Planning the reconstruction

Ray and Alese are planning
the post-construction reconstruction
of their half-acre wildscape

Life has been happily existing for many, many generations in the dunes and prairie that make up the neighborhood now known as Mustang Island Estates.  Now that we're planning our home on our little half-acre, we'll be inviting dozens of destructive people and their equipment to disturb much of the happy ecosystems that have been living there in peace.  

But eventually they'll go, and we'll be left with a beautiful home and an enticing blank slate of beautiful white sand surrounding it.  

Our plan is to help mother nature repopulate it with the very same plants that were scraped away, plus add a few pretty cousins from down the highway.  The primary goal is plant native Texas plants and, in particular, coastal South Texas plants.  And not the pretty things from Hawaii and South America and China and Japan, which don't taste good to butterflies and caterpillars and birds. 

Below are pix of some of the plants I've been taking note of lately that grow along our little neighborhood road. I've already identified some of them, but it's sometimes difficult.  Please let me know which you recognize and can put a name to.  Today's newly found site, the Kika de la Garza Plant Materials Center, looks useful, though I ran out of time before I could get through the Plant Fact Sheets page. Do you know of other resources with photos of coastal plants?

Plants of Mustang Island Estates

First Look: Front elevation

So, this is what we've gotten from the Architect.  It isn't perfect (of course, it's the first draft) but gives you a general idea.  We will have more windows and we may move some of these.  Alese wants a bigger front porch.  This does give you the general idea of the house though.

Another Design Meeting

We meet with Nick (builder) and Taylor (architect) today.  It was a productive meeting as you can see from the photo.  It looks like there were lots of changes, but not really, a lot of the red is clarification. We did make the most change to the master bathroom.  We also were clarifying pop-outs, and adding details. Taylor was also making notes, the next set of drawings, in about a week, will include elevations, so we can see windows and roof-line.  (You can see Taylor's explanation of the roof line on the lower left.)  Corpus Christi building code limits the building height at the mid-roof-line to 35 feet. 

We met for about 2 hours.  It felt good, but I'm now concerned that all the windows Alese wants are going to make the house more expensive than we will be able to afford.  None of the things I want will impact the costs.  :-) [Maybe that will get her to comment.]

FYI: About Port Aransas, just down the road from our future home at Mustang Island Estates Drive.

This is a description from a condo listed in Groupon.

 

Port Aransas, Texas: Sunny Beach Town with Excellent Fishing

Port Aransas is located at the northern end of Mustang Island, a narrow landmass that stretches for 18 miles off the Gulf Coast in Texas. The area gets frequent sunshine and is lined with sparsely populated public beaches, and it’s become popular with spring-breaking college students. They frequent the beachside clubs and bars, or rent kayaks and surfboards to paddle through the waves.

Fishing is a major pastime here; more than 20 fishing tournaments are based in Port Aransas, and you can catch tuna, kingfish, and marlin out on the water as dolphins jump nearby. When you return to land, bring your catch to one of the island eateries and they’ll often grill it for you on the spot.

There are 1,200 acres of tidal flats and undeveloped shore land to explore at the Port Aransas Nature Preserve, which features three miles of hiking and biking trails and boardwalks. Head up to one of the lookout towers and you can often spot rare and endangered birds such as the Piping Plover, a stout shorebird with an appetite for crustaceans.

Planning is underway.

Last Saturday we sat around a table in our builder's office going over details of the basic layout for the house.  We have a plan, but of course it's not quite the way we think we want things.  In preparation for this meeting we had done a walk-through of a couple of houses with basic floor plan.  One was a little larger and completed, and the other slightly smaller and under construction in the dry-wall stage.  Those 3-dimensional experiences were to help us visualize what was drawn on paper.

We made the greatest number of changes to the second (aka bedroom/office) floor.  As a reminder, the design if for garage and flex space on the first floor,  master bedroom and two offices on the second level, and kitchen, dining, and living space in one big open third level.  Of course second and third levels have porches on the Gulf side.  We added a small balcony off the offices on the bay side (that's the West side facing Corpus Christi Bay).  There'also a small deck off the kitchen -- which would also give us a view toward the Bay.  Then, over the living room porch, so up at the forth level is another deck.  That will give us a 360 view and a full view of the sky as well.

We had expected to go with the builder to his architect this week to get started on more technical plans, but the architect is on vacation this week!  So, that activity will wait until next week.  It may take two rounds with the architect, but that we'll get us to the stage of having plans we will show to the HOA Architectural Committee (aka developer).  Those will also be what we will show to the bank to get a loan.

(We just had a discussion about the difference between decks and porches...  Alese says a porch has a roof and a deck does not.  What do you think?)

Watch here in coming weeks as the action picks up.