Windows

Oh, we are getting so close to having the living area done. Sure, we may be caulking and painting for years to come, but most of the work that requires power tools is done!  Michael and I went this past weekend with the goal of getting all of the windows trimmed out (check!) and the rest of the molding done in the living room and bathroom (check!).  Michael got lots of caulking done and I started with baseboards and trim painting, which actually went way faster than I expected and wasn't nearly as difficult as I expected.  We are looking to having our handyman finish the paneling and the flooring in the bedrooms which will be a HUGE help, especially for Michael who has probably paneled way more than he ever wanted to!  Although he is quite good at it now. 

A cold front was blowing in from the North while we were there and it was so nice to lay in the bedroom at night and not feel like the house was going to blow away.  You could still hear the wind a bit, but not nearly as much as you would have before the storm.  No tree limbs hitting the window right by your head! 

Oh and another thing I did was put some bracing my my favorite green shelf down there so that it doesn't wobble and act like it is going to fall over.  Little shelf is beat up, but I love it.  May need a paint job soon, but it is just like new now that it has a bit of support!

OK, here are the pics...

 We also go the toe kick installed and the cabinets look all nice and finished out now!

Last pieces of trim for the bathroom ceiling.  Hung a couple of pics too. 

Flooring Part 2

Now we have it all throughout the living area - yeah!!!  It is so much nicer than living on plywood, looks great, we just love it and hope everyone else does.  We rearranged some furniture and did some more painting and caulking...just having the flooring done makes a HUGE difference. 

Another improvement since the last time we were there is the new couch.  Can't really see it in this pic that well, but it is super comfy, fits and looks great in the space.  Also really nice to have a place for everyone to sit now! 

A bit makeshift now, but I envision this being somewhat of a reading nook area or maybe puzzle table area.  Oh, we also hung some pics that Dad had donated to the beach.

The entire living area is pretty much painted.  Bit of touch up and second coat needed in some areas, but if you don't look close the room looks done! 

Painted wall with art. 

Flooring

Think we found some good flooring!  We took down one package and put it down - so much more comfy than plywood.  Now we are super excited to get it put down all over.  Everyone like the color?!

Goodbye Beach View

We knew it would happen eventually, but we only have one house to go before we lose our unobstructed view of the water!

Happy 4th of July

It was exciting to be back at the beach for the 4th of July!  Saw some great firework shows and fortunately the rain we'd had the week before from hurricane Alex was gone and the weather was dry, cooler than it had been, and nice and sunny.  And even more importantly hurricane Alex went into Mexico and not at the beach.  Let's hope we have the same luck the rest of hurricane season!  There was much more play than work this trip, but thanks to the hard work of our handyman/carpenter/contractor Drew we have a beautiful ceiling on the covered part of the deck and he corrected the structural mess that the previous contractor had made.  Looks great!

Michael did make more progress on the paneling...still just a bit more to put up, but we are almost done in the family room! 

Oil Reaches Texas

As a kid I remember always ending up with tar on things when we went down to the beach. It has been a long time since we've spent as much time at the water as we have in recent months, but we hadn't encountered any tar in recent history. Well, thanks to the little oil spill in the Gulf, the tar was back this 4th of July weekend. Until I saw this article I didn't think that the tar we got on us was from the oil spill, but guess I was wrong. After getting a spot on my new swimsuit I now remember why we always wore our older suits to the beach when I was a kid - better come out of my new suit or I might have to send BP the bill for a new one!

Tar balls from oil spill found on Bolivar coastline

Copyright 2010 HOUSTON CHRONICLE

July 5, 2010, 11:36PM

GALVESTON — About a dozen tar balls that washed ashore on Crystal Beach were identified Monday as oil from the BP well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the first evidence that oil from the spill has reached the Texas coastline.

But it was unclear whether the oil from the blowout dropped off a passing ship or drifted nearly 400 miles.

Laboratory tests showed that the tar balls came from the BP Macondo well that blew out April 20, killing 11 crew members on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, said Coast Guard Cpt. Marcus Woodring, commander of the Houston-Galveston sector.

The handful of tar balls came ashore Saturday and a second wave amounting to about 5 gallons of oil was found Sunday scattered along 1½ miles of beach on eastern Galveston Island and Crystal Beach on the Bolivar Peninsula, Woodring said. Laboratory results on the oil discovered Sunday are expected today, Woodring said.

 

Back To The Beach

We took a bit of a hiatus to have a kid, but we are back at the beach!  Now with a new addition to the family.  Ella made her first trip to the beach at only 5 weeks old.  Our trip was mainly for play, but we did make some progress in the rebuild area...while we were down around Memorial Day we got one more wall painted.  And when we left Jean was there and she got another wall painted during her trip.  We are super close to having the entire living area covered in paneling and painted and almost ready for flooring - yippee! 

