Clearly, I’m not one of those bloggers who can write about something every day, it’s just too much work for me…. I’m trying to blog about our journey in New Mexico about every 10 days or so and I’m terrible at that also. Anyway, let’s dive into what’s going on here in NM.
The house is coming along nicely as you can see from the above photo. This is the “brown coat” of stucco, which is the base coat for the house. Once this cures after about 10 days, then the color coat is applied. Inside the house, there is a lot of activity. The walls are taped and textured now. Our painter has started with the primer and painting of the house. He’s also staining the rest of the beams, internal and exterior. We had a delivery of tongue and groove ceiling for the patio yesterday, so that needs to be stained along with the doors and baseboard. We ordered the baseboards and discovered that because they do door framing differently now by using bullnose, so all the baseboard has to have a rounded baseboard piece to meet up with the door frame. These small pieces are $4.00 each and we need 40 of them!!!
We had the septic installed this week, so one more step closer to being able to take a shower! Cabinets will go in the week of October 13th and then flooring right after. We have ordered all the tile and Quartz for the countertops, so waiting on cabinets to get installed. All the electrical is ready, I just need PNM to make the connections to the house and install the meter at some point. Our plumbing will be one of the last things to happen. We’re still sorting out the landscaping concepts, but I think we have a pretty good idea of how we want things to finish out. I have a LOT OF DIRT left over from the septic, so I’m going to move it next week and start working on the landscaping and drainage. Our appliances are in storage with our supplier until we get cabinets and electrical installed.
I still have a few bills to pay. We’re still without a front door because of Pella. Never, never, never use Pella windows. While the reserve windows are good, the rest of their product line is crap. And they don’t make their own doors, so the doors don’t match the windows! For the money you pay, they don’t provide the quality of product. Our GC is hoping to get the windows for the front door next week, and we still need the one broken window in the master replaced. Pella shipped the wrong size initially. One point about fiberglass windows and stucco. When the stucco crew puts on the chicken wire base, they often beat up the corners of the windows. With the exterior being fiberglass, it exposes the fibers as in the picture below.
After the color coat is on, Pella is going to come out and clean up all the windows, install the screens and ensure all the windows are working properly. I have some acrylic paint pens the match the exterior color, which I’m going to use to cover up the white under coating. That should make my happy. She’s seriously annoyed and notices all the small details – which I’m thankful for. I think she’s going on the social media war path with Pella and all the issues we’ve had with them. Again, avoid using them if at all possible. There are so many other good providers that will give you a better product.
Other things going on in our journey. I believe I mentioned last time that Wendy has a new job at PNM as a sourcing manager, which is karma. Now she’s asking me all sorts of questions about electric utility things, and SHE’S INTERESTED!! We attended the NM wine festival last month. Kinda lame and clearly not the same caliber as what they do in Washington, but the quality of the wine and the grapes isn’t to our tastes either. NM wines don’t have the same character and body as Washington and California wines. They tend to be very fruit forward (i.e. sweeter) than what we’re used to. There are a couple of wineries that we’re going to try out that are near us, but it’s not like Walla Walla, Washington wine country.
The New Mexico ballon festival is starting next week for 10 days. It’s an amazing event with hundreds of balloons and people attending and beautiful balloons every day they can fly. With the mornings and evenings being much cooler, they have been flying balloons in the “ABQ box”. The “box” is a unique wind pattern that is a square wind flow at different altitudes. High altitude (1k ft or higher) takes you south, then around 400 ft, the wind drifts your north again, so you end up landing back where you started.
This balloon was drifting near our property yesterday. We see a lot of them this way during this time of year. Last year we had a couple land on our property. We were not here then, but my brother-in-law wasn’t happy about it. He needs to lighten up. We’d have served the coffee and champagne!!
Our monsoon season officially comes to and end this weekend, so rain and storms will become less frequent. It’s been a pretty light monsoon season, so water and plants are going to have a rough time. I was hoping for more consistent rain so I could get the dirt areas planted with grass, but that isn’t going to happen. We’ll landscape and gravel the areas that are muddy and build out a driveway in November, so the cars do get the sticky mud all over them that stains. I’m going to do a bunch of dirt work next week with my father-in-laws tractor to level out the bumps and move the excess dirt from the septic. With the cooler days, it’s a lot easier to yardwork done.
Well, for now I think that’s about everything. I need to get ready for the day and open the gate for the contractors. It’s cloudy today so it’ll be cooler – thinking I’ll take out the Can-Am this morning and explore the desert more. Maybe ride out the mountains.
Take care everyone and have a great day. Enjoy each moment because it’s the only time you’ll experience that moment.
More later.
Leave a Reply