Let the parties begin!

We had the inagural wedding party weekend for Justin and Katherine and had a wonderful time! Justin grew up on a farm in Magnolia, MN so we all traveled north for the fun festivities. James joined the boys at Justin's brother's lakehouse near Minneapolis for a little bachelor party getaway and then we all had a great weekend celebrating Justin and Katherine in Minnesota and South Dakota. Justin's parents hosted a delicious fish fry on Friday night and the 'Texans' all got our first taste of Pike and it was awesome!! On Saturday, Justin's sister, Stacey, hosted a wonderful kitchen shower for Katherine and then his parents hosted a great party at their home that night. It was lots of wonderful food and fun and couldn't have been a better way to kick off the wedding festivities!

K&J gave Rita and Gary an aweome gift.. a beer tub personalized with The Bush Farm (hard to see in the photo) that was full of Shiner and Busch Lite! Perfect way to combine the Texas and Minnesota families :)

The Future Mr. and Mrs. Bush!

Cute decorations for J&K!

The MOB and MOG received adorable personalized wine glasses to use for all of the wedding festivities!

Katherine and her little helper (Lily) opening lots of wondeful gifts at the kitchen shower.

Bride & Groom playing a cute game of "Who's Who's?"

Proud parents of the bride enjoying the party!



Two sets of very happy parents with the Bride & Groom! :)

All the "grown up kids"

It was a great way to kick off such a special time for Justin and Katherine. I remember all of our wedding parties and festivities so fondly and I hope they will enjoy everything and have as much fun as we did. It's an amzing time for them as they start their life together! We love you very much, J&K! :)

To the Window.. To the Walls

This week we have made even more progress and we now have all exterior walls and a roof. It truly feels like a home coming together now! YEAH!

View from the backyard of the garage, living room and porch

Exterior view of laundry room door, kitchen window and living room window

View from driveway of the living room and garage

Front exterior of the new addition

Walking through the house now, we can truly get a sense for how the house will feel to live in it, which is especially exciting in the kitchen, living room and the "new" areas of the house.  It was a fun week and we had the first opportunity to take James' mom and dad, Katherine and Justin through the house. It was truly touching when Carol said that she couldn't be more pleased with how our home was turning out. We knew that seeing the house her parents lived in and loved being changed so much was going to be hard, but to hear that she was so happy with it means the world to us.  

View from bar of kitchen and living room

View of kitchen and living room (the white pipe is the prep sink in the island)

View from the bar 

New hallway

New bedroom which will be our workout room

View from garage into living room and kitchen

The garage - still as big as ever! 

This week was also a big decision week as we ordered windows and doors, which is the last step towards being secured and sealed. It seems this will be a pattern that will continue as next week will bring all electrical decisions including outlets, TVs and even stereo. I am still trying to figure out how you decide exactly where you want every plug to be in your whole house! I hope we don't forget any crucial locations!

Taking shape

After the painful long delays with the inspections, it is so very rewarding and exciting to see our house really taking shape. For the first time we can actually get a feel for the "new" section and walking through the house we can now get a true sense of what it will be like to walk from room to room. The framers worked fast and furiously and in just three days we went from exterior studs to all interior walls framed, a roof built and decked. It is amazing what a few days will do!

Porch and living room are now tied into the existing house

One of the aspects of the house that have kept James and myself concerned was the roof. Neither of us could get a sense for how in the world the roof plan that we saw on a piece of paper was actually going to look when it was built (perhaps not being roofers had something to do with it!) I don't know if I have mentioned Pancho before, but he's our talented framer and on Saturday, Pancho and his team started tackling the roof and we were so lucky to be there to see it taking shape. It was entertaining to watch as he measured and then used a calculator and a protractor to determine what was the right angle and length for each piece of rafter. He strayed from the roof plan drawn by the architect to solve issues that he saw and while standing on a 2x4 12 feet above the ground came up with a rafter plan and a roof that looks great.

Pancho on the roof doing his magic

The very complex rafter arrangement

Tick Tock

Well, we have been officially in a holding pattern and it has nothing to do with air travel, but it's just as annoying as being stuck 100 miles out of your destination and flying in circles. This is a bit of a long, drawn out story, but it's what we have been living through and I wanted to make sure to document it so when I look back at this process I can remember all of the struggles and strife and know they were all worth it!

We were making great progress and were ready for our floor joist inspection by the City of Dallas.. well, when the inspector showed up he wouldn't even look at our joists because he said we had to have ALL of our plumbing roughed in. This was news to us, especially since we are building a pier and beam foundation house so until we lay the actual flooring the plumbing inspector will be able to see all of the plumbing. But, you can't argue with the inspector since we will have many more visits from him and it's important to stay in his good graces. So, we stopped framing and waited on the plumber...and waited..

Finally we had almost all of the plumbing finished with only two small things left to do. So, we called for a PM (you either get AM or PM) plumbing inspection to make sure we had plenty of time to finish those two small items. Well, of course the inspector showed up at 11:15AM and the two items were just being finished. However, since they weren't finished he gave us a red tag (officially my new dirty word!) and left. So, we lost the whole weekend and waited for Monday. Monday we got our green tag for plumbing, but still had to wait for the floor joist inspector to come back out before we could move forward with framing. The inspector finally returned and gave us a red tag (yep, red=bad!) Our builder called the engineer since they had drawn the pre-approved framing plans and confirmed that the inspector was in fact wrong. So, forgetting his own advice about staying in good graces with the inspector, our builder had to go over his head. Long story short, the inspector was wrong and the city verbally issued a green tag.

We finally received the paper copy of the green tag and could move forward with framing.. YEAH!! Of course, the 4th of July is tomorrow..so we are losing another day. But, on the bright side, we are supposed to have framing begin at 7am Thursday morning and it should move quickly and efficiently. And, best of all... we don't require another inspection for awhile!