Last week the tapers got going inside and the stucco guys continued on the outside.

The tapers are a husband and wife team and they really move fast!  They are both really nice folks (as are all of the folks we have met on this project so far).  Although we did not meet him yet, our builder Brad mentioned the tapers have a teenaged son that comes out after school and helps them as well.

By Friday morning, when we were there, they had gotten the second coat of mud on the entire interior of the house, as well as sanding it, and were working on the second coat in the garage.  It looks great.

This coming week, they will be texturing the entire thing, then it will be our turn to start hanging doors, installing moldings and painting.

It seems the couple doing the taping couldn’t resist having a little fun as well.  I wish I had brought a pencil with me as I could have had some fun with a couple of the fixtures they had missed.

Outside, they got most of the roof installed except where they had to complete the stucco first.  They stucco guys got everything done up to the point where they are going to start texturing the stucco this week.  They got the top peak textured so the roofing guys can get their part completed this week as well.  It looks great!

I had taken last week off from teaching to get caught up on some of the busywork stuff for my business which ended up being a very good thing for the house too.  We were able to finally meet up with a fence guy and get the whole fencing situation figured out.

The fencing guy goes by the name of Smiley (his real name is also Mike) and he is the quintessential Arizona cowboy.  Our friend Eve and our friend Danny both recommended him highly.  We drove around and saw some of his work and his fencelines are absolutely straight as a rifle shot.  Beyond that, he is about 10 years my senior, stands at least 8 inches taller than me and about 100 pounds heavier without an ounce of fat on him.  And his name fits him perfectly.  He is the most polite, easy-going guy I have met in years.

Smiley had a few questions that we needed answered from the county regarding the regulations for setbacks for the fence on the three roads bordering our land.

The first problem was that we bought the land as 6 separate parcels, so the county would not let us fence the whole property, even though it is all one connected piece of land, because the house only exists on one of the parcels.  So that necessitated a call to a different county department to get the parcels combined into a single parcel.

The next issue was the county wanted us to buy a building permit for the fence.  I had done my research prior to the call and I know for a fact that we are not required to have a permit for an agricultural fence that is less than 6 feet tall.  I quoted the statute to the county gal, chapter and verse.  But she just did not seem to get that we are just putting up a barbed wire fence with a 4 foot mesh bottom to keep the cows out and our dogs in, without “2 inch fence posts every 20 feet or less”.  Finally, I gave up on her and just did some more research and could not find any special exemptions for the setbacks on the two roads we were worried about, so we conferred with Smiley and decided a 30 foot setback from the center of the road was adequate and if they want to sue me over it 5 years from now, I’ll see them in court.  GRRRR!!!!

I really thought a rural county in Arizona would be easier to deal with than the retards in suburban Minnesota, but I guess government people are the same all over.  I really need to find a hippie to punch and work these frustrations out!  <grin>

Back at the rental house…

The lemons continue to grow and we have a whole bunch of new blossoms on the tree.

The potatoes are going crazy.  They took forever to break ground.  But once they did you can almost watch them grow.  This is about 10 days of growth.

The maters are going insane!  Tina planted our Roma heirloom seeds harvested from last year in about mid-February.  We have so many blooms on them now, I do not know what we are going to do with all of them.  Our past experience with heirloom tomatoes is they produce considerably less than the hybrids.  But this is the largest crop I think we have ever grown.

Eat your hearts out Minnesota and New England!  We are going to be harvesting tomatoes about the same time you all are getting yours in the ground!

The only plants that are not doing so great are the peppers.  I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Belle (the Amazing Water Dog) keeps digging them up.