The House Blog

Landscaping!

hannonpi — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:19:01 +0000

Unfortunately on October 16th my car was totaled whilst parked on 23rd and Pico in Santa Monica. Fortunately I was able to get a pretty good settlement from USAA as was able to use the money to purchase the landscaping that has been such a slow process for us.

Here are the pictures. Enjoy!

Landscaping progress

hannonpi — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:32:53 +0000

We’ve been living in the house since late November, and so far everything has gone pretty well. We had some water issues and we have had to redo the bathrooms due to problems with the plaster. However, Sean has been responsive to getting our problems ironed out and we are moving forward! The biggest thing has been I’ve started to work on landscaping. Below are some pictures of all the planting and our new rock wall…

I have a lot of steps to build

Morning

hannonpi — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:30:39 +0000

A few pictures of the house this morning as I left.

Moved in, but the work doesn’t stop!

hannonpi — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:56:23 +0000

Jenn and I are moved in, and had a wonderful thanksgiving and christmas at the house with our families. We have begun to get quotes for landscaping and are working on getting the house put together. It seems like there are endless projects. The big things are finishing the closet, hanging art, putting up some shades and landscaping. Living at the house is amazing! One thing about no shades is that we are up with the sun as our house faces south east and the sun comes right in at dawn. Malibu is definitely not Venice and the dogs have a lot of adjusting to do. We have coyotes howling at night, deer roaming, and many neighborhood dogs that wander around. Regardless, we love it.

Inspection passed, mortgage approved, and we start to move in

hannonpi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:21:28 +0000

Unfortunately with all that happening I haven’t actually taken any pictures. I am sure the 60 or so more or less regular readers are extremely bummed but here is something to tide you over. These are over the course of several weeks, so they are old. Our current status is that we have our stuff trickling in and will spend our first full night there Thursday! However, our septic system (huge) is still unable to take solids, ie no dookies so no spending the night.

Final Inspection Next Week?!?

hannonpi — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 05:27:26 +0000

We have our final mortgage approved via ING, the loan expires on the 19th which is fast approaching! Sean told me we are going to have the inspector come out on Wednesday for final inspection and Bank Of America is supposed to come out the same day. We are cutting it close, but the Sean is making great progress so I think we can pull it off. We shall see!

I should congratulate Sean on achieving LEED Platinum cerification for the house he is working on in Venice, he not only got the level needed, he surpassed it! Sean has done great work and is a contractor I would recommend without hesitation.

Below are pictures, starting with a shot of Ben who visited last weekend.

Stucco is finished, and light fixtures go in…

hannonpi — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:48:48 +0000

Over Friday and Saturday we started to see our light fixtures show up. The cans and smoke detectors are all in and switches and plates are being installed. The flooring is all in and the bathroom is well underway. It appears that the brown coat has been applied to the interior plaster walls, once that dries we can put on the smooth coat in white. The house is really starting to look good and, hopefully, we can start grading and septic work this week!

Getting close, but no cigar

hannonpi — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:33:32 +0000

Progress on the house continues, Jenn and I visited every day this week. Check out the pictures below. On a more personal note, this has been a hard week. I received news about an old and dear friend, Winston Churchill. He has been missing for over three weeks now in the mountains around Lake City Colorado. Winston has had a rough journey these last few years and we are all very worried for his safety. A website has been set up at insearchofwinston.blogspot.com which details all that we currently know of the situation.

The house gets some color

hannonpi — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:41:22 +0000

Jenn and I where lucky to get to the house as Sean’s guys started the exterior stucco on Saturday. The interior flooring is coming along nicely and the cabinets are basically in. We still need counter-tops, railings, and a bunch of other finish work, however, we are making decent progress. At this point, though, I do not see how we could possibly be done in ten days. I need to get in touch with BoA and our mortgage broker Brian to see what the deal is.

The last details seem to be the hardest not to change, every time we go to the house there is a little thing here and there that we want to work on. However, we need to stay focused on the goal: finishing the house. Every last detail need not be perfect, all we need is a house that can pass final inspection!

Site Visit

hannonpi — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:49:35 +0000

We had another site visit today with Sean and Nathan. We spent a bunch of time looking at the kitchen and figuring out what to do with the cabinetry and our small island. We decided to move the cabinets back flush against the wall giving us a few more inches on the cabinet and requiring our cabinetry guy to do some extra work but I am assured it is for the best. We also spent some time trying to figure out how the stairs are going to be supported by our steel hardy frame. In order to prevent the stairs from wobbling we need to ensure the contact between the stairs and the bolts into the frame are as big as possible. Sean is probably going to use a wooden box to create the contact, but I am still thinking a steel plate might work best.

The house is looking great and we are making good progress. I am a bit worried about hitting the end of the month so I’m going to have to talk to the loan guys to see what we can do.