My little corner of the world

/ CrazyKat1963

beach

When my birthday rolled around last month, it marked the two year anniversary of me and Blue Eyes being the proud owners of a little peace of heaven on earth, better known as our beach property.

Shortly after returning home from Europe we took a drive over to the property to see how things are progressing. I am learning patience through this process, a lot of patience. Here is a little photo journal of how things have progressed.

beach property 1

What the beach property looked like when we took ownership on May 14, 2014.

beach property 2

This is what the property looked like two months later in July, 2014 as the architect puts up rough stakes of where the house will sit.

It then took months and months for the permit process to be finalized. After that, it took more months for the construction financing to be complete. They FINALLY broke ground September, 2015, 14 months after staking it, and 16 months after we signed the papers.

foundation 2

The initial plywood forms for the underground foundation as well as preliminary forms for the foundation pillars. November, 2015

The open spots were filled with concrete and concrete pillars were poured. We were house bound for a few weeks for Blue Eyes’ surgery recuperation and therefore could not get to the beach property. By the time we were able to drive back out, the sub floor had been poured.

foundation

Concrete sub floor. February, 2016

beach house 4

Framing commenced. March 2016.

through the front door

View from the front door.

the view

Floors being prepped for coil heating. View from great room (and master bedroom view on the left). April 2016

Framing and roofing went on for a couple months.

more framing

roofing

While we were in Europe, a friend of Blue Eyes went out to the property with his drone camera and took some wonderful photos.

DCIM100MEDIADJI_0050.JPG

Our house is the tiny bright white speck on the right. May 2016

So this brings me to our most recent visit to the beach property. Some of the work has stalled out a bit as the windows are taking forever. They are all custom, and being shipped from Belgium, apparently? In the meantime, the guys are working on decks and fences and starting to run electrical wiring. We know once the windows are here and in, things will move along quickly. The contractor is estimating October for completion. I won’t hold my breath. It would be nice to be there for Thanksgiving.

The house will be contemporary. Due to all the building restrictions, it needing to be 5′ off the ground and no higher than 17′, etc… the house is all one level. Except… there will be a room above the single car garage. Heretofore, that room was called the loft. We had thought we would use it as storage and then maybe some day furnish it with a couple extra beds if we needed more sleeping space. We had no idea how tall the ceilings would be until the garage was actually built. Nothing turns out exactly as the architect draws it. We thought the mechanicals would be in that room, you know, the water heaters and whatever runs the heated concrete floors. We thought we would access the room by a wooden ladder from the laundry room. Not my idea of easily accessible.

Well… I could hardly contain my excitement when we visited the house last and they had completely framed in the room. Not only do the mechanicals have their own room, but there are real stairs going up to the loft, and two big windows, one that opens. The ceilings are well over 7′ high. The architect suggested we use the room for something special… maybe a meditation room for Blue Eyes. I thought that would be really wonderful.

Blue Eyes, however, had a different idea. He looked at me with those loving eyes, the ones I have looked into for more than three decades, and said, “this room will be your painting studio.” I hadn’t even thought of that. A sort of happy warmth coursed through me as I thought about what an amazing painting studio this room would be. All for me. I don’t have a painting studio at our house. Even though our city home is decent size, each room has it’s purpose and the oil paints, well, they are smelly. I could paint in my home office, but this is also where the dog kennels are. It’s not healthy for my fur babies to be inhaling paint fumes all night. I tried using our master bedroom for painting and moving the paintings out of our room when we sleep, but now parts of the carpet and all my decorative upholstered bed pillows have green paint on them. How the heck did I do that?

stairs to painting studio

Stairs leading to my new beach house painting studio.

my painting studio

The room is bigger than it looks in this photo, and that is protected land you are looking at through the window. It will never change. There will never be a house there. There is a long rectangular vertical window to the left that opens for fresh air. Instead of carpet, there will be hardwoods. I am so excited!

I think Blue Eyes is now worried I will never want to leave the beach house. He may be right. I can’t wait to spend time in my little corner of the world.

30 thoughts on “My little corner of the world”

  1. How wonderful to see your Barbie Beach House coming together so splendidly. Remember, I call dibs on the guest bedroom 😜. Nobody deserves this more than you do. I’m so happy for u ❤️❤️❤️

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • One of the great things about blogging, being able to read right on through typos (or more commonly autocorrect, our phones thinking they are smarter than we are) and just know what people are saying. One of my jobs at work is looking over contracts and correcting grammar issues. On the blogs, I don’t have to worry about any of that. Our messages of love and kindness and friendship are so clear, regardless of the little inconsequential electronic glitches! ❤

      Like

      Reply

    • Eek, I know, I know. The view itself is amazing, but picking out all the finishes and furnishings was pretty fun too. Counting the days now. Well, truthfully there are still a lot of them, but it is coming together. This house will always represent a new part of our relationship and for that, it will always be special to us. ❤

      Liked by 4 people

      Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.