What the cat dragged in

We have a patio door!  It must have hitch-hiked the entire way here from Florida, but it has arrived and is partially installed.  They have to build out a 21" wall to accomodate it and the brick ledge, but that's what keeps it interesting right?  This will make the back living room wall basically bomb-shelter quality.

No lie, that door is hella-heavy.  Granted it doesn't have the big handles on it yet, but I had to put my back into it to get that sucker open.  Thankfully there is a regular back door next to it so we won't have to use it as every day access.

On a less awesome note, we had to take down the dead/dying oak tree out front.  RIP lopsidedly-trimmed oak tree, you lived a long life.  We are looking for a replacement tree, and are leaning towards the Mexican sycamore.

Mexican sycamore 

On the outside, the vertical boards where put up on the second floor.  We also learned that all the front windows on the second floor have to be lowered 3 inches in order to meet code.  Which means they have to be recut, moved, all the siding and trim work redone.  Not a pain at all.  City if Houston inspection department is being pretty finnicky these days.  THANKS COH.

What bothers me most about this is that Gabe's windows are right over the gables below, and he can essentially walk right out onto the roof.  I remember being 11 and more than one of my friends pulled stunts like this, jumping off the roof, and breaking something when they didn't nail the landing.  And seeings as Gabe enjoys taking a running start to use his head as a battering ram these days, I smell trouble.  Someone please turn off my worrying-mom tendency to jump to the worst possible scenario first.

On the inside, some progress has been made.  The beer room/cellar has been wrapped, and now spray-foam insulated in preparation for making itself a big refrigerated closet.  Makes Andrew positively giddy.

The cabinet team is starting on all the built-ins.

You know this guy has worked with us before because he knew without me asking to verify the size of my freaking laundry basket.  Plus 5 points for you,Mr. McCaw.

Several "minor" adjustments are being discovered necessary because that's what happens when the details start coming together - like our toilet room door needing to be resized because the soaker tub is a bit wider than planned.

And last but not least, we finally have an insulated home now that the windows and doors are all in.

The drywall has arrived (even though someone stole the plywood from our site this morning) and word on the street is that once drywall is done, we have 6 more weeks to completion.  I'm not holding my breath, but cautiously optimistic.

It's been, one week since you looked at me

Week 1 is in the bag, and we are ready to pour the foundation.  The post-tension cables are set up and the plumbing locations have been checked and confirmed.

Retro-Rustic-Industrial-Contemporary-Mash-Up Home Design

When we started talking about building, we started drawing sketches.  I had a hard time getting motivated this time, I will admit.  Partly because we didn't have a lot yet to visualize environment, partly because Andrew and I had a hard time agreeing on a style, and mostly because the circus that is getting two kids fed, washed and to bed in 2 hours was draining every last ounce of energy from us in the evenings.  If the kids are in bed, it is good fortune if both us are not asleep on the couch by 9:30.

This time we bought some cheap online software to do floor plans instead if Microsoft Visio, and while not perfectly user-friendly, it worked well enough.  There were those first-draft mansions that encompassed the entertainment-mecca of our dreams.  Again, completely unrealistic, but I think it's an important part of the process to put everything you can think of, no matter how wacky, out there.  For us (if we are awake) it creates a conversation over priorities and AHEM provides an opportunity for alignment (through many arguments).  

Last time we were both agreed on a modern-style home.  Even if our interpretations were slightly different, most decisions didn't require a whole bunch of discussion to agree on.  There are so many details to decide on a home, it really helped that we agreed and also, that frankly there are not a whole lot of affordable modern options available.  We wanted nicer than IKEA (even though I have a love/hate relationship with that store), but designer modern is crazy expensive.  This city is 95% traditional in taste, and economies of scale say that design availability will generally be priced most competitively in that category.  Low demand of modern design equals higher prices.  In case anyone is looking for business ideas, there is an opportunity for mid-range priced modern design in the home detail market.

But let's face it.  Modern doesn't work in these neighborhoods we were considering in terms of resale.  There are also architecture committees and the such to consider.  So what do we do?

Andrew was pretty set on what he called "contemporary craftsman."  What does that even mean?  Is it retro?  Rustic?  Americana? Industrial? Traditional? Transitional? What does the addition of contemporary do for that genre?  We needed a central theme (if you know me, you know I love nothing more than a theme) to build off of, and we were having a hard time agreeing on an interpretation.  I tend to lean more retro while Andrew leans more rustic.  Sometimes there is overlap, sometimes there are two heavily opinionated and detail-oriented people using laser-beam-eyes on each other.

So while it hasn't been a pretty process, I believe we have made some progress in terms of home design and maybe even our relationship as a result.  I personally have had to learn a lot of patience.  And not being mean sarcastic. When it's worth arguing about and when the argument is not productive.  And well, maybe not just telling him that idea was stupid (that's called tact right?), when I have my own collection of less-than-brilliant moments.  Sometimes it's better to sleep on it than to continue the discussion.  Sleep always helps.

