Armadillo Creek

We get to choose absolutely everything that goes into our new house and to make it easier, you get to choose in ‘phases’.

We have just finished doing our Phase 1 Selections which includes choosing the roof material, wall stone, exterior paint & stain colors, front door and interior plumbing fixtures…

And so now it’s beginning to get very real – yesterday they put up the Sample Board at the front of the lot – this is where they will put samples of the roof tile, stone, stucco & paint colors we have chosen so that we can see how it will all look together – and if we want to change anything, we can – what a great idea!

When we arrived out at the lot this morning we saw the board in place – and whilst we were there, a man in a white truck arrived and added the first samples to it – the roof tile…

As you can see we are not having asphalt shingles this time (what you have in England on a shed, here they put on the roof of your house here – it’s weird!!!) – we are going with concrete tiles for the durability and the fact that the roof won’t need replacing when we get big hail – plus they look good!

Very soon we should see stucco, stone & paint on here too – it’s going to be really interesting seeing what our choices look like altogether…

And here is the front door that we have chosen…here is a photo of the same door on another house…

Hopefully we get the permits through tomorrow so construction can begin…and then it gets really exciting…

After the house has been built, when it comes to landscaping we are not going to have a ‘typical’ garden – we are having no lawn…no sprinkler system…no big flower beds…in fact nothing that isn’t natural to the environment…

We are going to be xeriscaping…protecting what we already have out at the lot and using native plants & grasses along with some rocks & containers to create a low maintenance, low water use and natural landscape.

As part of the planning process we needed to have a landscape plan – Ian met a very nice landscaper out at the lot and he loved what we have out there and completely understood what we wanted to achieve – we have some fantastic native plants and he told us we really really need to be firm with the builder about protecting them!!!

And so we talked with our builder and decided that there would be one way in and out of the building area – down the track that is already there – as we are very keen to avoid cars & trucks & heavy machinery destroying vegetation and tearing everything up…

And so they have put alot of barrier fencing out there…

The chain link fencing ropes off clumps of oak trees – the oak trees with trunks over 6″ in diameter each have a tag with a number and are logged – this is because you are not allowed to just take them out – you have to preserve them…

And then the orange barrier fencing is all around areas of planting that we don’t want destroyed…

In fact we went out this morning and put more orange tape around an area that will become part of the garden where we will be spending lots of time…it doesn’t have barrier fencing but it is a pretty part and is where the play scape & trampoline will be, not far from the house…and so we picked up some orange tape from Home Depot and ended up wrapping over 600 ft around the trees to make it a ‘no go’ zone!

Along the back of the top part of the lot they have installed a ‘silt barrier’ – this runs right along the top of the slope and serves to stop soil & building rubble from going down the hill…to give you your bearings, in the distance you can see the blue temporary water tank…

Hopefully this scene will look very different soon…

It’s amazing…every time we go out to the lot something else has appeared or changed!!!

Last trip out we found that the temporary water tank & pump had been installed meaning water can now be drawn from the well – this is one of the things needed to start construction…

Just down the slope behind here you can see the rock & dirt debris that was created when the well was dug…they spray it out over the land and over time it will sink down & get covered by ground plants so it is not noticeable any more…it’s a surprisingly small amount considering the hole is 490 feet deep!!!

Another thing that had changed is that the temporary electrical hook-up had been moved from the transformer where it was, over to close to where it will permanently be on the side wall of the house…

PLUS the electric company had been out and installed a meter onto it – so now we have water & power, and the only thing we are waiting for until we can break ground are the building permits…

WARNING!!!  If you don’t like big spiders, skip past this post!!!

We went out on Thursday to move the kids playscape…

We took it down a year ago when we were planning to sell the house, to make the garden look bigger…and we put it out on the lot in pieces, just to store it somewhere.

The twosome are very keen to have it put back up again (and I don’t blame them – they haven’t been able to use it for a year!!!) plus we had put it where the house is going to go, so we have to move it anyway.

So out we went to move it into it’s new home.  We were moving all the pieces and I turned over the slide to empty water out of it, and came across a very cool visitor…check him out…

Isn’t he cool?  He’s a tarantula…Ian was in the truck so I flagged him down so I could grab the camera and take a photo to show the twosome…

They were sad not to have seen him in real life (they LOVE bugs & wildlife!) but happy to see a photo…I wonder how many of them will make their way indoors in the insect collecting containers we have?!

