They made good progress on the house again this week.  But we also found out all of the windows are on a two week backorder.  That means we will end up with at least a week where they will not be able to do anything.  Even so, it is starting to look like a real house now.

The bathtub is set in the master bathroom.

And in the guest bathroom.

The plumbing is run through the entire house.

And the water now runs from the well into the house.

Tina and I went to the house on Friday afternoon and met the carpenters.  They were in the process of installing the outside doors and the pocket door to the master closet while we were there.

On the outside of the house, they got the soffits done and got ready to do the roof this week.

We were talking to the carpenters and they mentioned the birds had already built a nest in the front entryway.

They also said when they showed up to work on Monday, there were two Great Horned Owls sitting in the garage.  Unfortunately, nobody got a picture of the owls.

Lastly unrelated to the house, as we were leaving the house Friday we saw a pretty good sized dust devil.  Although distances in the desert are very deceiving, I estimate the dust devil was about 2-3 miles away.  (The house you see in the foreground is about 1/2 mile from us.)

Back at the rental house, the lemon tree has about 8-10 lemons starting.

We were more than a little nervous about the water in our well a week ago.  When they initially tested it, they were only getting about 5 gallons per minute.  That is enough to get by, but it is still pretty low.

I am happy to report when they installed the bigger pump we are able to get over 9 gallons per minute consistently.  They said the pump draws the water down 11 feet while pumping.  But as soon as the pump shuts off, the water level returns to normal immediately.  It is also extremely quiet.  I was standing right next to it when I took this picture and could barely hear it running.  So that is a major problem averted (for now).

Most houses in the area have a 30 gallon pressure tank on their well to bring water into the house.  So we decided to go with a 1550 gallon non-pressurized tank with a secondary pressure pump.  That way, even if we do run into well problems, we still have water for a few days.

The bigger pump also required larger electrical service as well.  But that is okay since we do not want to have to re-run electrical service if we do have to drill the well deeper eventually.

They also got most of the ductwork installed as well as most of the electrical wires run.

I expect the electrical should be just about done by the end of the week.

One of the features the electrician convinced us to add is LED lighting on the bottoms of the top cabinets in the kitchen.  They will not change much on how I have to build the top cabinets and should look pretty nice and give Tina a good amount to light for working in the kitchen.  The thin black wires in the pictures below are to power the under cabinet lighting.

And they got the exhaust vent installed in the kitchen.  Initially, I was thinking Tina wanted a European style exhaust vent with the vent pipe exposed all the way to the ceiling.  But this will actually be better since it will allow her to have a top cabinet above the cooktop as well.

Finally, Tina had to go to Tucson to get the chimney pipe for the woodburning stove for the livingroom.  Since the stove was due to have a price increase in the next couple weeks, we decided to buy it now.  Although, we are not taking delivery on the stove until after the sheetrock and taping is done.

Wood stoves are expensive!  But the one we got should look pretty nice and with the mild winters, we are thinking it should be able to provide most of our heat in the winter.

Although the house does not look radically different than it did a week ago, it is easy to tell they made good progress again this week.

Our friend Eve wanted to see the progress of the house, so Tina and I went over on Friday afternoon and took Eve to lunch, then stopped by the house.

They have just about completed the framing and started working on the trades.

I especially like the way the front entryway came out.  We get a lot of wind, so having the front entry covered is going to be nice.

Still, the back porch is my favorite part of the whole house.

With the plywood on the trusses, we finally got a sense for what the high ceilings are going to look like.  We are both very happy with how those are coming together.

The electrician had just started tacking up boxes and few of the can lights.  When we got there, the HVAC guys were still busy installing the ductwork so I did not take too many pictures of the inside as I did not want to get in their way.

On Wednesday, I got a call from our builder Brad, with some bad news.  I had the well drilled 7 or 8 years ago right after we bought the land to make sure there was even water on the property, since no water meant building a house there was out of the question.  They had originally hit water at 500 feet.  They dug the well an additional 40 feet deep.  In the years since the well was drilled, the water level in our valley has dropped almost 30 feet!  Our well still has water, but if the water levels continue to drop we are going to have a problem.

I queried Brad about whether it made sense to just drill it another 100 or so feet now to avoid problems in the future.  However, Brad said sometimes the water levels come back up.  To further complicate matters, he mentioned that well drillers usually will not come out and set up to drill just 100 feet.  Plus, once the well has been drilled deeper once, it cannot be done again and we will have to drill a completely new well.

Therefore, Brad’s suggestion that we decided to follow is to put in a larger (and more expensive) pump than we originally planned.  That way, if/when we do need to drill down, we will not need to replace the pump too.  We are also going to have 1500 gallon above ground tank that will be filled automatically by the well.  We will draw the water for the house from the tank rather than directly from the well.

Finally unrelated to the house, Tina and I went into Tucson on Saturday to visit my mom.  A block away from my mom’s apartment is the largest nursery I have ever been in.  On the way back home, Tina convinced me to stop at the nursery.

We have been talking since we moved about getting some small citrus trees.  They sell “Midget” versions of most citrus trees that supposedly grow well in large pots and do not get bigger than 6-8 feet tall.  After looking at numerous “Midget” citrus breeds, we settled on trying a Midget Meyer Lemon tree.  Our friend Eve has one and she gets several dozen (full sized) lemons from it per year.  We looked through all of the Midget Meyer Lemon trees and settled on one that looked pretty healthy and had a bunch of blooms on it.

We bought the tree and a cheap pot and some dirt and took it home.  However, when Tina was planting it in the pot we found a tag on it and found out it was not a Midget Meyer Lemon tree.  It had been put in the wrong area of the greenhouse.  It is a full sized Meyer Lemon tree.  These damn things get to be 25 to 30 feet tall and 25 to 30 feet around!  Furthermore, they do not produce several dozen lemons per year; they produce several HUNDRED lemons per year!  I guess I am now in the lemon business too.