December 28, 2004
First plumbing
by Ed Rozmiarek
Christmas afternoon, looking for a reason to get outside and enjoy the warmest temperatures in several days, we decided to drag the boys away from their new video games and visit our new house to see if there had been any progress this week. We weren’t expecting much since it was Christmas week and it had been very cold for several days this past week. We received what we expected, little progress, but at least some progress.
When we pulled up to the lot, we saw several pipes sticking up out of the foundation fill. Upon examination, we determined that the pipes were the sewer & drainage lines. While not very exciting, it was another small step forward.
The drainage pipes go in.
Pipes, pipes and more pipes
These weekly visits are turning out to be a lesson in Home Building 101. Today’s lesson is that even the drainage pipes are inspected. During our visit I noticed that one of the pipes had a big orange inspection sticker with a few notes on it. Also, most of the pipes were completely sealed and there was a pressure gauge on one of the riser pipes. It seems that they were testing that the pipes would not leak air and therefore not leak water. Something I don’t want happening with pipes running under the foundation.
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9:58 PM
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December 25, 2004
Merry Christmas
by Ed Rozmiarek
To all our family and friends, Susan and I would like to wish everyone a
Merry Christmas. We hope that the end of the year finds you in good health and high spirits. We hope everyone has a happy holiday season and a prosperous New Year.
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December 24, 2004
Off we go
by Ed Rozmiarek
Last Friday, with a day off from work and school, we were able to get out the new house site before heading out of town for the round trip to the grandparents’ houses. We were greeted with hard evidence that the house is actually going to be built. As I mentioned in my last update, all we saw in our previous site visit was a hole in the ground. This week we actually had the first construction.
The foundation starts! This will soon be our dining room & living room.
When we arrived at the lot we were met with the sight of wood. The forms for the foundation had been laid out and the initial fill dirt (crushed stone?) had been added. This was a significant step in the building process as it set the location for the house. As such, the builder would not go any further until Susan and I signed off on the location. If they needed to move the forms, they wanted to know now, not after they started laying the pipes or worse, after pouring the concrete.
As such, we spent a good deal of time walking around the foundation thinking about what would be where. I know I mentioned this in the last entry, but the foundation just seemed too small. However, I paced out several of the rooms and it was right (at least as far as I could tell). I know things will seem better once the walls are up, but for now, it seemed small.
The view from the southeast corner. This will be the back porch, living room and master bedroom.
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The southwest corner, the garage.
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The good news was that we liked the position of the house and were ready to sign off. So, on the way home from the lot we stopped by the builder’s office and dropped off the foundation approval form. We also took the opportunity to chat with them and get a list of our “to-do’s”. The top of the list is picking out the counter tops and appliances. Those trips will be on our list for things to do the week after Christmas.
I don’t expect a lot to have been done this past week being that it is Christmas week. The weather here was really nice Monday and Tuesday (the high was 76 on Tuesday) so maybe they were able to get out to the site and do something. However, the weather turned really cold Wednesday and has been in the 20’s and 30’s for the last three days. (Yea, I know, that’s not cold to some of you, but it’s pretty cold for Central Texas.) At least there was only a little rain before it went below freezing and no frozen precipitation the last couple of days.
A last bit of irony for the week came from the mailbox today. The only piece of mail we got today, Christmas eve, was a Christmas present from the bank, the first bill for the construction loan. How nice.
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December 11, 2004
Let there be ... dirt?
by Ed Rozmiarek
We made our weekly visit to our lot this afternoon hoping to see some exciting progress. Our builder had mentioned that the site prep was done and ready for us to examine. We were thinking that we would get out to the lot and find some wood framing up the foundation. However, we got there and the only thing we saw was dirt, several large mounds of dirt. That, and a big hole. Where once was a bare lot and foot tall Texas field grass, there is now a construction site, port-a-potty included.
Some day soon, there will a house on this bare piece of dirt.
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The view from the top of a pile of dirt. Look! We have our own construction site port-a-potty!
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The thing that struck me was that the cleared area for the house looks so small. I know it’s the right size for the house and that we are building a pretty good sized house, but it seemed small. I know from watching many houses being built in our current subdivision that the bare foundation will seem small, but it’s still a little scary when it’s your own house. I spent some time stepping off the area and it’s the right size, but boy did it seem small.
We spent the rest of the site visit just walking around the lot talking about fencing and other odds and ends. Shea spent the time climbing on the mounds of dirt and doing what little boys do and Kevin re-explored his future backyard, trying to climb the trees and whacking ant hills with a big stick. After getting home today, Susan and I were curious about the relative sizes of the lots for our current and future homes. After looking up the size of our current suburban lot we compared that to our lot for the new country house. Our new lot is 25 times the size of our current lot. It’s hard to imagine that we could fit an entire block of our current neighborhood on our new lot.
Shea plays on one of the piles of dirt scraped from the building site.
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The building site and the "trash corral" for construction trash.
