Holy Sheetrock

When we first signed our contract with Mike, and he was going over all the specifics, I remember him pointing out one clause in the contract and explaining it, “When we get to the sheetrock stage, if you still haven’t sold your house, we have the right to start showing it to other prospective buyers.” I remember thinking at the time that that sounded so far away. Surely we would have our house sold by then. 2 1/2 months, 5 showings, and one joke of an offer later, we are at the sheetrock stage of our home, and still the proud owners of the little house at 24003 Silversmith Lane.

No worries though. We are confident that our house will sell. If not, we will have to get by like my sister and bro-in-law, and Nancy’s parents did. They both had trouble selling their houses, too…and they managed. Honestly, we are not at the point where we are stressing about it, although I would say we are getting a little anxious. And Mike has assured us he will not be showing The Fitz to anyone else. Which is very bright on his part, because Nancy might slash his tires if he did. She knows where he works.

Speaking of the sheetrock stage, Nancy went (alone) for the “pre-sheetrock meeting” yesterday. For those of you keeping score at home, that is a pre-release meeting, two design center meetings, a pre-construction meeting, and a pre-sheetrock meeting that I have managed to get out of going to. Damn, I’m good. Any of you guys out there that would like pointers on how to get out of boring stuff you don’t want to go to, I’m thinking about writing a book on the subject. Chapter 2 shows you how to get out of going to your wife’s college roommates’ weddings. Chapter 3 is Class Reunions. That’s as far as I’ve gotten so far. My number one tip is simple…”work” until at least 6 pm every night. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that one. However, after my wife reads this, I will probably be going to baby showers with her on Aggie football weekends this fall.

Our neighborhood is quickly turning into a ‘Who’s Who Among Teachers at Taylor High School’…where Nancy teaches. She has gotten out of control with trying to get referrals, which in turn get us $1000 off our upgrade costs at closing. So far, she has recruited two fellow teachers to Silver Ranch, and every week, it seems, there is at least one more teacher who is considering buying a house there. I mean, it is a pretty sweet neighborhood and all, but at this rate we are going to have to sit in tiny desks and raise our hands to speak at the neighborhood BBQs. She even recruits teachers she doesn’t like, which doesn’t make any sense to me. Nothing like selling out and having crappy neighbors…all for a thousand bucks worth of brushed nickel plumbing fixtures.

Seriously though, there is no one else I would rather be going through all this stuff with than Nancy. Well, maybe if she was the same woman without my Mom’s name…but I digress. She even thoroughly enjoys being picked on and being the butt…err, subject… of most of my stories on this blog. Although she did try to convince my sister last weekend that I am making it all up. She wishes.

This week is going to be an exciting week. They are going to finish the drywall and start laying bricks on Monday. Once the bricks are done, I suspect things are going to slow down for a while. So I will have to come up with something else to write about. I am sure you’re heartbroken about that. Prepare yourself for stories about crazy clients and their pets….that’s all I’m sayin’.

On to the pictures




Bricks are ready to go

Our living room

Kitchen

Stairs

Fireplace

A Slow Week

Things are moving pretty slow with the house these days. That hasn't stopped us from checking up on it almost every day, however. The last few times we have gone out, it was obvious that nothing had been done since we last saw it. According to our construction manager, we are about to have bricks and sheetrock, as soon as the framing inspector checks everything out. I could save him the time and money...we have inspected every square inch and it looks up to code to us. To give you an idea how little has been done in the past week: When we went out there tonight, Nancy got excited because it looked like a spare 2x4 was laying in a different spot, a sure sign that someone had at least been in the house today.

Last week when we went out there and they had just poured our driveway, we got the bright idea to carve our initials in the wet cement. Nothing too big, just a small piece of evidence that we were there on the day they poured the concrete. The problem is, semi-wet cement is not real conducive to writing initials, especially small ones. It is very grainy and crumbles very easily. So when Nancy got a nail and tried to write our initials, it didn't work so well. Since you couldn't even tell what it was supposed to say, I repaired the damage. And by "repaired" I mean made it alot worse. So now we have a nice little rough patch on our driveway that sticks out like a sore thumb. Adds character, I guess.

