patrick and raquel dot com

For all who are interested, there’s been a ton of progress on the house and pictures have been posted. See the link just to the right of this post. The interior is all but completely finished, the landscaping and sprinklers are complete, our appliances have been delivered (not necessarily installed yet).

Tomorrow we have our first walk-through with our builder and a roll of blue tape, Sunday we pack the moving truck, and Monday, we do the final walk through, sign the papers, close escrow, get the keys to the house, unload the truck, have some pizza and lots of beer, and enjoy the new abode. Sounds like a plan to me.

I was going to blog more about the house and other stuff tonight, but I’m just exhuasted, so I’m off to bed. Good night, all.

I can’t believe that we’re down to two weeks on the house. We are scheduled to close on Monday, July 31. It’s a very exciting time for both of us.

Yesterday we headed up there to get a heads up on what had been done during the week and we took a bunch of friends with us. Our dear friends, Ty and Kelly are in town this weekend for Kelly’s birthday and they wanted to see the house. Since we all had plans to hang with the Bournes, Browns, and the Terrell for dinner we all got together and everyone caravanned up to see the house.

Even though we were expecting it, we arrived at the house to find–much to our delight and surprise–that the outside of the house had been painted. I had been somewhat leary of the color scheme we chose…for no good reason…but you just are never sure until you see the final thing. But when we saw it last night, I had a difficult time containing my excitement. I am so pleased with the way it looks! I love it when things go the way they should.

We’re expecting to have countertops and tile flooring put in this week and I guess they’ll start the sprinkler system and sod as well. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but it’s looking good for us to be able to close on the 31st still.

A few more pictures from the last couple days–including pics of the house with the chosen colors–have been posted to the album. And then there’s the fine pic to the right of five of the sweetest and lovliest ladies anywhere.

This is a good time.

Read part one.

One of Raquel’s and my favorite things to do when we have downtime on a weekend is to get in the car and drive. Sometimes we’ll go exploring places within a couple hours of here to see new things. But most of the time, we like to drive around the housing subdivisions and communities in the area to get ideas for what we want to buy when it comes time.

Earlier this year, thanks to some end-of-the-year blessings, we came to resolve that 2006 wouldn’t complete without the purchase of a home. So when my mom and dad came to visit for a long Easter weekend, we thought it might be a good idea to take them to see a couple communities we had come to appreciate over the years. Mind you, we had no plans to do anything serious…just casual looking, much like our weekend drives. My dad is a residential developer and architect and has been in the industry for as long as I’ve known him, so his opinion on the things we like was valuable to us.

Well, it was more like this: Mom and Dad flew in on the Thursday before Easter. They left on the Tuesday after. Just hours after we signed the contract.

On that Friday morning, Raquel went to work and I met the folks at the hotel. After a leisure breakfast, we headed downtown to do some tourist-type stuff. We went to Old City Park, had lunch at Farmer’s Market and walked around the shops. We still had a little bit of time before Raquel got out of work so I suggested we go check out some things in the Savannah neighborhood. It was my intention to drive around the neighborhood, show Dad the neat look of the houses…full of southern colonial charm…and head on down the road to a similar development and see more of the same.

However, as we drove through the neighborhood in Savannah, we stopped at a couple homes for sale and took the info sheets from the “info tubes” (or the take-ones, as Raquel and I like to call them), the prices on them were such that Dad wanted to stop by the sales office. We ended up being there for almost two hours, walking through the models, being blown away by the prices and the incentives, and even being very drawn-in by a house that we all liked. Mom and Dad were blown away by what was available to buyers there and almost bought a house of their own.

Raquel, though, wasn’t there and didn’t have a chance to see what we had seen yet. So we left, and took our excitement home, eager to share with her. It was a great night, sharing with Raquel all that we had seen and learned that day, playing some cribbage, having some beer, enjoying some BBQ chicken, and eager to go look at more houses later in the weekend. It was a great day and Raquel and I decided that night that we would no longer be casual about learning the process and what was avaialble to us.

The next day, Saturday, was a play day. Mom and Raquel had a Peg O’ My Heart jewelry party hosted by our dear friend and realtor, Sonya, so Dad and I hopped the train to Fort Worth and spend the day out there.

After church on Easter Sunday, we had a forgettable lunch at the Prairie House and we resumed the housing search.

To be continued.

After several weeks of seemingly no progress (apparently there were some delays with some inspections), last week we finally got sheetrock and cabinetry. Some new pics have been uploaded to the Flickr album. Go check ‘em out.