Leslie and David's Wanderings: November 2025

They finished taping, bedding, and texturing the interior walls. They did a wonderful job. We could only find one place that needed to be fixed in a closet. In the last week, the masons installed the Austin White stone on the lower 3 feet of the walls on the front of the house and fully on the back wall of the house. Then installed the Smokey King Brick all the way to the eves around the rest of the house. They forgot the decorative accents on the garage wall that were supposed to be there and are now having to go back and add them. David also had a conduit set up in two places to route wiring from in the garage to the outside. Somehow they managed to get one of them messed up and are going to have to figure out how to fix it. They started on the fireplace stonework (still need to add the hearth) and still need to do the stone work on the lower 3 feet of the front of the shop. It will take them a few more days to finish up. They rearranged the panels on the shop roll up doors so the windows are on the top panels so no one can peek in. The garage doors on the house were installed It took them almost two weeks to wire the shop but they put one of the RV plugs in the wrong spot and left out a 220V outlet I had requested. They are supposed to come out and fix those issues, then they can do the foam insulation. Hopefully the shop will be done this coming week. We looked around for a mantle we liked and found a sawmill down in Stephenville that has some raw blanks we really liked. We did some measurements and some calculations (who would have thought algebra could be so useful) to determine the blank size we will need. We need to go back down and pick one out and see about getting it prepared to be installed. We picked out our plumbing fixtures (and went a little over our allowance) and all our lighting fixtures (came in just under our allowance). We also shopped around for mirrors for the bathrooms since they are expensive at the lighting store. We found mirrors for all three bathrooms very inexpensive on Amazon. We have also been going to antique malls and consignment stores to get a feel for what furniture we may want. Once we get the shop finished and can start storing stuff safely in it, we can start working on buying and storing furnishings. Next big step is the build and install of the cabinets. We have asked repeatedly for an estimate of when that will happen but have not been getting any answers.

We celebrated our thirteenth wedding anniversary on the 20^th. So, we made it safely through year thirteen and are into year fourteen and cannot be happier! We went to a French restaurant, Le Margot, in Fort Worth and had a wonderful dinner reminiscent of our trips to Paris. The restaurant is fairly new and has won several awards already.