coral, so it's pretty much as close to Cape Coral as you can get, without actually being in Cape Coral. I'm in a small development (16 lots) called "Las Lomas".

The house is a bit bigger than I was originally planning... the home owners' association required a minimum of 2500 sq. ft. living area, but I ended up with 3464 sq. ft. However, about 500 sq. ft. are comprised of the bonus room over the garage (what will be my media room).


This is the elevation, looking directly at the front door. This will actually be the view of the house from the corner of the lot, since the front door will face the corner.	This is the first floor... it's kind of hard to see the details, but essentially the wing at the bottom right is my master suite and office, the rooms at the top are the other 2 bedrooms, and in between are the family room, kitchen (with nook), dining room and living room. The media room is a second floor above the garage.

If you want to see what convinced me that I picked the right floor plan for me, take a look at this.

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