The tapers got all of the interior walls textured.  We were happy to see the texture is not as severe as it is on our rental house.  It should serve well to hide the imperfections in sheetrock and taping, but not be so thick that it looks like the house is made from concrete blocks.

They also got the concrete put in for the floor of the shower in the master bathroom.  I was a little worried that I would have to do that part because I have never done it and my concrete skills are somewhat lacking.  Now, all I have to do is clean it up and lay the tile.

FInally, they got the texture done on the stucco.  We will see once it gets painted, but I think that is going to look really nice as well.

Our fence guy, Smiley, is busy welding up fence corners and will be starting the fence this week.

I am presently on a business trip in New Jersey but due to get home midday Thursday.  I am taking next week off from work to start on our part of the house.  The builders still have work to do, but it is far enough along that we can start on our part of the construction now.  So the weekly progress will slow down considerably once we are doing our part.

Last week the tapers got going inside and the stucco guys continued on the outside.

The tapers are a husband and wife team and they really move fast!  They are both really nice folks (as are all of the folks we have met on this project so far).  Although we did not meet him yet, our builder Brad mentioned the tapers have a teenaged son that comes out after school and helps them as well.

By Friday morning, when we were there, they had gotten the second coat of mud on the entire interior of the house, as well as sanding it, and were working on the second coat in the garage.  It looks great.

This coming week, they will be texturing the entire thing, then it will be our turn to start hanging doors, installing moldings and painting.

It seems the couple doing the taping couldn’t resist having a little fun as well.  I wish I had brought a pencil with me as I could have had some fun with a couple of the fixtures they had missed.

Outside, they got most of the roof installed except where they had to complete the stucco first.  They stucco guys got everything done up to the point where they are going to start texturing the stucco this week.  They got the top peak textured so the roofing guys can get their part completed this week as well.  It looks great!

I had taken last week off from teaching to get caught up on some of the busywork stuff for my business which ended up being a very good thing for the house too.  We were able to finally meet up with a fence guy and get the whole fencing situation figured out.

The fencing guy goes by the name of Smiley (his real name is also Mike) and he is the quintessential Arizona cowboy.  Our friend Eve and our friend Danny both recommended him highly.  We drove around and saw some of his work and his fencelines are absolutely straight as a rifle shot.  Beyond that, he is about 10 years my senior, stands at least 8 inches taller than me and about 100 pounds heavier without an ounce of fat on him.  And his name fits him perfectly.  He is the most polite, easy-going guy I have met in years.

Smiley had a few questions that we needed answered from the county regarding the regulations for setbacks for the fence on the three roads bordering our land.

The first problem was that we bought the land as 6 separate parcels, so the county would not let us fence the whole property, even though it is all one connected piece of land, because the house only exists on one of the parcels.  So that necessitated a call to a different county department to get the parcels combined into a single parcel.

The next issue was the county wanted us to buy a building permit for the fence.  I had done my research prior to the call and I know for a fact that we are not required to have a permit for an agricultural fence that is less than 6 feet tall.  I quoted the statute to the county gal, chapter and verse.  But she just did not seem to get that we are just putting up a barbed wire fence with a 4 foot mesh bottom to keep the cows out and our dogs in, without “2 inch fence posts every 20 feet or less”.  Finally, I gave up on her and just did some more research and could not find any special exemptions for the setbacks on the two roads we were worried about, so we conferred with Smiley and decided a 30 foot setback from the center of the road was adequate and if they want to sue me over it 5 years from now, I’ll see them in court.  GRRRR!!!!

I really thought a rural county in Arizona would be easier to deal with than the retards in suburban Minnesota, but I guess government people are the same all over.  I really need to find a hippie to punch and work these frustrations out!  <grin>

Back at the rental house…

The lemons continue to grow and we have a whole bunch of new blossoms on the tree.

The potatoes are going crazy.  They took forever to break ground.  But once they did you can almost watch them grow.  This is about 10 days of growth.

