June 26, 2013

First of all we need a little shout out to Cousin Don, on the occasion of his 80th Birthday.  That's him on the left.  His brothers Chuck and Richard and I played a sparkling game of golf on Saturday to celebrate.  It was a very good day.  My brother Rick would have been pleased to participate except he was in New Mexico at the time.  This year, like every year,  Rick and Don have celebrated birthdays just 10 years and 10 days apart.  Happy Birthday to Rick, who turned 70 on June 9.  Between 'em they've made 150 trips around the sun.  You are setting the standard for those of us in the younger generation.

 

 

 

 

On with the blog!

 The stone fireplace is going up one rock at a time.  The big ones in the lower left corner will be behind the hearth.

 Looking across the top of the fireplace you can see the "Ledge"  No mantle here at the Crossing on Hearts Ledge..

 From the dining room looking toward the Crossing

 Exterior view with the garage doors in and down.

Garage doors from the inside.

We expect the interior stone to be finished in a day or two.  The tile in the bathrooms should have started today but....alas, they didn't make it.  It is so difficult to maintain good progress here from day to day.  Today the gutters were started, the exterminator made his first trip (and I didn't see any scorpions or daddy longlegs tonight).  Did you know a daddy longlegs is not a spider?  Neither did I.

That's it for now, see you next week, unless they finish something.

Fathers Day

Blanco River Dam

Sandy and Nick sampling the good Hill Country wines

 Progress on stone and stucco

 Blanco Lavendar Festival

Blanco Lavendar Festival 

 It's what's for dinner, with Karen and Buddy Baker, Brian and Sandy

 Another good one.....

 Same one

 Business end of a katydid

 

 On the ceiling of the garage

 From the Ledge

 From a distance

 

 From the front

 North elevation

 North hall from the garage

 Entry columns at the Cloister

 Westside Porch column

 Summer kitchen column

 the Crossing

 Clerestory windows in the kitchen

 Rose window detail

 East Elevation

Couple of the local boys

 

  

Breakfast with my kiddos

The sun sets on Fathers Day 2013

 

 

 



June 3, 2013

Last week was busy at the Crossing.  Antonio and Roberto, stone masons, Juan and his gang on the stucco scaffolding, Billy, Rodney and Ferrin on the framing, Manuel and a bunch of drywallers on the gyp board were all in there on Thursday and progress was made:

great room
    game table corner

my officethe crossing toward the offices

glass block in the hall bath shower

master bedroom

master bath

Sandy crossing the crossing

exterior west side

the future summer kitchen

from the Proposition Rock area

Happy Mother's Day to everyone to whom that is appropriate!  It was a beautiful day here in the Hill Country.  We had quite a bit of rain last week, including that hail storm that I drove into from the Austin Airport Thursday night.  It was an amazing light show from my vantage point coming across the Devil's Backbone, and then all hell broke loose...

 The day after was pretty foggy, but clear and sunny before another round came in that afternoon.  Seems like no one likes to work, especially outside, when it is stormy.

 This is the view our future neighbor to the west will have on sunny mornings.  We're thinking he will want to build on the other side of his lot...

 Close up with the rain still beaded up on the metal.  I don't think we got any hail at the site.

 Current status of the stone work on the north side of the office/bedroom wing.  The window on the right is my office, the large one on the left is the guest bedroom and the little ones on the end are in the Master Bath.

 Current view of the east side of the house from the street

Detail of the north facade.  The white blocks are styrofoam.  They will be shaped and much thinner when finished, and then they'll get a couple of coats of stucco.

We are planning to use travertine tile for much of the flooring.  Recently I went to Houston and picked out these 3 plus 1 more crate from the dealer.

 Another good one...

Some exciting news...about 3 June we expect to close the purchase of some additional land below the ledge.  Two lots came up for sale a while back so we decided to make an offer, to protect the views and limit additional development below the house.  Also the larger lot actually angles down to the Guadalupe River, and now we will have about 90' of river frontage.  There's only one problem with that frontage, the river is a tad low these days.  Elissa, Cory and I did a little foot exploration last weekend (we'll take Sandy with us when her ankle recovers a bit more): 

 

 

 

 The climb down to the River is steep and rocky.  This part is actually on the neighbors land.

 The cactus was blooming profusely, thanks to the rain.

 Our part is the rocky part behind Elissa

That's about a 12-15' drop off-note the kayaker.  The Guadalupe is a fairly deep river through here-the center channel is 20' deep or more, but I don't think there will be any diving off this ledge anytime soon.