Now to put the playscape up…if only we can find where we put the box of bolts!!!  Off to hunt for them today so that we can get it built before the real heat comes…

Since there is no main line water service out to where we are going to live, we needed to put in a well which means digging down until you find water and then digging some more…

Ian met the drilling company out at the lot and they told him that once they started drilling, they hoped to reach water at 400 ft down…here is the drilling rig…

And here is the drilling rig extended…

You’ll notice that the sky is a bit cloudy – we had a storm that came through that day and they had to stop drilling for a while because of the lightning…a tad dangerous!

Ian stayed out there for a while (he LOVES big machinery!) and here is a photo of the rig in action…not that you can see much for the rock dust LOL…

And (just in case you are interested) here is the drill bit that chews through the rock…

They actually ‘struck’ water at 470 feet – wow – and then they dug down to a depth of 490 feet to ensure the supply – the rig they used can only dig to a max of 500 ft so we got lucky!!!

But the flow rate is great and we struck water – phew – if that didn’t happen then we’d have to get concrete trucked in and the hole filled and then dig again – which is REALLY expensive so we are very glad we could avoid that.

They finished and here is the well pipe sticking out of the ground…next to be installed is the pump & temporary storage tank which is what we need in order to get the water out for use during construction…

One step further…now the waiting game for the permits…

Over the last couple of weeks, every time we go out to the lot we find that someone has been busy doing something…

A couple of weeks ago we went out to have a wander and found some intriguing holes had been dug in several places…

Looks like a giant mole has been at work, eh?

These are holes that they dug as test holes for the septic system to see what our soil composition is…that’s right…we are a bit off the grid out there than here so we need to have our own septic system and well for water…

They’ve also started marking out where the house will sit so it’s getting very exciting right now – BIG smile!

To start building, aside from building permits, the builder needs 2 important things…electricity & water…

Here is our temporary electricity hook-up to the transformer…

No meter on it yet but I figured it would give my Dad a good chuckle to see it…coming from England it’s a bit bodge it & scarper, isn’t it?!  But that’s the way they do it here!

So we saw a great idea in the school gardens – they used cut up tree trunks for the kids to sit on – and bearing in mind we had so many tree trunks ourselves we decided to do the same thing in the ‘canyon’ area…

But when we saw that area we both realised that it would be a fabulous place to be able to hang out in the evenings…and with Ian’s love of making fires (!) we decided our Christmas present to ourselves would be a fire ring to put down there…

And so we went out one chilly winter afternoon in early January and did a bit more clearing and levelling and to install our fire ring…

You can click on any photo to view a much bigger version…

And here it is in place along with a couple of those tree trunk seats…so far we have 4 perfectly sized for each of us…but we need to make some more for friends when they come over…

That fire ring is VERY sturdy weighing in at 70 lbs so it isn’t going to get washed downhill when it rains hard and the water pours down through there…we also decided to buy a cooking grid on the top figuring we might get the munchies down there…

And here it is all glowing with Ian’s first fire…and the twosome enjoying opening peanuts and pistachio nuts and throwing the shells into the fire…

This is the view up from the fire ring looking up to where the house will be, just as the sun is beginning to go down…

And here is the view looking up there once it is dark…isn’t it magical?

 And the glow of the fire ring…isn’t that cozy?

We are going to be spending MANY happy hours down there…and it is just calling out for a guitar player…mmm…maybe not a beginner tho…

Talking of big piles of wood in my previous post – oh my, they were EVERYWHERE – the previous owner had cut down lots of cedar trees and left the piles of wood & debris all over the place – some up top but most down the back part of the lot…

And so when the weather finally cooled off last winter, myself & Ian went out and dragged all the wood we could find lying around – and it was scattered all over the place – it took a while and was very hard work as most of it had to be dragged up hill – and we formed big piles that Ian then chopped up using his chain saw (yes, he did ‘need’ to go and buy a new one for the job LOL!)…

Here is an example of a couple of those piles…one in the foreground and that big one in the distance…

Once cut up into manageable sizes we need to clear them off of the lot – we are very lucky to have our wonderful friends Steve & Linda who let us borrow their huge trailer for a few days…here is Ian pulling off of our driveway with that trailer…doesnt it make my car look small?!