The maters are going insane!  Tina planted our Roma heirloom seeds harvested from last year in about mid-February.  We have so many blooms on them now, I do not know what we are going to do with all of them.  Our past experience with heirloom tomatoes is they produce considerably less than the hybrids.  But this is the largest crop I think we have ever grown.

Eat your hearts out Minnesota and New England!  We are going to be harvesting tomatoes about the same time you all are getting yours in the ground!

The only plants that are not doing so great are the peppers.  I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Belle (the Amazing Water Dog) keeps digging them up.

Now that the windows are in, they are busy on both the inside and the outside of the house.  The sheetrockers started last Wednesday.  We went to the house last Friday afternoon and they were well on their way.  They were planning to have the entire house sheetrocked by last Saturday.

The taping is supposed to start this week.  Originally, our plan was to do the sheetrocking and taping ourselves, but after looking at the number of boxes of mud in the garage, I am really glad Tina talked me into allowing them to do it.  There are 30 boxes of mud stacked up in the garage, each one containing enough for 3 1/2 gallons of mud.  It would have taken me two months to slap up that much mud!

The stucco guy and his son were also out there working on the outside.

I had never seen stucco done before, so I found the whole process really interesting.  The stucco guy and his son are both really nice guys.  They took a good 45 minutes to explain the whole process to me.  They start by wrapping the house with Tyvek, just like the vinyl siding we put on our Minnesota house.  Then they cover the Tyvek with about an inch of styrofoam insulation.  Finally, they staple chicken wire to the foam.  They put expansion joints around all of the windows and finally, this week they will be covering the whole thing with concrete.

After all of it is done, the outside walls are going to end up being about 8 inches thick.  My only concern now is that the house might be too well sealed.  I am afraid if we go out for Mexican and I come home and rip a hot one, I may break glass!

They were having another inspection today on both the sheetrock as well as the outside.  If all went well with it, they should be starting stucco and taping tomorrow.

We also ordered the epoxy floor covering for the garage and laundry room floors last week.  We went with a three coat metallic epoxy system.  Tina and I will be doing that part.  If we are successful, it should look almost like marble when we are done.  We went with the epoxy thinking it would be cheaper and faster to install than tile.  But by the time we bought all of the primer and other chemicals it requires, it came out to almost $3 per square foot; in other words, about the same price as cheap ceramic tile.

Brad also mentioned today that we should be able to get in and get started on our part of the build in the next couple weeks.  I am both excited and apprehensive about that.  Every single thing we are doing to this house, we did on our Minnesota house.  So we do not have any significant new skills to learn.  But we have never done this much in a short period of time.

Finally, we have an appointment to meet with a fence guy tomorrow afternoon.  Our friend Eve is going to be releasing her herd of cows into our area in the next couple weeks.  Then we will be surrounded by about 400 head of cattle.  I would prefer if they are not hanging out on our back porch and Eve would prefer the cattle not eat the construction scraps.

I am sorry for not posting an update last week, but due to our windows being on backorder, they did not accomplish much.  They did paint the eaves, but otherwise, not much happened.

However it did not take long for the birds to discover my office and build a nest in the ceiling.

And crap all over the floor.

The windows finally showed up last Wednesday and they were able to get them installed on Thursday.

Tina wanted a garden window in the kitchen.  The garden window they ordered was different than what we both expected, but we both like it better than what we thought it was going to be.  It has a glass shelf that can be set in the middle of the window, so I think it will work out nicely for growing Tina’s herbs.

They also started blowing the insulation into the walls and ceiling.

I am not sure if they plan to do a second coat of the insulation or if they are planning on just sheetrocking over it as is.  But we noticed some of the walls the insulation comes right to the edge of the studs, while some of it is only an inch or two deep.  I have a call into our builder to ask about that.  I am obviously not going to accept an insulation job that does not completely fill the void in the studs.

They also dropped off the sheetrock and mud.  I believe they have the sheetrockers scheduled to start this week.

They also delivered the roofing materials this week.  So I expect they will be installing the roof this coming week as well.  We decided to go with a steel roof so it should last for the rest of our lives.

Hopefully, this will be the last delay until we start our part of the construction.