The Masters House

Well it has been quite a long time since I have posted here. In Blogoshere that’s a bad thing but I am back never the less.

My drop off in posting was directly related to how busy I became both at work and at home with both house at the same time. At work I got the equivalent of a promotion (I say equivalent because I got the responsibly but not necessarily the title or the money, but both should be coming) so that kept me busy during the day which when I had free time I would blog. With the two houses it was a combination of getting loans done, getting the new house ready to move into, and getting the older house ready for someone else to move into.

So here I am, sitting on my back porch of my new house with the majority of the move-in projects done. This is actually the first time that I have sat out on our second story porch and got to enjoy it. It is nice to be able to sit here with my laptop and type away and watch people walk back and forth to the little neighborhood park we have that is a block away.

The kids are in their individual rooms enjoying their own personal space. My mother and father-in-law were downstairs outside for a while but then retired indoors downstairs to watch TV in the downstairs family room. They eventually retired to their room that is also down stairs.

The house is really nice and has a great setup. Everyone has their own space and can get away to do whatever they need to do uninterrupted. The upstairs is where my wife and I reside with the kids. They all have their space and we have ours. We have our own family room upstairs and in the laundry/utility room we have added a little fridge and microwave so it doubles as a mini kitchen.

I feel so much more at peace in this house then I ever did in the other house. Don’t get me wrong, the other house is great but it just didn’t fit for us the way this one does. Here everything just falls into place and is comfortable.

Anyway, enough of the heartfelt commentary for right now. I will get down into the nitty gritty of everything that has been done at both houses in the days and weeks to come. There is a lot so expect to see plenty of posts.

With the addition of the new house that we are building I had to reorganize things around here a little bit. The main change is that there are now the Butler House and Cami House categories. Butler and Cami are the names of the streets that each of our houses are located on.

I have moved all of the previous posts that related to the Butler house under the Butler House category. I have also created an Initial Construction Category under the Cami House category. This way things will be organized and you will know which house I am taking about in my posts.

I am also thinking that I need to make separate "About" pages for each house too. I will do that later though.

Technorati tags: DIY, Home Improvement, Building a House, Housing Market, Austin TX, Round Rock TX

One of the things that I was tasked with when we signed the contract for our new house was to take the Floor Plan layout and mark up where I wanted the various options that we had purchased. In looking at the piece of paper they handed me I knew that my chicken scratch on that paper was going to nothing but confuse people. To top it off the floor plan was reversed which made it really hard to mark the correct wall I wanted a switch or outlet on.

I decided that I would take it home and fire up Photoshop so that there would be no misunderstandings as to where I wanted each item.

If you click the picture above you will be presented with my hour of labor in reversing the original floor plan and then adding color coded options to it. The options that are listed in the diagram are:

• Additional electrical outlets (extra outlets that we purchased)
• All the cable outlets (standard and extra)
• All the phone jacks (standard and extra)
• The extra door off the 3rd car garage
• The upstairs deck door
• The 2 additional concrete slabs to extend the down stairs patio
• The fence line

When I presented my printout to our sales person she was blown away by the level of detail. I did not do it to impress her but to make sure that there is no question as to where things should be.

In our last house I had marked up the cable outlets by hand and sure enough they put one in the wrong place. I caught it the same day they did it so I called the foreman and it was corrected the next day. I will be checking when they put these things in with my trust diagram in hand to make sure there are no mistakes .

Some people may think that this overboard but it was an hour of my time and was actually a little fun to build my house on paper.

P.S. The model of the house that we are building is “The Sparrow” and is by DR Horton.

Technorati tags: New Home Builders, New Home Construction, Second Home, Housing Market, DR Horton, Round Rock TX, Ausitn TX, Central Texas

We came home from running around on Sunday afternoon to find the house kind of warm even though we had left the air conditioner on. We usually have the thermostat set at 78 degrees during the day and the A/C usually has no problem keeping the temperature there.

On Sunday though it would not get below 82 degrees. I had just put in a new filter the week before so I knew that wasn’t the issue. I called the company that put out unit in so they could have a look. I set an appointment for Tuesday for them to come and take a look.

On Monday I called my wife mid-day to see how the A/C was doing. She informed me that it was working the way it had always work and was a comfortable 78 degrees in the house. I contemplated canceling the appointment for Tuesday but decided to keep it even though it would be a $60 service charge. 

Tuesday rolled around and the A/C repair guys showed up and took a look at the unit that is outside. They checked the freon and found that it was a little over-charged. From what the guy told me being over-charged is pretty much the same as being under charged and the unit will not work as efficient.

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I debated when to post this or not because it is kind of a ghetto solution but man - it really works.