We drove to Austin this weekend to meet Makinley. She is so tiny and adorable. She likes head rubs, sort of like her Aunt Nancy. I know Scott and Laura were very tired from a long week, so we didn't get to stay long, but we are glad they let us come by and meet the newest member of our crazy family.

We also got to see their new house for the first time, and we were very impressed. Laura was a little nervous after reading this blog, since she was sure Nancy was going to walk through and critique the light fixtures or countertops or something. Nancy loved their master closet, which is similar in size to what ours will be. Ever since she saw Laura's ironing board inside the closet, she has been very excited about being able to iron inside our closet (don't ask...I have no idea why that is exciting. I do my ironing with the dryer). She even did a rough measurement of our half-built closet today to make sure this would be possible. Thank God it is big enough, or we might have had to bail on The Fitz before we ever moved in. The problem is, the wide end of the closet, where putting up an ironing board is possible, was supposed to be my side of the closet. Nancy has now claimed that side for herself (and the ironing board) as well, so I am pretty sure I will now be hanging my clothes in the linen closet in the hallway. That is, until she needs more room for her shoes.

Here are some recent pictures, although not much has changed. The pictures of the Porto-Potties are after a big storm we had that blew them over. I would’ve hated to have been chunkin’ a deuce in there when that happened. Since then, we witnessed two non-construction-worker-lookin’ guys put our house’s Porto-Potty in the back of their truck and drive off. It still has not returned, so Nancy is convinced that the workers will now be using our bathtub as a urinal.

Aren't you glad it isn't your job to clean up this mess?

Our fireplace

I hope they haven't already used it as a urinal. Come to think of it, she was acting a little pissy on the way home that night.

Our driveway. My "repairs" are not visible in this picture.

Makinley Kate Bigham

7 lbs 3 oz

Born 3-17-08

Congratulations, Laura and Scott. She is adorable!

Happy Mom and Makinley

Sleeping Makinley

And, since she is a St. Patrick's Day baby:

Raise the Roof

This has been an exciting week. Well, as exciting as watching a house being built can be. It's sort of like watching grass grow, only with more nails and Mexican immigrants. I can't wait for the days when we are, quite literally, going to be excited about watching paint dry. That'll mean we are pretty close to moving in.

We even got an offer on our house. It was a laughable offer, but an offer nonetheless. I thought we should counter with a price higher than the list price, but Nancy wouldn't let me. We did make a counter offer, so we'll see how that goes.

We made our daily excursion to the new neighborhood yesterday, and they were working on it again! I mean, like actively working on it. No one was even taking a nap on our slab. That's two days in a row, folks, for those of you keeping count. And they have made quite a bit of headway since I last posted. They finished the roof, put up all the outside covering, installed the AC and all ductwork, the hot water heater, all the hardiplank and all the windows in the past two days.

Our roof is pretty steep, and Nancy was very concerned for the safety of the guys putting on our shingles. She thought they should have safety harnesses or something. I tended to agree with her that it looks pretty dangerous, but that's the reason I am not a roofer. Well, one of the reasons.

On our Friday evening trip to the house I lost my cell phone. I had put it in my pocket before we left, and the first time I got out was at the house. I figure this is where I lost it because I later realized my left shorts pocket has a huge hole in it...plenty big enough for a cell phone to drop out onto the soft dirt and me never notice. In fact, I didn't notice until the next morning as I was getting ready for work. Nancy even went out there to look for it after I went to work. Of course she didn't find it. When she got there, the AC guys were already working, so she asked them if they had seen it. Shockingly they hadn't. But one guy did offer his best guess as to where it might be. He asked who was working when we visited last night. Nancy told him it was the roofers. He nodded, with a knowing look on his face and said, "I bet they took it." Those damn roofers...a shady bunch. So now I have the fun task of retrieving all my phone numbers via mass email and painstakingly entering them into my new phone (which came complete with a shiny new 2 year contract).

