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.

We huffed and we puffed

Weeks 4 and 5 brought progress that always makes me giddy - sticks!  The day after Thanskgiving, framing on the first floor started and we finally got to start seeing the spaces more visually.

From left to right, this is looking at the kitchen, butler's pantry (sadly it does not come with a butler), dining room and guest room/office.

This is the place that will house our giant 12' sliding door from the living room to the back patio and yard.  One of my stickler-items was to have an open-feeling living room, so those two weeks a year when Houston weather is divine, we can enjoy the openness.  The 3 large glass sliding door panels will slide completely into wall.  I haven't quite figured out how we will combat mosquitoes with this but that's just details, right? (Wrong.)

Looking at the front of the house, the guest room is on the left, front door in the middle and garage on the right.

Hello from the front entry!  A long hallway goes straight through the middle of the house so hopefully there will be a good view of the back from the front.

This is the beginnings of the stairway that will come off the master bedroom balcony.  We designed a partially covered balcony off the master to (in theory) take advantage of the opportunity to lounge stress-free first thing in the morning and right before bed.  This is one of those things I'm not sure will work out in practice like it did in our head because I typically fall asleep 0.75 seconds after the kids are both in bed.  But it's a nice idea right?  Eventually there will be a pool and hot tub in the yard so the stairs will provide direct access to that as well.

Then in week 5 the second floor started going up!  The kids got to walk through their bedrooms for the first time and Lilly's response was "I have to share a bathroom AGAIN?"  She had a long lecture on entitled attitudes after that and how she is lucky we didn't put them in the same room so Mama could have a yoga/craft/wrapping room (what?  It could be a thing!).

Peaking at the steps, we found our first design problem.  The ceiling clearance going from first to second floor isn't quite 6'8" (code height) so there will be some re-engineering of the trusses in that area.

This is the view of the middle hallway from the back.  Just past the stairs on the left is the mud room coming from the garage and I am so excited to not have backpacks/diaper bags/purses/laptop bags strewn all over the kitchen.  Which they better not be.  AHEM.

Lilly scopes the kitchen while Andrew stairs dreamy-eyed at the cellar.  I had to refrain from writing his cellar because that starts a whole mess of arguments that's not even worth the breath, but suffice to say, he is really REALLY excited about the  refrigerated closet that will house his beer collection, and some wine.

And lastly, the start of a roof over our heads.  Unfortunately, the huge tree on the left will not be staying as we had an arborist come out and look at it since it was dropping huge branches with every storm.  Apparently it is ridden with termites, has the tree-equivalent of all-over staff infection, and is also at the end of its life span (water oaks live about 75 years, this one is about 70 years old). So needless to say, in the interest of not having a really unfortunate accidental tree-crushes-house situation, we are looking for another large tree to put in its place.  Anyone know anything about sycamores in Houston?