Category: Construction

Making Progress

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When we started

Harlingen House

After the front was cleared (mostly)

full house

What!!?? That was a porch?

I hated that porch, it was like walking into a tunnel . . . or to your death. Really, the thing was a bit scary.

The entire roof should be done in about a week and that’s actually one of the bigger jobs to be done on this house. The main house (the right half) actually had a fire in the attic at some point and most of the rafters got burned up pretty good. That last owner decided to kinda just throw more wood at the issue than actually fix it. We are fixing it.

Probably the other big projects are going to be electrical and plumbing but this really gets us a good ways down the road. Now we can start working the inside as well.

Oh, I forget, new windows coming as well!!

Having Fun Now!

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Having fun now

So, after a couple of hard physical days, pulling a muscle in my back and just all of the other crap that goes on around here, my wonderful wife says to me “Having fun now, aren’t we”? As I gave a low volume “heh” and kept walking, I thought to my self, “hell yeah!”.

It’s pretty amazing how our lives can take such turns. I would never had though us in this type living conditions or situations. But it’s awesome! Not easy, awesome.

I had gotten to feel like I was on autopilot, pretty much the same thing day in day out. I wasn’t a bad same thing, just the same. You become complacent like that. If there is one thing that moving to Harlingen has done for me (and I hope Vivian as well), it’s given us purpose. We are moving toward something, building something. That’s pretty darn cool.

So are we having fun now brother?! Hell yeah!

While we were out having fun

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While we were out having fun at the Onion Blossom Festival our contractors were hard at work back on the property moving quickly on the next phase, the “shed”. Check it out. This is where we were after one day.

16 x 32 shed

And here we are after the second day of work.

Building a shed

This shed will make life MUCH easier for Viv and I. It will allow us to get our “stuff” out of storage and on to the property to where we can finally have access to it. Having access will allow us to start really getting things organized and moving along.

So much to talk about

gacott 2 Comments

Wow, I’m not even sure what to think anymore. It feels like we have been here so long . . . but then not long at all. Very confusing.

We had our first crack at burning away the vegetation today, firefighters on hand and all of that.

Fire fighting Harlingen

It was going pretty well initially, but then the wind kicked up and we weren’t really able to burn as much as we wanted (all of it). There ended up being a small brush fire down the street (not caused by us) and a truck had to come help them out. So while they were leaving that fire, they stopped by to ask if we wanted some help putting ours out. Yes, please.

Fire truck

Fire Fighters

The REAL good news is that we FINALLY got approved for our shed! I know, how hard to get a shed approved right? Well down here they have become very particular about such things. It seems there is a bit of a history of people just building “sheds” and then living in them. The weather is so nice here I could really see that being an issue, so they have really tightened up the permit process etc.

Shed starts

It’s very important for us to get the shed done because just about everything we have is in storage . . . a monthly bill with just a monthly RIO (ROI being a place to have our things) tied to it. Building the shed gives us something that as storage will have a full pay off in a little over three years . . .and we’ll get a whole lot more use out of it to boot! Also, it allows us to have our property on site and on shelves! Boxes are collapsing in the paid storage because of the humidity. We hope to be able to get out of the storage place in April.

I was just looking through pictures, have you guys seen this one yet?

Pirate ship

That was on the way back from South Parde – such a cool place to live!

 

Moving fast, let’s see where this goes

gacott 1 Comment

construction

When I was looking for an office in the area I just happened to walk into the office of a local developer. We started to talk about office space but once he started asking question about what kind of work, how did we end up here, etc, etc, he was pretty interested.

We spent about 45 minutes together with him showing some of the development they are working on, some really nice stuff. He was also very clear about the perils of just “running on down here, buying a piece of land and thinking things are going to work out”.

Then he asked about what we were working on . . . hmm, did I see a glimmer of interest?

He asked for more . . . definitely interested now.

He went and grabbed a large ipad with a map of Harlingen on it, “show me where you are doing this” he stated.

I pointed – he asked me to zoom in. I grabbed the ipad, zoomed in on the property and said “right here”.

He likes it! Alot!

He wrote me later that day and asked if we could come in today with our property layout, he’d be interested in helping wherever he could.

Interesting times indeed.