We, of course, made our way to the house today as well. Sundays are when we inspect everything and take alot of pictures, since no one is around. It is also when we wander through every other semi-built home in the neighborhood, looking for defects. After all this time, you'll be glad to know The Fitz is still number one. In one house, Nancy was nosing around in one of the bedrooms, no doubt about to tell me how much smaller it is than ours, when I hear a blood-curdling scream. Great, I thought. I had warned her about stepping on nails. Now, I'm sure she had three 4 inch nails completely through her foot. Or maybe a half-built wall had come crashing down on her head. Or maybe she had stepped in a hole and broken her ankle. Whatever it was, with that scream it had to be bad.


So, being the caring husband that I am, I came running from the other end of the house, with no regard for my own safety as I stepped on nails and leaped over huge hunks of sharp metal. I practically run over her as she comes bounding out of the bedroom. A quick assessment told me that she was not horribly disfigured or wounded in any way. Then why the scream, you may ask? "A SNAKE!", she yelled. I cautiously rounded the corner, expecting to be confronted by the dripping fangs of a 10 foot rattlesnake, or even a King Cobra. Nope. A 6" long baby king snake. Hiding under the edge of the wall. So I picked it up and put it down her shirt, just for laughs. Okay, that last part is not true, because I wouldn't be here right now, at least with the ability to type, if I had done that. I did tell her about snakes being trapped in the walls of newly built houses, and climbing out of the toilet while someone sat on it. It may be awhile before she uses our nice, new, non-elongated toilets in our new house.

She did manage to recover from this traumatic incident to take some new pictures. Here ya go:

Isn't she beautiful?

We have a back door!

Our covered back patio

Slowly but Surely

There's not a whole lot to say about our house. Yesterday, we made our daily trek to the new house and everything was exactly the same as the last time we had seen it, 24 hours earlier. The workers' half-eaten lunches were still in the exact same spots as the day before, which means no one even stepped foot into our house on Wednesday, let alone do any work. It was a sunny day, so I guess they just decided to take the day off or work on a different house. Which is fine with me. We haven't even come close to selling our house yet, so we don't want them to finish it too quickly.

However, they must realize that I have a blog to write, and pictures to take. If they don't work on our house, what the hell am I supposed to do after Nancy goes to bed? Something productive? Riiiiiight. I guess I could branch out and bore you to tears with other things besides the construction of The Fitz. But when you've already written paragraph upon paragraph about concrete and shown a hundred pictures of 2x4s, other subjects would just be sooooo boring in comparison. So I will try to stay focused. But if I slip in an occasional story about a large female client showing me her yeast infection in the clinic exam room, just bear with me. It just means they probably took another day off.

Luckily for you all, The Aggies beat Iowa State in the Big 12 Basketball Tourney tonight, or I would probably be using this space for far less positive commentary. And there would be alot of cussing.

We, of course, drove out again tonight. When we got there, we saw the most unusual thing. In all our times to go out there, we had never seen anything like this. I really couldn't believe what we saw: People working on our house. Seriously, every time we have gone out there, whether it be 6 pm or the middle of the day, weekday or Saturday, we have never actually witnessed anyone doing any actual work on our house. Obviously they were working at some point, since our house was growing. Yet we never caught them in the act. One Saturday around 1 pm (see pictures in previous post) all the workers were laying around on our slab listening to Tejano music when we got there. We drove around, walked through 5 or 6 unfinished houses, stopped by the model home to say hi to Mike, and when we went back to our house an hour and a half later, they hadn't moved. That's one heck of a lunch break!

Well today, we were happy to see that most of the rough plumbing and gas, and even some of the siding, has been done, and they are starting to put the protective sheeting on the frame, even still working on it when we arrived at 6:30. They even smiled for our pictures. We took a few, but nothing too exciting today. You can see our shower drain is now in place, and all the windows have been dropped off, and a few are already installed. Hopefully, after this weekend, I'll have some more exciting stories and pictures to share. Since there is even someone in Dubai reading this blog, I wouldn't want to disappoint my international audience.

