Hill Country Hideout: April 2014

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Pooling our Resources

I am the engineer in the house. The analyzer. I like math, science, physics and the related fields of study. Which means I'm a nerd. And often the party pooper.

The good news for my family is Roberta is the antidote to my analytic life. I could devote an entire library of posts on the aspects of this yin-yang relationship, but that is not why you are here. Actually, who knows why you are here... My point is sometimes I can throw caution to the wind and say, "Maybe".

A "maybe" will always buy you more time to over-think and worry. I've come to accept that not all decisions can be black and white. No matter how many times I run the scenarios there are a lot of gray areas... and when it's light gray you may as well go for it. The worrying is Overkill.

For the better part of a year Roberta has been campaigning for a pool. And having spent a few hours in and around a few pools myself I wasn't interested. Frankly, they're a hassle to maintain, and since we aren't going to be at the Hideout full-time it doesn't make much sense. But Roberta kept reminding me that the summers are 100+ degrees and without a way to cool off everyone is going to be miserable.

I wasn't buying it. Ever hear of air conditioning?

But she continued to erode my resistance. Slowly getting bids and designs from half a dozen different companies. So when we found ourselves in March 2014 and the house was still not done, and the temperature was starting to creep up... You know that gray area I was talking about? Well it started to lighten up considerably.

We settled on a plan and told the pool builder he needed this thing wrapped up in 30 days or less in order to avoid delaying the house closing (haha, that was a funny thought!), and he said no problem. We are looking to do something in the style of this photo below. A long and rectangular profile matches our house well. We also decided not to tell the kids. They have been strung out on this ride for over a year and we tried to keep the pool option off their radar. If it didn't happen we didn't want them to be bummed out.

Since our foundation sits about 4 feet above grade in the back the excavation was minimal. We are doing a simple rectangle along the back of the house, with decking at both ends. This is particularly helpful on the north side as it solved the problem of getting from the outdoor shower to the back porch. I know that sounds like we built a pool to be able to walk 20 feet, but it was part of Roberta's argument (she's good). Here are a couple of renderings of the final result.

The pool crew isn't messing around. Excavation took 2 days, another day for framing and rebar, a day for electric and plumbing... and one day for Gunite. In just over a week of work we have the shell of a pool behind the house. It has a bench running the full length on the house side, the other side is a lap swim lane. Here are some shots of the framing and plumbing:

Next update will show the Gunite application. You may have noticed not many updates on the house lately... I wish that was my fault but our builder has lost his way. I'll provide some detail on that later, for now I can tell you building a custom house builds character.

Thanks for stopping by.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Total Recall

I thought we would interrupt the regularly planned update with a flashback. Shouldn't be nearly as dramatic for you as it was for the Austrian Oak in the movie, but feel free to tune out.

This week we were talking about the project and how it has been both challenging and rewarding this far, and we are really looking forward to enjoying it as a family. Our conversation moved on to the past and the little things we have done with the kids, and before them, to enjoy the property. This spurred us to snooping around for any older pictures we had from those days. We did find a few and I'll share them here. Note that some of these are actual real photos we had to scan so the quality is lacking.

Back in 2001 Roberta and I decided we wanted to buy a piece of property outside of town as an investment. We wanted something on the water, or close to it, and no more than 90 minutes from Austin. We didn't have kids at the time which meant we had tons of free time to work on our search. For months we spent the weekends driving around the Hill Country looking at properties. At first we were looking for property with a small cabin or house so we could actually use it. But after visiting dozens of them we were disappointed. I would spend every weekend for the next 20 years keeping these buildings together rather than enjoying them. We did have a lot of fun though - we hired some real-estate agents from different areas to shuttle us around. Let me tell ya, we rode around with some flat out crazy Texans.

We faced reality and converted our search from homes to land. And there is plenty of it around here. We soon found a few areas just west of Austin and started making offers. At that time, the market was hot. We made offers on 2 properties and were out bid by Californians! But the third time was a charm - we learned from our previous offers and got a great deal on land with 150' of frontage on the west side of the Pedernales River. It was Summer 2002 and Roberta was pregnant with our first child, Addison. Here are some photos from the day we closed the deal. We were taking selfies before it was cool.

Cool black socks, right?

We would head out there on the weekends, make a fire and hang out for a while. There is only so much you can do without running water... eventually, you just "gotta go". But we kept a kayak out there and a fire pit and would hang out when it wasn't scorching hot. Here are a few pictures of Roberta's brother and his wife hanging out with us 10 years ago...

Once the kids came along we would head out for the afternoons to explore, roast some smores and stomp around. All in all, it flew by! and it's hard to believe we're making this happen. Here are a few more pictures from our history in Spicewood.