Kellers's blog

Into the Home Stretch

 

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November's edition of "This New House, Only Slower" is a bit late. We are very close to finishing the house and as you can guess there are a million little details to sort through. From looking for bargains for window coverings to a mismatched washer/dryer combination to the long list of fixes Bennett needs to make on the house... everything else seems to have taken priority over getting this video finished. So you get the November edition in December. Think of it like a magazine slowed by the crush of holiday mail.

 

As always, depending on your connection it might stop and stutter during playback. Just hit pause, count slowly to ten and press play. That should buffer enough video for it to play smoothly.

 

We do final walk-through on Friday for the "punch list" and we close in 10 days on the 14th. We are guessing we will spend two weeks moving and settling in. At least.

 

Thanks for watching these goofy videos. We have had a ton of fun documenting the progress.

October: Drywall defines the space

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Once again we have cobbled together a little encapsulation of the past month's progress on the house. We would like to think we have a little less than two months before we get the keys, but we are getting pretty clear messages from Bennett Homes that they are not expecting to honor the contract's promise of delivering our home in early December. All the same, there have been a lot of changes. Our house finally looks and feels like a house. But as you all know, the house really does not belong to us yet, it belongs to the developer until it is completed. And then it will belong to the bank, I guess. No matter who currently lays claim to the place, it technically is not us. Consequently, we won't have access to the house until it is done. You never know, the next video might just be our housewarming tour.

Outtakes, oh wait. Everything is an outtake.

 

 

Outtakes

This is the ultimate in self-absorption. Not absorbing like paper towels or kitty litter. More like what you find in the kitty liter. In the course of shooting these silly little home movies about our home, we tend to flub our stand-ups. A lot. So this is a string of mistakes, bonehead flubs, stumbles, jets and OKs. Here is two minutes of tomfoolery from Darcy and Drew. It is evident we are not professional on-air talent. But we do have fun.

Peep Show

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Here is the September installment. We only hope the October version shows more progress. We are not a very patient lot.

We do think we have cut down on a lot of the herky-jerky playback issues. If it is still not playing smoothly for you please let us know, and the trick of pressing play, then pause, couting slowly to 10 and then play again should help out.

A House By Any Other Name Would Probably Be A Shed

We have no earthly clue what our title means.

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And so we begin the third month of home construction.  Well almost the third month. That date comes in a few days. The past 4 weeks have been very productive at our little construction site. The heating system is in, as well as the plumbing and the electrical wiring. I am guessing the next phase will be the cable/phone/network wiring… that is if the house a few lots over is any example.

Each lot in the development is numbered. We are pleased to say that we have house number 8. Very lucky indeed. House number fourteen appears to be about a week ahead of us. Well, except their exterior is painted and the back patio is framed in. Two benchmarks we have not seen in our house. This past week the construction team focused on finishing house 14's communication and entertainment wiring, so that is why we are thinking we are next on the list. If we were guessing, and we are, we would guess the insulation will go in to the house in about 10-14 days, and drywall will kick in after that. We can’t wait to see how different the spaces in the house will feel once the rooms are defined. We don’t know if they will feel larger or smaller. We do know it will begin to feel more like our home.

Drew thinks both this video and the previous one will play better now. If you never managed to see the second video as anything but choppy fits and starts, you might want to try again. He re-encoded the file and he thinks this new bitrate will work better over DSL and cable lines.

This Old House, Only Slower

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We found our new house one month ago. Perhaps we were a bit naive to expect that construction would continue at the same speed as prior to our purchase. For the past four weeks nothing has happened. We are surmising that the builders felt they needed to wait until any change orders were finalized, the new stuff got ordered and the new plans were drawn up by the architect. At least that is what we have been telling ourselves. So this is our most recent update, Drew's 3 minute video about nothing, well at least next to nothing, that has changed with our new place. Jeeeze what a ham this guy is. And the name of this video is a joke, by the way. We love the series on PBS, and this video has no connection with that fine program. We just don't want any lawyers coming after us for some sort of wacky infringement issue.

Just like all the other videos, the movie will play smoother if you click play, click pause, count slowly to 10, and then click play again. This will allow the movie to buffer in your computer’s memory. It seems that anything over :30 seconds causes the browser to choke. Bottom line, if it gets too herky jerky hit pause, count and then play. That should clean it up. Ah, the bleeding edge of new technology. Consider yourself an early adopter.

This Aint No Shanty

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It wouldn’t be a life changing experience if we didn’t document it. What is “it”? “It” is our new home. We thought we would give you all a glimpse (OK, more like a rather long look) at our new place. Right now it is nothing but framing and shingles, but Darcy gives you a tour of our new digs. It requires a lot of imagination and a little patience as we point out every nook and cranny in the place. Bear with us, because we are insanely excited.

Just like when we posted videos from Hong Kong, the movie will play smoother if you click play, click pause, count slowly to 10, and then click play again. This will allow the movie to buffer in your computer’s memory. I think we are discovering that when you are on any connection less than 100 megabit, anything over :30 seconds causes the browser to choke. Bottom line, if it gets too herky jerky hit pause and then play. That should clean it up.

So with apologies to “This Old House”, we present the first installment of an all new MoKel Hotel. Just click on Drew's ugly mug on the left.