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The week had started out with a Monday morning meeting in the rain with the electric company. We needed to plan out where the power for the house was going to come on to the lot. This was another thing I thought the builder would handle, but it apparently is something the owner needs to decide. After talking to the engineers from the power company, we decided not to decide. Or rather, we decided we could wait until after the house is positioned and framed to determine the final position of the poles and from which side of the lot the power will enter the house as there are possible feeds from either side.
Looking forward, the weather forecast for the next week is pretty good, a little cool but no rain, so hopefully the foundation will get going this week and we’ll see some real construction, not destruction, during the next week.
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8:47 PM
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December 5, 2004
Soccer season ends
by Ed Rozmiarek
Since I commented on the start of the soccer season in an
earlier blog entry, I guess I should mention the end of the season.
The regular season for Kevin’s team finished up about three weeks ago. The final game was a rainout makeup game against the East Austin Tuzos. Kevin’s team and the Tuzos were both undefeated going into the game so the winner of the game would end up in first place for the fall season. Kevin’s team jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead and added another goal prior to half time to take a 3-0 lead. The second half was more of a battle with each team scoring two goals resulting in a final score of 5-2 for the win.
Making a save during the second half.
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Kevin ready to stop a penalty kick. The kick went wide.
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With the win, Kevin’s team finished with a record of 7-0, scoring 27 goals in those games and only giving up 7. The first place finish also allowed them to get a bye into the post season playoffs as the second place teams in the north and south divisions had to playoff for the third playoff slot.
This past weekend was the playoff tournament for the Western District of the South Texas Youth Soccer Association. For the U-12 boys, there were 8 teams from several parts of south Texas including Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi and as far away as Brownsville. (For those of you who don’t know, Brownsville is about 375 miles from Austin.) We were fortunate in that the tournament was here in Austin which meant that we didn’t have to travel for it.
A first game save.
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Fernando takes a shot.
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For the round robin part of the playoff tournament, Kevin’s team played three games this past Saturday. (With the first at 8:00 in the morning.) As you would expect for a tournament with the top teams, the competition was pretty tough. All three games were hard fought. The first game was a 1-1 tie, the second a 1-0 win and the third was a 2-4 loss.
In these tournaments the teams get points for wins, ties, goals scored and shutouts. As it turned out, after the round robin, Kevin’s team was tied for second place in their bracket with 14 points. In that case, the first tie breaker is “goal differential” (i.e. goals scored minus goals allowed). Based on straight up goals, we would win the tie breaker by one goal. However, there was a rule that for goal differential, the most a team could gain or lose is three goals per game. Well, the other team lost one game by a score of 5-0, so that game only counted -3 to their goal differential. That two goal swing was the difference and gave the other team the tie breaker. So, Kevin’s team didn’t make it to the semi-finals and it brought the season to an end.
Kevin stopping a 2 on 1 breakaway.
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Kevin punting the ball after a making another save.
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All in all it was a pretty good season. The boys played well and came together as a team, the parents were supportive and fun to be around and the coach did a great job, getting along with the boys & parents and doing a good job at coaching & training the team.
Kevin had a really good season. He was the number one goal keeper and played keeper most of the season. I was a little concerned with this since Kevin got to play very little as a goal keeper last year and I thought his skills would be rusty. He started off the year a little out of sync but got better as the year went on. During the playoff tournament this weekend, he played very well. In fact, during the second game of the day, Kevin made several great plays including stopping two open breakaways (a young goalie’s nightmare).
As much as I like watching the games, I’m looking forward to having my weekends back for a few months as we have a lot of work ahead of us getting the house ready to sell.
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Construction Begins
by Susan Rozmiarek
It’s been a stressful couple of weeks getting this house off (or is that on?) the ground. The first major hurdle was getting the building loan. The big unpleasant surprise there was that we had to come up with the cash for the loan down payment without being able to apply all the equity we have in our current house. Then we had to deal with numerous time delays involving paperwork with errors and an appraisal that came up $20,000 short. After a few panic attacks and numerous phone calls though, we got everything signed to commit ourselves to a lifetime of poverty in a really cool house. (Okay, I’m exaggerating slightly).
Now, you might think that once you set your builder loose on the project you can just sit back and watch. I know I did. Nope. I spent the last few days scurrying around the county getting a septic permit and arranging for electricity. We may be moving out to the wilds of the country, but we are certainly not moving off the grid. Apparently, the home owners, not the builder are required to set up those basic comforts. Eventually, I get to drive to a far, far away little town in the boondocks to set up the water as well.
When I finally made it out to the lot yesterday to post the septic permit, my eyes met a sight that made all the hassles of the previous week worthwhile. The ground had FINALLY been broken. Work had started on the house that we had been planning and waffling over for years. It wasn’t all that much. The building site had been bulldozed and a culvert and gravel driveway had been put in, but it was enough to shock me into realizing that the dream was finally going to be a reality.
It starts! The culvert and temporary driveway are in.
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3:17 PM
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