Leslie and David's Wanderings: November 2025

Saturday, November 22, 2025

10-22 November 2025 Slower Progress

As we get into the detail work on the interior, things are slowing down. They fixed the wall in the kitchen by the oven enclosure so it fits now. They built the vent hood over the cook top. That finished up the cabinet rough ins and the builder immediately sent us an invoice for the fifth installment. We also had to pay for the change request for the additional 220 outlets in the shop and the amount we were over the allowance for the flooring and tile. They got the insulation sprayed in the shop. We did not make it down to the Second Chance Sawmill in Stephenville since they had something come up and put us off. But we did go over to the Buy Barnwood shop over in Burlison to checkout what barn wood they might have available. We were blown away by their business. Not only did they have barnwood available at prices better than Amazon, but they also had old beam from dismantled barns available for mantles. We saw some display mantles in the front office and asked if they had anything over 90 inches long. So, they took us out into their extensive wood working shop and wood storage area. Turns out they make beautiful custom wood and epoxy tables with huge slabs of wood from a variety of local trees. David was drooling! We looked at several old barn beams but they were either too short or badly warped. He took us out into the outdoor storage yard and they had a beam from a 1890’s barn that Leslie fell in love with. Plenty long with hand hewn marks and hand cut mortices. There was no denying it would look magnificent as our mantle. We discussed the process of cleaning it up and getting it ready to install in the house. They will clean it, seal it and bring it to the house and install it just after Thanksgiving. After negotiating, we settled on a price of $1515. The washer and dryer were delivered to the builder’s warehouse with no issues. We also met with the tile and floor installers at the house and confirmed the tile going in each location and decided how it would be oriented (Never knew there were so many choices of how the tile will be installed) in each of the bathrooms and the kitchen. A clean up crew came out and cleaned up the remains of brick and stone out of the yard. Then we went out and cleaned up after the cleanup crew. We got over 2 inches of rain on the 20^th. Of course, that was the day they decided to start the tile install! The property was a mud hole when they went to bring in their equipment. We noticed the truck was starting to make a noise we had not heard before and figured out it was the power steering system. David found the fluid level was low and added power steering fluid thinking that would fix it. We drove up to the Rustic Furniture Depot in Denton with our friends Mona and Wade and it became clear there was a leak in the power steering system. Wade pointed out where it might be coming from and we added more fluid so we could get home. We have an appointment to get the truck in to have it repaired on Monday. Unfortunately, we did not find any furniture at the Rustic Furniture store to our liking this time (We had bought furniture there for the apartment back in 2012). We are watching the black Friday sales so we can pick up items we will need when we move into the house. We locked up the shop this week, so we can start using it for storage. More rain is due this coming week. After months of dry weather and having access to the house and shop, the mud is deterring us from getting in to check on progress.

Our 1890's Barn Beam Mantle.

1-10 November 2025 Surprised!

They Finished up the exterior brick and mason work on the house and shop. The masons still have to fix the conduit and replace a couple of cracked bricks, but they did a nice job on putting in the accents. They finally corrected the electrical issues in the shop after a bit of an argument over the next progress payment. To everyone’s surprise, the cabinets showed up on Tuesday with no warning. Of course they were not completely correct, so some adjustments had to be made. But Ronnies team were fantastic and had everything corrected in a couple of days. The plumber finally went in and correct the plumbing connections in the master bath so the cabinet would fit right. That issue had been known for weeks. We did find one issue with the framing where the short wall where the ovens are mounted in the cabinets was not deep enough. They will have to fix that issue since the cabinet cannot be any shorter due to the clearances required from flammable material for the ovens. They still need to build the vent hood frame that will be covered in weathered barn wood later. So, this week they will get the shop insulated, frame the vent hood installed, fix the short wall and measure for the countertops. Next week they are trying to schedule the start of the flooring install.

Watching for sales, we ordered a clothes washer and dryer on an early Black Friday sale at Lowes. We will store it at the builder’s warehouse. Later this week we will go back down to Second Chance Sawmill and pick out a live edge mantle now that we have measurements. We may swing by Burleson to a shop that specializes in barnwood to check out colors. We may need to go pick out the countertops if they get the measurements competed early. We also are engaging a water specialist to get our well water checked out to see what, if any, additional conditioning we may need.

Sunday, November 2, 2025

11 – 31 October 2025 Exterior brick and store almost complete

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.