Category: Deconstruction

Still clearing land

gacott Leave a comment

One of the great things about living here is with the trash service, they will also haul away some natural rubbish. This month I think we may have pushed it too far.

In front of house

The pile was quite high already, but today my Friend from Colorado, Steve, of “Steve and Katie” fame, who are on the last few days of a two-month stay, has moved up a bunch of the palm tree fronds from the back of the property.

So while we have been working on the house, we’ve also been clearing quite a bit of the property, faster than we can get it out of here really.

felled trees

We have these piles of dead trees, branches, etc all over the place. We’ll try to mulch as much of it as we can, burn some and take some out to the road to be hauled away.

With Steve and Katie on their way out, we are getting ready to have three rounds of Grandkids visiting so we are working on finishing up the last bits of construction in the house. We have to wrap of the closing of the main house to the studio.

studio door

And FINALLY, we have decided how we want to treat the fireplace in the main house, framed it in late last week, will drywall today, then tape and float, spackle and paint. Hopefully, we can get it done before the kids start showing up.

Fireplace

Another Three Loads Gone

gacott Leave a comment

So, Vivian walks around in a fairly steady disgust. No, we’re doing fine, thanks. The disgust is leveled in the direction of the two brothers who lived here before us. Apparently they just had real issues throwing anything away.

After multiple dump runs, a couple of giveaways, more dump runs, we are finally making our way into the trees. Here is a picture of our THIRD dump run from items in the trees. (UPDATE: We took more than three tons of crap to the landfill.)

Third Load Out

After taking down the, hmm, third I think, yes, third chicken coop, we found this HUGE dead tree. Look at Viv, doesn’t she look like she’s having a fun time?

Huge Dead Tree

Yep, that’s right, we are still finding new trees. We have actually yet to be over the entire property, it’s just too over grown. However, we did find two more citrus trees today! Woo-hoo!!

Having Fun Now!

gacott 1 Comment

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!

The Breeze Was On Our Side Today

Vivian Acott Leave a comment

Our Contractor, “Barazza Construction ” do change with the breeze when needed. They determined that it would take too long to get the brush burn completed and decided to haul the debris to the land fill. Today is the first day, the temperature is in the 90’s, and the direction of the wind was in full compliance of what we (Gar and I) needed.

For most dirt moving, burning and tree removal days the wind blew the dust and dirt north, in the direction of our camper and home office. But not today! Today the wind is blowing south … and a little to the east or west, but mostly south.

Here are some photos of some carnage being scraped, lifted and moved into the trailer to be hauled of the the landfill.

As some of the locals say… “Thank you Jesus”.

I say “Thank you Barraza Construction”! Making progress helps me feel real good!

Everything old is new again

gacott Leave a comment

Ever hear the saying “everything old is new again?” well remember that big old tree that our guys took down right here?

Big Tree

Well, it seems as though it had different ideas. One of the guys jumped up on and it started to cut off the big branches….

Cutting off huge branches

And didn’t account for gravity. Once the large branches were gone, the tree took for for a bit of a ride. To right back to where it was before.

Tree back in it's hole

Hmm, right? Now we just have to figure out what we are going to do with the bees.

Seems that they have a number of kinds of bees down here. These little buggers aren’t the “Killer Bee” variety but they are pretty darn aggressive, and they aren’t honey bees. They look just like killer bees but won’t follow you to the ends of the earth in order to cause pain and death – just about 25 yards to do so.

We have this little thing around here. You just keep your ears open and be alert as you are working, listen for the word “bees” to be shouted out and be ready to take cover fast! So far I think we have found five hives on the property. One of which IS honey bees. I’m going to talk to ol’Ken next door and see if he would like them. Until then, we’ll see if we can’t stay clear of these buggers.

Bees on a tree

HOLY Crap!!

gacott Leave a comment

Well, wow! I have been on plenty of construction sites in my life but never anything like this. When you go though something like this, you just have to ask yourself, WTF are we doing?

The land looks like a bomb went off in the front and another in the back.

On the other hand, it has to have been at least 30 years since the front of the house proper has even seen daylight. Four wild bee hives and wasps nest later, we still have quite a bit to go.

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