Monday November 15, Lots of Miscellany

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The Tiki Bar

It's still there... But, the roof has come down.

I went to the property on Friday to do some yard work and I was surprised to see somebody there ripping the roof off of the tiki bar. The new "owner" of the tiki bar seemed really eager to move it to his place. Instead of taking out some more dead shrubbery, I spent the evening helping him and it was certainly a lot easier. He said that he would return Saturday morning with a backhoe to take the structure apart and break up the concrete slab for us. He didn't show up this weekend; I know people have better things to do, but he loosened the bolts right before he left and we've had to be really careful when we get near it.

I seriously hate that thing. Our friends and family think it's amusing. I think it would be better off at a frat house.

Yardwork

We have been really hard at work clearing bushes, cacti, small trees and leaves.

There are a total of 11 cacti and they all have to be removed because: A) We don't like them and B) they're unsafe for Walter. We removed 3 so far. There are also approximately 7 scrub oaks on the property. We can legally remove these because they're babies, but I'm inclined to relocate the nicest one in the back of the property (Oaks need to reproduce too). We also have many dead or dying bushes and trees that need to be removed as well.

We also marked the property by stringing some twine to the surveyor's corners. We can see how close that guesthouse is to our property line now.

Above is a view of the property line on the west side.

Above is the growing trash pile. We're waiting for the "free dump day" in Val Verde next month to haul it away. David even turned down a gig for "free dump day!"

Electrical Plan

We have totally stalled on this because I was still waiting for the IKEA planner to return my messages. We needed our furniture and fixture measurements to figure out our lighting plan and I wanted to wait a little bit longer to see if perhaps, she was on vacation. I didn't hear from her on Friday so, I spent my night hours working on it. In the end, I am happy that did it because I knew how I wanted the spaces to function and I didn't have the time to tell her during our meeting. Some of my favorite IKEA picks are the toilet roll holders, the dining room light fixtures and this sink/vanity

There was one item for which I could not find a solution. In our kitchen design, Greg suggested that our island could be movable, so we could roll it away for parties, etc. We really liked this idea and I found this island at DWR, but I thought that it would look too sterile since our backsplash, appliances, and range hood are all stainless steel. Also, it started to remind me of operating table carts (I looked at those too). In the end, I decided what I needed was something more custom so I decided to have Kerf Design make something for us for the same price. I think it's a better fit with our style anyway.

There are a lot of things that we've had to do on our own because we went with a very custom design on a low budget. But I like having control of the project. I still have to accurately measure our cabinets and sinks so the modular home company will know where to put the rough plumbing. Right now, we just want to get the the engineering stage. Everything is on hold until we have engineered plans. We can't continue with permitting, foundation details or contesting the necessity of a soils report until it's done. We're aiming to start tomorrow, if we're lucky.