We again drew up a million iterations and possibilities and even looked at modifying existing plans our builder had on file.  When it came down to it though, the modifications we would do were too large to provide any savings in that process.  So we came up with floor plans we liked and then tweaked another million times to try to put together an elevation we liked that worked together with the floor plan.  Enter the help of a home designer, and we have architectural plans after a few rounds of mark ups.  Simple as pie, right?

Next steps are engineering plans and detail selection.  That's the part where our wack ideas get dollar signs attached to them and we all have a good laugh about that time we thought the rare Antarctic marble mined by the hands of buddhists would look beautiful in the bathroom.

At it again

Here we are, 3 years after we moved into the house that we designed and built, our baby, our crazy project... 

And we're doing it again.

Let me back up a year.

Last summer, two weeks after giving birth to our son, we were at the neighborhood park letting Lilly burn off some energy while our newborn was strapped to me sleeping.  I was watching my husband play with Lilly.  All the kids were a couple years younger than her at least.  When Andrew took a break and walked over to where I was sweating with a warm newborn on my chest in the summer evening heat, I looked at him and said "what are we doing??"  He looked at me for more information on where I was going with this.

Me: "Why do we live here?"

A: ....

Me: "We wanted that walkable life style right? How does that work for us right now?  We live right next to bars and restaurants we don't go to anymore."

A: "You're right."

(Wow, not what I thought he was going to say, so let's save that for posterity, shall we?)

Maybe it was partly the hormones, but after having a second child, something in me, something in us, switched on (or off if you like).  I finally realized that we were a legitimate family, not the couple with a kid who still got to act like they were kid-free some of the time.  Going from one to two was a huge shift for us.  The sheer logistics of that expansion were (and still are) exhausting us.  We needed help, and we are lucky to have our parents here to support us and provide those extra hands for help.  

But after Lilly, I learned how much easier, how much more enjoyable that chaotic routine can be when you have a community (physically) around you for support as well. The first time around we tried to do and manage everything ourselves, partially because we didn't know any better and partially because we just barely could and maintain some sort of adult life.  With two kids, I wanted to have other children around to play with in the neighborhood, other parents around to talk to, BBQ with - the whole tv-sitcom-walk-in-your-back-door-unannounced community.

This shift kind of came as a shock to even myself, let alone our family and friends.  The reality is that our neighborhood is great for singles, young couples, even very young families and empty-nesters, but when the kids get past the toddler stage, it gets dicier.

The local school system is it's own challenge, but in our neighborhood especially it is extra challenging.  Without boring you of the details of testing and lotteries and the complete cluster that process is within HISD, we survived it (barely), but were reinforced throughout that process that it was time to move.

So last fall we started casually trolling HAR.com for areas with good schools.  Would we build?  Would we buy?  Where would we go?  How far out of the city could we live and maintain sanity?  More importantly, what could we afford?

About that time, the real estate market started to increase at a rapid pace, and in the past six months, it has gone completely nuts in Houston.  Listings don't last more than a couple days and the bidding wars in certain areas are ruthless.  Great for sellers, not-so-great for buyers.  I have become a HAR expert at this point and have spent an embarrassing amount of time on that app.

When we were trying to narrow down the neighborhood to search, there were a lot of *discussions* around this topic - we have lived in Midtown/Montrose for 9 years, have loved it.  Where would we equally love it just as much?  

The first instinct was The Heights, where we have many friends, it's a great neighborhood with lots of families and great access to downtown and Galleria area (our work locations).  I was having a hard time figuring out how we could be happy after getting to build our (realistic) dream home going to a tiny bungalow on a small lot eating spam sandwiches for eternity.  In the "good school" areas, it was expensive, competitive and old (in our price range at least, which is not bad, but means more $$$ for upgrades/renovations which means now those spam sandwiches are more like mustard-only sandwiches).  Then we branched out into various areas around town, even looking as far as Sugarland (I know! So far for us!), but we started gravitating towards the Oak Forest/Garden Oaks area.  It seemed like the right compromise for our family.  We drove around several times, taking in the feel of the neighborhood, checking out the schools and local stops,
talking to people about the area and it began to grow on us.

Needless to say, when Lilly got into the magnet elementary school program there, we took it as a sign and the search was exclusively in that area, and it was intense now.  We wanted to avoid the whole lottery mess when Gabe went to school if we could so school zoning was critical.  We had been talking to our builder (same team as last time!) and apparently there are a lot of people like us, thinking the same thing, and moving to the area.  Real estate had gone crazy between November and April and we started stressing big time.  Could we even still afford to live in that area?

Do we renovate something existing?  Honestly that seemed a lot harder than building from scratch (kudos to all those who have patience for remodels!).  We couldn't comfortably afford the way the new builds were going and couldn't find anything we even 70% loved at any close-to-affordable price point any ways. 

Be warned: This is what happens when you custom build and want to move again.  You become a total snob and nothing existing seems right and functional the way YOU want it.  This is a totally annoying byproduct of this process.  

Needless to say, Andrew wanted to build the whole time - Dude is addicted to it and had the bug big time.  So once we went to enough open houses, and had been frustrated enough times, I agreed and gave in.  We told our builder the plan, and off we go...kind of.