Our master bedroom window

More windows to install

Master shower drain

Yes, those are workers!

Even got some Hardi-Plank installed today

It's Been a Great Year!

Without going into the detail that I did in my very first post on this here blog...it has been an exciting year for us and our families. Tomorrow is our one year anniversary. Then, the next exciting happening will be Makinley joining our crazy family. Maybe the Bigham side will lend some sanity to the child. Nancy and I have decided that next weekend is a perfect weekend to drive to Austin. This means that Makinley needs to enter this world sometime next week, and mom and daughter need to be home by Saturday afternoon for our visit. See what you can do, Laura.

Great news this past week is that Mom is healthy and doesn't have to go to MD Anderson for another 6 months. She got to stay with us one night last week, and we really enjoyed having her. She even got to go see the Fitzgerald model home and what there was of our house's frame. And as far as I know she did not snoop around in the attic of the model Fitz like Doris. We were a little disappointed that Brynna was sick...so Dad, Lo, and Brynna did not make the trip. But we had a great time nonetheless.

Now about tomorrow. I can't believe that it has already been a year since our wedding. A year since our crazy, fun reception. A year since my drunk wife puked all night in our honeymoon suite while I watched Sportscenter. A year since our "wonderful" flight to Florida. It really does not seem that long ago. I guess with all the excitement of the past year, time has really flown by.

Not to mention marriage has been much better than I ever imagined. It helps when you are married to the most beautiful, selfless, smartest, funniest woman in the world. God has blessed me with a great family, a great career, great friends, my own clinic, you name it...the blessings are too numerous to count...but for Him to bless me with a girl who can put up with ME...now that's really something. And lemme tell ya, it ain't easy. All I know is that, even though I don't deserve a woman half as wonderful as she is, I am happier with her and love her more than I could have ever imagined.

The best thing about our relationship is that we have fun together. I think that is what keeps her from running off screaming into the night. Well, that and I hide her keys every night. She sometimes even laughs at my jokes, and she makes me laugh more times a day than I can count. It's sappy and cheesy and cliche, but I really do feel like the luckiest guy in the world. I know that the next 50 or 60 years (in The Fitzgerald, of course, cuz I ain't moving again) will be just as much fun as this first one.

Tomorrow we get to eat year-old, dried out, probably freezer burnt wedding cake. But you can tell by looking at me that I think even bad cake is still pretty good.

Framing is complete!

Well, the Ol' Fitz is really taking shape. And with these guys working on it at such a frenetic pace, we may be able to move in next week!

Just kidding. Those guys really have gotten an amazing amount done in just one week. A week ago, it was nothing but a slab. Now we can walk up the stairs and wander around the second floor.

I know the construction crews love it when we wander up and get in their way. And I am sure the unsuspecting owners of several houses out there would love the fact that we walk through their house a couple of times every week. We feel like we know these people, based solely on their as yet unfinished house, and never having met most of them. And we have yet to be busted by the owners showing up while we are critizing their choices in flooring, counter tops, and floor plans. I've already prepared myself for the day when we are opening doors in some stranger's house, loudly critiquing their tiny kitchen with the ugly counters, when the new owners walk in and hear everything we are saying. That will be awkward.

And as much as we go out there, I'm sure we will one day run into some people walking through our unfinished house. Or maybe we are the only weirdos that do that. Nancy might just kick them out if she finds anyone in our house uninvited, though.

Here are some up-to-date pictures of the house. Looks like they are just about done with framing, and will start putting up the facing soon. You probably thought I was kidding when I said we would update the pictures daily. Hell, I thought I was kidding.

View of the living room from the upstairs game room

I am sitting on the shower seat in our master bath

Nancy is in the kitchen, looking into the living room. Being able to do this was a big reason she liked this floor plan.