Leslie and David's Wanderings: December 2025

Monday night was our first below freezing night since last winter. In preparation, we turned on the propane heaters to check they were working. Normally, when the thermostat turns on one of the two heaters, there is a click followed by the exhaust blower turning on. We noticed that the upstairs heater did not start the exhaust fan when the thermostat clicked on. The downstairs furnace clicked on and ran fine. David checked the fuse for the upstairs furnace and it was blown. He put in a new one. Same response. David checked the new fuse and it too was blown. We got through the night with the one heater and the electric fireplace heater. The next day, David disassembled the upstairs furnace and found this huge mud-dauber wasp nest was jamming the exhaust fan! He cleaned it out, got it all back together (with no spare parts!), put in a new fuse and all works now. We won’t need it for a couple of weeks, but knowing it is fixed and ready to go for the next freeze is a comfort. On Wednesday we headed over to Burleson to view the cleaned up version of our future mantle and to check its color against the stone it will be above and the wood floor planking. It’s going to be awesome. We then headed down to Midlothian to pick up a kitchen table Leslie had discovered on Facebook Marketplace. Carrying the 5 foot in diameter glass top and getting it back to Cresson was a challenge but we were successful without hurting ourselves or breaking anything. They continued working on the tile and flooring in the house. It’s going slower than they said it would, but it's looking great. We went up to Fort Worth to pick out the counter tops. We picked one slab of granite with a leathered finish that we had to have for the island. We then picked out quartz counter tops for the rest of the kitchen, bathrooms, utility room, coffee nook and pantry. They are putting portable heaters in the house to keep it from freezing during the cold nights. Everything is waiting for them to finish the tile and flooring. On Saturday, we dropped some stuff off at the shop and went inside the house to check on progress. Most of the tile work is completed and they are laying the underlayment for the flooring. David saw they had run the underlayment into the guest bedroom so he went to check on the two bolts sticking out of the foundation from their mistake back in August. David has been on them to cut those bolts off since August because they were a safety hazard. They kept telling him they would be taken care of, then that the flooring guys would take care of them. We have reminded each new build supervisor about them and even the flooring guys before they started. But sure enough, there they were sticking up through holes in the underlayment! On Saturday they also dug a trench from the house to the shop and ran a 2 inch pipe to carry the power line from the house to the shop. But they put it right next to the wire routing pipe that David has been trying to get them to fix since they bricked the house. Now it is going to be even harder for them to fix it since there is less room. Sigh.