It Won't Stop Raining...

Enough of the rain already! I enjoy having a dry backyard.

Decision of the day to think about - how do we deal with the water ponding in the backyard?



The four fingers Matt is holding up refers to how many inches of water are in this particular spot. I think that is the most that was in any one spot of the yard, but it had definitely been higher than that.

Under the house was a similar story. I think it is a few inches of water there, but you can easily see that the water was much higher at some point in the day. Matt said this was still lower than the water from Ike and that event was still below the frame of the house.


So the big decision is whether or not we should raise the house. Either way we will probably need to re-level the yard and possibly install drains. Oh the joys of living in Houston...

The Chimney Issue

The architect came back today with the next set of plans. I'll scan those in and post them, but one of the issues that came up again was the chimney. When we first moved in I noticed a 2'x2' section of the kitchen that was walled off. It didn't take long to figure out that there was a chimney behind that sheetrock. You can see the base of it under the house and then it comes up through the attic to the roof.



I was in the "Keep the Chimney" camp, while Matt was not so sure. I rooted for it at every possible moment. We had mentioned the possibility to the architect that we would keep it, but weren't sure. We tried to look at it once before, but when we cut the sheetrock away, the chimney was still covered in shiplap, so we taped the piece of sheetrock back up...



Now we are discussing the possibility of having side pieces in between the living room and dining room to match the chimney. So we decided we had to look at the chimney to see the potential of keeping it. I gave Matt the go ahead to cut up the wall in the kitchen, after getting his promise to cover it up after destroying it.



Now we both really want to keep it. It doesn't stick out as far from the center wall as the standard 2' counter tops, so now we have to decide if we want to shorten the countertop or if the countertop sticking out will look ok. We'll probably run that one by the guy who has more design experience than we do... =]

One a related note, I am excited about the possibility of finding any cool tidbits about the history of the house. We haven't discovered much so far, but anything is cool to me. So it was pretty excited when we saw the wallpaper that was hiding behind the sheetrock. It's such a funky color!



Oh and just to make us more nervous, the shiplap in front of the chimney had lots of termite damage... Just like every other piece of wood we have uncovered in this house. *sigh*

First Plans

The architect came by again today and had sketched out 3 different plans, each one being grander than the one before. While I did like aspects of all of them, the middle of the grandness seems to be the one we both liked. We gave some feedback on aspects of it, and we will meet again next week to look at plans again.

I know it wasn't the finished product, but just seeing plans on paper made me really excited! We copied the image, though it has doodles and tidbits of what we liked on it - so it's not the cleanest document. But if you are curious (my dad wanted to see the progression), then feel free to take a closer look.

If you want to see the house drawn up as it currently is built, click here.

Does Our House Measure Up?

The architect came by last night to measure the house in detail to begin drawing up plans. I think we both expected to help him out, but he said he was used to doing it and didn't need our help. I was pretty impressed, he did get everything measured out. He pointed out a few interesting things that were "unique" about our house - like how front doors are supposed to be 36 inches and ours is 32. That one is going to be interesting to fix if we can't find a Craftsman door in 32".

At the end of the measuring he said he would start the plans and that he usually liked to meet once a week during the process to stay on track. Next week might just be the house as it currently is, but it's still exciting that we will soon have our house on paper. It sounds like the general plan is that he will take our ideas we have given him and make several designs, then we can decide which ones we like and reiterate on them. He said he would even throw in a few off-the-wall ideas so that we don't miss any ideas we might like.

Architect

The architect came by to look at the house today and showed us some drawings of his previous jobs, then talk about his usual process for designing a house. We walked him around the house and pretty much gave him the full scope of our ideas - some of which I am sure contradict each other, but we just aren't totally sure what we want yet. Anyhow, it went really well and it looks like we will see what he can come up with. He's coming over again Friday to do all the measurements and take lots of pictures.

I'm so excited. =]

Trying Something New

I'm switching the website over to blogger to see if easier updating abilities encourages more updates. Matt will also have access, so he will be able to give his perspective as well. We have an architect coming to look at the house next week so we will hopefully be starting the renovation sooner rather than later.

At some point I will get around to adding in the old posts and trying to do a little show & tell on what we have gotten done so far. We'll see how that goes - I know I have made similar promises before and let you down! =]