Here is our new painted wall.  We had such a great time on our trip that we are super motivated to make more progress and make it even more comfortable.  Flooring will definitely be nice, especially with 2 little ones that spend a considerable amount of time on the floor, or have toys that end up all over the floor.  Fortunately we remembered we had the ABC foam flooring pieces so we took those down for a little cushioned play area.  Also realized we need to get a new couch as soon as the floor goes down.  The little love seat is nice, but there are 3 of us that need to sit at times and it isn't quite big enough for all of us to sit comfortably!  We'll get it all together soon.  Fortunately we are still having fun with the progress, although the progress may be a bit slower for a while at least! 

Coconut's

OK, last post for this trip.  Michael and I had been taking food down and cooking dinner because we only knew about one seafood restaurant that was open and we are not big fans of the place, so we preferred to cook.  Since this was our last time down for a while we are guessing we decided to eat out for dinner.  After a little bit of searching the web I found out there was a place open named Coconut's - couldn't find any reviews, but figured it couldn't be worse than the other option we knew was open.  Turns out it was GREAT!  I am convinced they borrowed some recipes from our pre-storm favorite Steve's Landing because their crab stuffing was nearly identical.  We were very excited to have a place to eat out.  There were a lot of cops and EMS folks eating there, much like when we went to Steve's, so as soon as we saw that we knew it was a good place to eat.  Looking forward to many more trips there and lots of good seafood! 

We did a drive by Steve's Landing and we had heard they weren't going to open again, but now we are convinced.  It doesn't appear to have been touched since the storm.  The structure is still there, but you can see clear through it - looks like the storm water just washed the place out.  Sad. 

Star

This was Star's first trip back to the beach house since before the storm.  She had a pretty terrible time mainly because of the power tool usage and I think that she was generally confused about where she was, but she did get one trip down to the beach and she seemed to enjoy it.  Water was freezing, but the beach was beautiful!  Not sure what this summer has in store for us, but I really hope we get down at least once for Addison to play on the beach. 

I tried to get a pic of our house from the beach but the dunes are kind of high, so it was tricky.  This is the best I could do and you can see the very top of our house if you click on the picture to enlarge it.  Picture also shows you how nice  the beach is right now.  

Culverts are Coming

We think at least.  Not sure who is installing them or what exactly is going on, but right now there are freshly dug culverts from the highway to the lagoon on the other side of the road and on our side they are about 1/2 way there.  Haven't made it to our house, but it looks promising.  I never really understood what purpose the culverts served, but since they got filled in after the hurricane and we had such bad flooding at the front of the subdivision, I think I see why they are important!  Here is a pic of the progress on the other side of the street

Another notable thing in the pic - the house in the middle there that is under construction is the yellow house that hadn't been touched since the storm and looked like the front part of the roof was about to fall off.  Not sure the story, but we are excited to see them rebuilding! 

March 13, 2010

Well, I misspoke in my last post - all of the pictures aren't going to be of white walls.  Michael and I made the executive decision on a wall color this past visit and one of the walls was all set for painting so that was my contribution this trip.  We think it looks great and hope everyone else does

Paneling is coming along too - we had stockpiled a lot of it down there and Michael was able to hang all of the pieces we had left.  There is still some work to be done in the kitchen area, but for the most part the living area is paneled and has baseboards.  Still a decent amount of work to do, but it is coming along.

More Paneling

The next few posts may be somewhat uneventful since we are going to be paneling for a while still, but I'll keep it up because the progress itself is exciting even if it is just pictures of white walls. We did put a sample of paint on the wall, but the paint wasn't completely dry so it doesn't look real good in the picture so we'll just try for another pic next time.

We did a little rearranging, partially out of necessity because we were working our way around the room and needed to move things so we could put up paneling but also to start making better use of the space and moving towards a more permanent furniture layout. The right side of the "wing wall" makes great living area, hopefully one day we'll have a nice big comfy couch like the one we had pre-Ike so we can put that where the love seat is now and shift the love seat around, get a nice area rug. Then the left side of the "wing wall" makes a great little reading nook, we can get a comfy chair and little side table...it is going to be really nice, one day!
Paneling now covers the entire west wall and about 1/3 of the south wall.
Nearly 7 months pregnant I am not much help in the construction area these days - but turns out I'm not too shabby at installing hardware on kitchen cabinets. Having some handles to grab sure does make it easier to open these things now!

Workday January 18, 2010

Dad and Michael made a beach run and made some more progress.

Yet another milestone, we now have 3 fully functioning doors and one full wall with paneling and ceiling trim and baseboards.
It looks funny (in a good way) to see everything so white since the place was SO brown in the past. Now comes the fun job of caulking the seams and preparing the walls for paint. I think we are going to need to go with a darker wall color otherwise we might need to wear our sunglasses in the house!