Ian took two overflowingly full loads in that trailer to the recycling facility – it was amazing how much there was to clear!  We kept a pile for firewood to burn over the winter but typically we had a very mild winter with only a couple of days cold enough to have a wood fire…but still…we aren’t going to be short of firewood for years to come!

And wow did it look different all cleaned up – it no longer looks like a dumping ground back there but a beautiful woodland environment…

That is the cleaned up ‘canyon’ area and it is a really magical part of the lot…it cascades down to a flatter part at the bottom and is circled by trees…and when you look up there is an opening in the tree canopy to clear skies – the only part back there like it…

And so this is a part where we want to be able to spend lots of time whilst keeping it completely natural, and came up with a great idea…

We kept a few of the big tree trunks and Ian cut them up into chunks…want to guess what we are using them for?

So you’ve seen some photos of the top part of the lot but there is a whole other part of it which is my favorite…

The bit that is out the back down the hill is what really drew me in – when you walk back past a line of stones that marks the start of what I call the drop-off, in my opinion that is the best bit of the lot…it is just like a woodland…

Here is a photo that I took last October standing on a rock at one side of our lot about half way down – there you will see my bench in the center (yes, it’s the little bench that I brought over from England and it’s still going strong!) and that is about half way down the slope…

That bench is sitting on a flat walkway halfway down the slope that runs from one side of the lot and narrows just about where you see that big pile of wood – it then turns into a little path that you can follow down to the creek bed…

That walkway is lined on the drop-off side by a row of tree trunks to help stop erosion and it’s a really cool feature – here is a photo that I took in April just peeking over the edge of those tree trunks looking down towards the creek…there was greenery everywhere this springtime!

And then the walkway path takes you down further until you reach the creek right at the bottom…here is Sophie enjoying that water…

As you can see, she LOVES to get wet – who needs a swimsuit?!  And believe it or not, she even has her wellies on LOL – it’s just that they are not long enough!

Now for one of our favorite bits back there…

This bit we have nicknamed ‘the canyon’ – a bit grand LOL but it’s beautiful down there – it’s hard to see from the photo but two hillsides come together & curve down into a hollow – it was very scrubby when we first saw it as it was filled with wood piles & some trash but as you can see from the photo above, once we started to clear it out the natural beauty started shining through.

Where you see the line of trees at the top – the house will be built just in front of them – and we should be able to look down into the canyon from the back patio.

We cleared all this bit up and have made a cool little area out of it – I’ll show you that in a later post – we are going to be spending ALOT of time down there and I decided that I need to learn to play the guitar – all will be explained later!

I took some photos out at the lot last month and was amazed at the greenery and wildflowers in bloom this year…

You see when we bought the lot last year we had had an extremely dry winter & spring and everything was brown and crunchy underfoot with very few flowers…this is what a part of the lot looked like in April 2011…

Because of us being in the worst drought in Texas history we weren’t sure if we would see any change this spring but wow was it different this year – check out this photo of EXACTLY the same spot in April 2012…

Isn’t that an amazing difference?  What a difference a bit of rain makes over the winter…

There are a bunch of wildflowers and native grasses everywhere this year – we are going to stomp in some new seeds after the house is up – the best time to sow them is late November and the way you sow them here is sprinkle them and then stomp them into the dirt – as you can imagine, the twosome LOVE that – I think we’ll be inviting a few of their friends over to join in the fun!

Here are a few more photos of the landscape at the top part of the lot where it is pretty level ground…

The photo below is looking across from one side of our lot to the other where you can see our neighbors greenhouse – this flat green part is where the house will be built – to the left where you can see those bright green trees is where the steep drop off begins running down to the creek…our back patio will be 6 ft from that drop…

It’s all going to look very different in a couple of weeks time when we break ground but post-construction we are planning to get it restored as soon as we can – we are not putting in a traditional type of garden with lawns & flower beds – we are going to keep it completely native using plants that naturally grow here along with some features with rocks, pots & the odd bit of metal art work…