Margaret & Ian's life together, including Ian's MINIs!
The Amphicars at Disney Springs are expensive but unusual – and as the price is per car not per person, we felt a bit more justified riding today while Kate is with Margaret & me! Here’s some photos, and a video too …
While Hurricane Irma did slow construction for a week, Jones Homes are back now and doing rapid work on our new home! Yesterday lunchtime we visited and took a few pictures – at that time the block walls were about half height on two sides …
This evening we returned, and it looks like almost all of the actual house block walls are completed!
The front porch is started, but there’s more work to do there – and the back porch isn’t complete yet; but it’s impressive how fast all this work was done!
UPDATE: next evening, all the block work is finished, including all the front structures:
This hurricane has been slowly approaching Florida for a week or more and it’s path has drifted east / west / back; yesterday it finally got close enough to see it’s route, heading to our west but bringing rain and winds to us for sure. Even then, Irma changed path again during the afternoon and swung back east so that it tracked almost straight over us in central Florida! Overnight last night was dramatic, crazy, and scary!
Throughout the night, as well as howling wind and crazy rain, there were crashing sounds of things hitting the house – and this morning we found out why; a chunk of our roof was blown off in the night, and scattered all around!
We do have water on the ceiling of the bedroom below that roof, so we’re going to urgently need to get some repairs – although right now Orange County remains under curfew so no travel …
I did though go for a walk outside and took photos around – there’s a lot of blown over trees, and some broken ones too; the worst wind damage we’ve seen since moving to Florida – and that last view is normally dry, not full of water!
On our front porch, one bush is fine and another is stripped of every leaf!
But we’re all fine here, we still have electricity (and air conditioning), running water, and apart from the roof nothing is damaged.
UPDATE (Thursday): with huge thanks to Ace Hardware, and Alexy, our damaged roof is now covered to protect it from any further rain getting into the roof!
Margaret’s sister Kate is visiting and we spent much of today at Epcot, with the Soarin’ and Spaceship Earth rides, various snack food, and character meets with Mickey & Minnie Mouse, and Goofy!
Earlier this week, rebar was added to the new home, ready for concrete pour (and then it was inspected/approved) – and early this morning the footings and foundation were poured, with concrete from at least five vehicles, via a huge pump truck! We were up early too, to watch and take photos (and we returned this afternoon to photo the finished foundation) …
If you prefer, here’s a fun video sequence of today’s construction work:
This morning one of our neighbors pointed out a black snake in a bush in their front garden, calling it a Black Racer; not wanting to disturb it, I got my high zoom camera for some closer views:
(it’s not venomous!)
Another quick visit to the new home construction today – there’s now a huge pile of assembled wood framing for the eventual roof (a bit early!); more plumbing too including the sewer waste pipes. And a couple of electrical conduits that will be buried in the concrete flooring (one to the kitchen island, one to an outlet that will be under the sofa in the eventual living room) …
