Building the Casita... Time lapse

     I haven't posted a blog entry for some time, but those who follow us on Facebook know why. As detailed on the last blog entry, we are building a spot to stay for the winter months that is warm (relatively) and yet conveniently near family. We have now finished 98% of the project and will be starting our summer travels soon. So, for those who are interested, we thought that you might like to see how the lot shown in the picture above became the site shown at the top of the blog.

     When last I blogged we were in the throes of having 100+ truckloads of dirt delivered and packed down to form the foundation of the site. Load after load were delivered, spread, and packed by an industrial roller. Once this was done the site was formed up for the concrete. 

The RV Pad area packed and ready for the concrete forms.

     The concrete pad was massive! Not only was it 6 inches of reinforced concrete base, but there was also a 6 inch edge around the entire perimeter. This edge does double duty. It serves to contain the brick pavers and also provides a clean, neat edge between the pavers and the yard area. It was determined to do the pour in one shot instead of multiple days of pouring. So, with the aid of a concrete pump, 9 truckloads of concrete were delivered, poured and finished. They started about 8:00 in the morning and worked all day, but the results were well worth it! The pads for both the Casita and the Spa were poured at the same time and were a part of the entire process. This made them an integral part of the concrete and not just sitting on or next to the patio. A much more stable platform and less likely to have problems later.

The pad for both the Casita (foreground) and the Spa (on the upper left)

     We were able to walk on the pad that evening but once poured and finished, we needed to wait a few days before we could start the buildings. We needed to wait a month for the concrete to cure  before we could start putting down the pavers or driving any heavy equipment on the pad.

Casita (left) and Spa being framed and sided.

Casita from the street. Spa to the left.

     It took a while, but finally the buildings started taking shape. As with all building projects, they seemed to grow or shrink in size as building progressed. Sometimes they seemed huge and other times they seemed waaaayyyyy too small. We found ourselves second guessing our decisions on several occasions. 

Sand around the Fire Pit area.

Pavers being started.

     The next big step was to add the sand for the brick pavers to set on. Once spread and packed, the pavers were placed using brownish-red bricks accented by a curving sidewalk pattern of white bricks. Once laid, a polymer sand was spread between the bricks. This polymer eventually turned into a grout like consistency and helped to keep the pavers in place. 

Doors are on and the cedar wrap added around the Spa.

     Once the Casita was sided and roofed, Brad was able to get in to begin finishing the interior. Our Platinum package called for The Preserve to finish the Spa but we chose to finish the Casita. After some careful planning, the first thing was the placement and installation of electrical lines. Outlets and light switches were planned and boxes installed. Wires were pulled and marked. The ends were coiled up and we waited for the breaker box to be installed and service power provided to the site.

Murphy Bed wall with electric wires and outlets installed.

Murphy bed wall and Sofa Wall as insulation was going up.

     After the electrical was finished came Brads favorite part...NOT. Insulation! It took a while but finally it was completed. Just in time as the temperatures finally began to rise outside and it was getting hot in the upper parts of the ceiling. We did encounter a pesky leak that ruined several of the ceiling insulation batts and resulted in the roof being re-done. 

     Our next order of business was to stain the concrete floors. Well that was the plan anyway. The stain went down on the Casita floor and instead of a nice smooth copper brown we had a splotchy patchwork that resembled a cheetah's coat! A second attempt only made it look worse. The Spa had a similar issue with coverage and then combined it with the most god-awful green color you ever saw. Not a pleasant forest green or even mint green, it was a pea soup nasty green. Not anywhere close to the color that we thought it was going to be. Well, we dashed off to our second home this winter... Home Depot, and picked out two new colors of concrete paint. We brought those in and had them painted on and were relieved that the uneven coverage and green tinting was gone. 

     Our daughter and grandkids were due out for Spring Break and we wanted them to be able to stay in the Casita. Things were running behind so we hurriedly put up the wallboard for the wall where the Murphy Bed was to be installed and wallboard where the HVAC unit was to be installed. So their visit saw only half of the walls completed and no running water in the Casita. The Spa's shower wasn't completed until the last day of their visit, but the kids got to take the inaugural bath in it. 