Our garage gets really hot during the summer so we would leave the garage door open a little bit to try to let the hot air out. This was better then leaving it closed but it still would get really hot since there was nothing to circulate the air. The garage also has the only access to the attic of the house.

I planned on getting a “real” attic fan sometime this year but then the weather go to hot so it was too hot to do it. The attic fan that I was planning on installing is the one that has a temperature sensor that turns the fan on when it gets hot. Anyway, it is too hot now to put one in the attic and plus the can be a little pricey (in the $100-$150 price range if I am not mistaken) compared to the solution I found.

About a month ago I was moving stuff around in the garage and came across a $10 box fan that I had bought from Walmart. My plan was to suspend the fan from the ceiling to circulate the air in the garage to hopefully cool it down.

As I was making preparations to hang it I noticed that that the height of the fan looked really close to the the width of the opening to the attic. I grabbed the ladder to check it out and sure enough the fan was the perfect fit! In addition the cord was just long enough to reach over to the second outlet in the ceiling that was for the garage door opener.

After making sure that the fan was secure I flipped it on high to make sure that it would not vibrate or wobble out of place. Then I closed the garage door so that it was open a couple of inches on the bottom to test it out. I came back an hour later and the garage was a whole lot cooler! For $10 I had myself an attic fan.

My theory is that this should help to cool the rest of the house also as the fan is sucking air from the outside that is then being pushed into the attic. I am not usually home during the day but my wife says that she can tell the difference in the house and that the air conditioner does not seem to come on as much. I guess the true test will be when I get my electric bill this month.

Anyway, I thought that I would share this since it is such a cheap solution that has the potential to save some money.

Technorati: Home Improvement, Attic, Attic Fan, DIY, Air Conditioning, Garage

Over the weekend the wife and I went mattress hunting for a King size replacement for our Queen size Serta mattress.

The main reason for the new mattress was that we have both been have back problems from the mattress sagging in the middle. This was really disappointing since the mattress was only 4 years old. It may have been due to the fact that it had pillow soft on both sides but regardless - we needed a new one.

This time around we wanted a King size so that when when one of the kids decides that they want to sleep with us instead of in their room then we can all fit comfortably in the bed.

We ended up settling for a Sealy mattress and paid more then I wanted for it (don’t you always pay more then you want for these type of things?). The nice part about it was that it was delivered the same day so we were able to get a good night sleep. Read the rest of this entry »

I bought the water seal stain to do the back porch railing this weekend but I did not get a chance to do it. I came home yesterday to find that my father-in-law had done it for me - Thanks!

I have to say that it looks really awesome!

The color is more then I expected and it just really gives the porch a finished look. The best part is that it matches the fence.

Now this makes me want to do the expansion of the deck!

Click here to see more picture - porch pics.

I stayed home yesterday in anticipation of the roofer. I am glad that I did as the guy for the door and the paint guy showed up before the roofer did.

The Door Guy

The door guy fixed the door in 5 minutes as it was obviously a simple fix. The door now has no gaps and both the dead bolt and the door knob both close and lock. My wife mentioned that the door looked a little crooked in the frame. I told her it didn’t matter as long as it closed, locked, and didn’t leak. A new door is on the project list in the coming years anyway.

The Painter

The painter showed up and painted the spot on the roof in the family room. Then he went around the house and paint a whole bunch of other spots while making his way to the master bathroom. I was not expecting that and thought that it was cool. We corralled the kids outside while the paint dried.

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My search for the correct bulbs for my son’s ceiling fan has ended - at Ikea. I wish I would have checked out their assortment of bulbs a long time ago as they have a lot.

I was looking specifically for candelabra bulbs and they had 3 different types/wattages to choose from. I ended up choosing what they consider to be 30 watt equivalents.

The color of the light is more of a yellow or natural color as opposed to the bright white of the other lights. Needless to say I took the other bulbs back to Walmart.

I will definitely be checking out Ikea in the future for fluorescent bulbs.

Technorati tags: CFL bulbs, Fluorescent Bulbs, Saving Energy, Ceiling Fan, Home Improvement, DIY

While I was in the shower this morning I got a message from the roofing company. I called back and they wanted to schedule to come out today. I asked if tomorrow would work since I wanted to be home when they were there.

Appointment made for tomorrow.

While they are there tomorrow I am going to make sure that they go through everything with a fine tooth comb. Specifically I am going to show them the area that was repaired - twice - to make sure that it does not need to be repaired again.

This time around I plan on taking so before and after pictures just to be sure that things get done right.

Technorati tags: DR Horton, New Home Builders, Home Repairs, Texas Homes, Round Rock Texas