Foundation FEAR!!

So I drove by the house today not expecting anything and low and behold I saw something going on! It looks like they are preparing for the foundation. The shocking thing was how tall the foundation may be. I was lucky to run into the builder, he was right there. He said our foundation at the back could be 10-12 feet tall.

It looks like they did not expect the foundation to have to be that high due to the slope of the lot. They want to make it not quite so high by possibly putting in a retaining wall on the side of the house. I was not too thrilled by that idea. Also he builder said our house was one of the more difficult to build because of the angle of the walls? I am glad I got to speak with him but the foundation does worry me a bit.... See, David gets to post the fun stuff and I get to post the worrying stuff!

I am the Very Model of a Modern Major-Teapot

Greetings Travelers and welcome to the first installment of decorate our house! Since not much is really going on with the house and it looks like it will be a few weeks before we have pix of things happening I decided I would mention our first purchase for the new house. For Deborah's B-day earlier this month I got her a modern teapot. It looks like this:

She loves tea and this Sorapot made by Joey Roth will look good on the kitchen counter. We have not used it yet (check out the video on the site) but it sure is “purty”. Speaking about tea if you like it as well check out The Steeping Room in the Domain. It has a great selection. I’m not a fan of tea but they may convert me over from the good ole java. Hmm… I wonder if the Agave builders can change the color of the cinderblocks on our house to Earl Grey. After all we must only have food inspired colors on our house. :)

Now all we need is a tea kettle to go with the teapot. Maybe one of these.

The Color Crisis

Okay since David has done many of these postings and was most anxious to get the new colors on the blog, I have a few words to say.

A) I spent a month trying to decide on colors and came up with every combination. I lost sleep over it. I drove people crazy. I hated the colors in the first house picture on our blog. It was like mint chocolate chip ice cream. I am so glad that the decision has finally been made and David could relate the colors to food or drinks. If you are thinking about house colors, be careful though. They look really different in sunlight. As for the Whoville house, I do not think the colors were bad, it was a bit bright but that is the new "thing". I know that Alana and Alex's house is being repainted and they probably agonized over colors as well. You just never know until it is done!! To future Agave owners, have them write in your contract they will repaint for a nominal fee :). We are just so lucky at Agave that we can be so colorful!

B) We met our first potential neighbors while they were out walking their adorable dog and more adorable baby on Sunday. It was nice to talk to someone who already lives there and were some of the first people to build a house out there. My main question is always that darn train that will be behind our house. They assured me it was infrequent and not that loud but I still could lose sleep over this one. The funny thing is they said that in their prior neighborhood people paid a premium price even right next to railroad tracks. Thank you - I feel a bit better now. It just you see with a treatment plant, prison, railroad tracks, power lines/towers, and a 100 year flood plain I get a little worried. Then I look at the architecturally interesting homes, the cool people, the GREEN mindset of the community and I think, hey forget all that other stuff!

Mighty Morphing Agave Colors!

We met with Julie today to go over the colors we wanted on the house since the metal was out and stucco was in. We did not want a Whoville ™ house so went with muted colors; as you can see below they are the same basic colors we picked earlier but now they are a different tone.

The base or main color of the house will be my favorite Starbucks flavor: Mocha.


The stucco area on the second floor of the house will the healthy beverage: Lemongrass.


The trim of the house will be the best potato chips in the world: Wise Owl.


Now only if they had a Donut color... oooooh Donuts.

We also changed the color of the roof to Desert Sand so that it blends better with the new color scheme:


Our deck and fencing will be Seasoned Mahogany. Speaking about our deck and fence for those of you who don't know it's made by a company called MoistureShield and it made from recycled material.


And now for the complete effect of the colors on a sample house:


The Garage pictured above show the Mocha, our main house color. The second floor is Lemongrass, which will be on the top part of our house. The Wise Owl is the trim as pictured above. Depending upon your monitor, these colors may not appear as they truly are!

Tin Roof Rusted

We recently found out that the Architect did not like the metal on our home design and requested we allow a change to stucco for a cleaner look. All future versions of our house will be stucco so we decided to go with stucco as well. Personally every time I saw the metal I kept thinking of the line from the B52’s Love Shack: “Tin Roof Rusted”. It did not bother me one way or another but my wife is somewhat unsure about losing the metal and she likes the B-52 song.

The bonus about going with the stucco is that we get a “get out of color jail free” card, which means we can add a different color to the house where the metal used to be or change colors all together. We are not really sure what to do just yet and we are meeting with Julie again in a few weeks. Now being of the Y-chromosome set I see things in EGA (16 colors) and my wife sees in XGA (16 million colors) so choosing colors is interesting. For example I see white but my main squeeze tells me it’s: bone, eggshell, ivory, off or snow white. With my trusty book of secrets I can decode the colors and their names while not creating a style faux pas.

At Agave the color names are even more interesting. I have no idea where they come up with these names but I think it has something to do with the paint company liquoring up Rainbow Bright so she can spew out these hues in some kind of Technicolor yawn.