     After Spring Break, Brad buckled down and spent many long days finishing the walls and ceiling, installing the lights (both inside ceiling fan/light and exterior porch and floodlights). The kitchen cabinets came in and were built and installed. One cabinet stayed on the back order list for 4 weeks giving us quite a scare. It finally came in and we breathed a big sigh of relief. As the Casita and Spa interiors were  being finished, the outside was being landscaped and the sod brought in and laid. Both buildings were painted and the RV pedestal area (which provides electric, water, satellite and sewer hookups for the motorhome) was finished. One of the original ideas we had was to put a storage loft above the kitchen/entertainment center area. This took some designing and is supported in the front by two cables that are attached to the ceiling rafters. It came out better than we had hoped and provides a good amount of storage without taking up valuable living space. 

     One of the last things was the outdoor kitchen. It was the first time that this particular model had been built by the folks at The Preserve and it proved to be quite a learning experience! I won't bore you with details, but it is finally 98% complete as I write this blog and can serve as a cooking area if we need it. 

     So below are some photos of the completed site...

Looking at the fire pit and into the back of the property.

The Outdoor Kitchen and Patio table.

The "business end" of the Outdoor Kitchen.

The Casita and Spa as seen from the Motorhome.

The "monster" shower in the Spa.

Looking in the Spa. Shower to the right, Sink center, Laundry facility to the left.

Kitchen/Entertainment Center wall without loft and storage (before).

Kitchen/Entertainment Center wall with loft and storage (after)

Corner of Murphy Bed and Sofa walls (before)

Corner of Murphy Bed and Sofa walls (after)

View from the Casita porch!

Building in Texas

 
   After a quick trip through Colorado and Kansas to visit family, we headed south to Cleveland, Texas (a sleepy little country town about 45 miles northeast of Houston). Here we plan to spend the winter and build our new "Winter home" on an RV site at The Preserve of Texas. Way back in February of this year we made an announcement in this blog that we had purchased a site. Now we have come to build.

Our coach parked on the Platinum Model site back in March

     The first item of business is to finalize our development plans. We purchased what is referred to as a Platinum RV Homesite.  With that option you get a Casita, Spa, outdoor kitchen, and fire pit along with a pad and full RV hookups (50A electric, water, and sewer). Now you can take the base options or you can customize if you so desire. The folks at The Preserve have a design engineer on staff who works with you to design your amenities. We decided to make the Casita a little bigger and enhance the outdoor kitchen. After a few meetings and refinements to our designs, we arrived at a finished product. 

     The photo above shows our lot as of October 16, 2013. It extends well back into the treeline and ends up along Davis Bayou as it runs through the property. One of the first decisions we had to make was whether to remove the big Sweet Gum tree that is in the middle foreground of the photo above. It was positioned such that it was going to interfere with the back of our RV pad. We tried a variety of modifications but in the end, couldn't come up with a way to keep the tree. So, unfortunately, we had it removed. It is however, the only big tree that we needed to get rid of. The rest of the lot just needed some brush clearing and pruning. Mario and his crew came in and in the space of only a couple of hours cut down and removed the big tree and cleared a large area of brush from the lot.

Here the lot has been scraped and the Sweet Gum removed

Removing the brush

Nice view of the lot with tree gone and brush removed.
This was on 11-23-2013

     So above you see a progression. The Sweet Gum tree was removed and a company came in to grind down the remaining stump. Meanwhile, a bunch of the brush on the property was cleared out and removed. (Some by me, a lot by Mario and his crew) The front of the lot was scraped and leveled to a degree and prepared for the next step. It was determined that, due to the slope of the lot, that the back part of the pad would have to be built up by 6 feet in order to be level!!! That worked out to at least 100 dump truck loads of fill dirt. The dirt started arriving on December 4th and continues to today.

