Getting obsessed with finishing house...

We have gotten the word that we might be able to move into the new house as early as the end of next week. This makes us very happy. But it's also consuming a lot of our time, since we have been driving out to the site at least once a day. Each visit shoots the bottom out of an hour, at the very least. But there are a lot of important processes going on and there's no other way to stay on top of it.

The excavation man has managed to turn ten truckloads of fill into a pretty big driveway that for the first time in history meets up with the floor of the garage:



The slope is a little steeper than I would have liked, but such is life when building on hills, I suppose. Especially little bitty hills. From the road, it really helped break up the silhouette of the garage:



But we worry about erosion. We have already been talking to a landscaper about what to plant on that slope to stabilize it. The timing is good, we have another five or six months before "rainy season", with its awesome summer electrical storms and torrents of cistern-filling rain. So we have time to stabilize it all a bit using drip irrigation.

There were plenty people working on the house yesterday. Tiling the bathrooms, preparing the garage floor for finishing, painting trim, and these guys were a pleasant surprise. They were getting ready to pour some concrete steps to make it easy to exit the patio. That wasn't in the drawing, so its a nice extra touch.



We were especially happy to see the tin roof team finishing up there in the background, as well.

I tried to do a little two-picture mosaic of the top of the garage. I suppose I should use the term "Sunset Deck", since that's what it's more or less been called on the plans.


I am still struggling with putting together these shots and not getting the 'fisheye' distortion. That far wall really is straight, and the horizon really does not show the curvature of the earth. This is the area where we think we want some kind of tiki-bar, or similar. We have been thinking of building something out of massive driftwood logs. I have also wondered about something Tex-Mex, with adobe arches, beams for a ceiling, something that looked like it was designed in Santa Fe or Taos. Or more of a Pacific Mexico kind of look. Just a thought.

You know, some nice place to sit at the end of the day with friends, break out some ice cubes and a charcoal grill, and watch these sunset things:



Later in the year the sun moves further north, and sets in the water among the small islands to the right of where it is right now. Still, now ain't bad.

So, anyway, please bear with us if house-related photos seem to be in preponderence over the next few posts. Its the biggest thing going on with us right now. We do have a couple boat trips to make over the next few days, too. Those are usually good for some fresh tropical-looking photos.