As I’ve mentioned before, we had a lot of maintenance to catch up on when we got here. As the south Texas summer heat set in, we noticed that the air conditioner was running around 20 hours a day. We were also struggling with the vents on our high ceilings forming condensation and dripping. While we do enjoy a nice cool house (and Josh needs to be able to cool down fast due to his health), we did not enjoy the sizable electricity bill. While Nueces Electric Corp execs were planning their Christmas party based on our bill size, we were looking for ways to save! We had some companies come out and take a look at our A/C system. While one company said we needed a complete new system, that ours was old and worn out (🙄 we knew there would be one company that said that), another company was very honest and said our system is working fine. We have two simple problems; one, the insulation in our attic is minimal and could use a refresher, and two, we are keeping our house way too cold 😂. We were so used to the dry heat of Colorado, and running your A/C at 69 degrees was no issue there. But here, with the humidity, that is what was causing the condensation on the vents.

We made the decision to adjust our thermostat to 72/73, and to get some bids on having the blown insulation in our attic redone. We found a company we liked and scheduled the work to be done. The next few days we got quite a bit of rain so our install was delayed a few days. When the installers finally arrived, so did our problems.

We have a very narrow driveway. Josh warned the owner of the company that his drivers would need to be cautious of the driveway and may need to park on the street. The owner assured us this would not be a problem. Famous last words. The driver of the truck was a young and probably not very experienced… and it became quickly apparent that he had no idea how to drive such a large vehicle nor how to get out of a bad situation. We should have stopped them when they drove their trailer off our driveway as soon as they pulled in.

But, we gave them the benefit of the doubt. It is a narrow driveway. But we really should have stopped them before they drove on the lawn.

We were less than thrilled with this situation. Not only did this happen, but one of the workers fell through our closet ceiling, dropping insulation all over our clothes. The owner of the company offered to fix the ceiling and the grass, but honestly, after all of this, we did not want this guy or his employees on our property ever again.

We decided to fix things ourselves and just move on. We ordered some more rock to push our rock drive clear to the fence. That way no one (even us) would get stuck in that area again.

From the moment we first looked at this property, we both began forming ideas of what we wanted the property to look like. Josh’s vision was an open ranch, with a coastal feel. He came up with the idea to build a rope fence along our new rock driveway. He sketched out a plan, and we began gathering the supplies.

It was a long day of work, but the final project is so beautiful! We decided to just do one side, that way we can use the other edge for extra parking if needed and we’re not limited on space.