One of many truckloads being delivered

Our lot as of 12-6-2013

      The dirt comes in and is spread and will be compacted by a bulldozer in the near future. This will provide a solid foundation for the RV pad, Casita, Spa, and fire ring. Compare the lot photos from October to now. It is beginning to take shape!

Just for perspective... that's me on the left. The leveled dirt is about to my waist.

     In the meantime, we moved from the Silver model site to the Gold one. Gold sites have a nice shed built on them. This worked out well for us. The folks at The Preserve were kind enough to give us a key to the shed and we have been using it to store things that we have bought for the Casita/Spa. We have taken advantage of several pre holiday sales and of course, Black Friday. We are able to have them delivered to us here on site and can store them protected from the elements. The folks here have really gone out of their way to help us and make this transition time a little less stressful.

     So now you know what we've been up to for the last couple of months. The best place to see how this progresses is on our Facebook page. It's a lot more timely information usually with illustrations or pictures. Internet is limited to my MiFi card out here or sometimes I take the laptop into the Houston area on shopping forays. There I can get on any of a number of public WiFi spots. Guess what I'm saying is that the blog will continue to be more of a summary of happenings and Facebook will be more daily events.

Summer is over, Fall is on the way!

     Wow! The summer has gone by quickly. We've been busy but haven't really taken the time to make a blog entry. With the availability of Facebook and its timely posts, a blog seems a bit of redundancy. But, with it being the end of our summer in Alaska, I thought that I'd sum up events. Seems like it was just last week when we were covered in four inches of snow in Palmer. While we didn't do as much touring this time as we did three years ago, we still saw lots of fantastic sights and were visited by several members of our friends and family. We "enjoyed" a Winter that didn't want to leave, a Spring that was all too short, a Summer that was far too hot and dry for Alaska, and are now drifting into Fall with its colors and nip in the air. By my reckoning, that's four seasons in the space of 4 months!

Winter

Spring

Summer

Fall

     We saw quite a variety of wildlife on our drives around the Kenai Peninsula. Bears, Bald Eagles, Salmon, Moose, Steller Jays and much more. 

     We had great visits with friends and family and really enjoyed showing them our favorite sights and attractions on the Kenai. We cruised the Kenai Fijords several times and saw many marine animals and birds that call Alaska a summer home. Humpback whales, Orcas, Steller Sea Lions, Harbor seals, and the cute Puffins. The glaciers of the Kenai Fijords never failed to excite. Large chunks of ice the size of a house dropped from the face of the glacier and splashed into the ocean. Every cruise we saw something different and amazing. 

     As before, we really got used to the long 20 hours or so of daylight. We sat on the beach in Seward at midnight to watch fireworks on the Fourth of July. We stayed up late one night to see the "Super Moon" as it rose over the mountains. We caught its reflection in Trail Lake along with the light of Trail Lake Lodge in the distance. Bear in mind that it is after 1:00 AM and you can still see the snow on the far mountainside!

     Towards the end of our stay, we did do something that we had not done before. We took a ride on the Alaska Railroad. We have watched the Seward to Anchorage run go by the Chalets every day this summer. The familiar Blue and Yellow cars stand out and is ridden by thousands of tourist every summer. We took a day trip from Portage to Grandview and back. The views were magnificent and breathtaking. Waterfalls were in their glory, since it has been raining in record amounts the last few weeks. Streams are running fast and deep. And now, in early September, the trees are changing color and Fall is rapidly surrounding us. Seems odd to see highs in the low 50s here when back in the Lower 48, highs are in the 90s and 100s. 

     We had a great time this summer. We met a lot of nice folks who stayed in the Chalets. We ate a lot of salmon and halibut that had been caught fresh. We worked on the Chalets and made several improvements. I think that we have left the Chalets in better shape than we found them. We are now making ready to head south and continue with our adventures. Our winter destination is Cleveland, TX and turning a small piece of land into our own personal RV plot for the future. Until then, safe travels to all of you, wherever you may roam!