Helen and Tony Baczynski

Here are some photos taken around the back garden. It’ll be interesting to see the same views this time next year - everything looks really small at the moment. Most of the shrubs will get much larger - I hope the trees will too! The nurseries have a much bigger selection of desert plants now so we have quilte a lot of Australian varieties as well as ones native to this area. I was so happy to find a Creosote Bush, Rabbit Brush and Sage Brush. I had good success transplanting small self seeded plants from our other house. I must have done it at just the right moment because ones I moved a couple of weeks later have not done well. I’m especially pleased that some Mohave Desert Asters, which only grow wild around here- you cannot buy them, seem to have taken hold. I haven’t had much luck with seeds but will collect some fresh ones and sprinkle them around and just hope the birds don’t eat them all.

Now, please come into the garden through the side gate and we’ll walk around.
This is looking from the side gate.

This from behind the pond. The bright red plant is an Amazon lotus - I’m pleased it’s survived and is flowering again since it really likes a lot of water. I don’t expect it to last long.
Look beyond the pond and you can see a black shape to the left and a single, standing stone to the right. The black thing is an old pack saddle we found in the desert - it’s on top of Tortoise’s burrow. The standing stone is directly across from the entrance, imitating an ancient burial mound we saw on Angelsey.

This from the S.E. corner behind our pile of rocks.

Now we’re sitting on the garden seat looking back towards the pond which is by the palm trees.

From the seat again but looking across the stone circle to our house.

Now we’re at the S.W. corner of the house.

And finally here are a couple of photos of Tortoise looking out of his new home.

I walked to the street behind us and into the house behind us, which isn’t finished yet (obviously), to take these photos of our back garden. I was curious to see what kind of view they had and it’s pretty good from the upstairs. The house is exactly the same floor plan as ours just in reverse (Through the Looking Glass sprung to mind as I went up the stairs). It is set about 3 feet lower so the wall looms over you in their back garden which is only about a third the size of ours.
This first photo is looking north east.

This one is to the north.

And this one to the north west.

Here’s the latest view from the house opposite. Notice we’ve added some trees at the front. It took several days to get them all in since there is some serious caliche. It was almost too much for the jack hammers the landscapers were digging with. Finally Tony tackled it and spent two whole mornings hammering. He got down about 12 inches and finally broke through. The middle cyprus tree was the most troublesome and the one that Tony was working on. These trees were in 36″ boxes so needed substantial holes for planting. Ofcourse we’ve had some stiff winds this spring so we had to tie guy lines to stop the trees from toppling over as they haven’t sent their roots far yet.
You can see Tony’s work truck parked on the street.

Here’s the inside. This is looking towards the front door from the bottom of the stairs and shows our new dining set.

This is looking towards the front door again but from the family or sitting room. You can see the back of the computer monitors in the foreground. There is a half wall between the sitting area and the computer area. That’s my quilt “Happy Birthday Las Vegas” hanging on the wall. It won a second place ribbon (and $800) in its category last year at the Machine Quilters Showcase, an international show held in Kansas.

Now I’m upstairs in my studio looking from the master bedroom door. There’s a cover over the quilt on the machine and the waiting quilts on the floor as well as over my Pfaff because the sun shines through my windows and I probably had them open so was keeping the dust off also.

This is the view from the other end of the room looking back towards the master bedroom, which is the double door at the end. One door is open.

Now I’m standing behind the Gammill and looking at the top of the stairs. (I turned the alien’s head around so he could smile at you) You can also see the other two bedroom doors. These bedrooms are at the front of the house.

Now I’m back downstairs looking from the kitchen into the sitting area. You can see our new rug. We’ll eventually get new couches or chairs but haven’t found any we like yet. I didn’t take a photo of the kitchen - it was probably too messy!

I’ll take photos of the back garden when we get our final three trees. I’m also planting lots of shrubs but it is a desert garden.

These two photos were taken from the upstairs window of the house opposite.

From ground level.

From the road. The house stands up higher than the road. We have what they describe as “mountain desert lanscaping” at the front - very suitable for a house on a (very) slight hill.

That white box is the POD. We kept it few a couple of weeks because they had to patch the garage floor then re-apply the epoxy finish and you can’t walk on that for about a week. All the garage stuff was in the POD.

This photo was taken before the landscaping was done.

Here we are at 1824 Panther Place packing up the first POD. The 16 foot POD wasn’t big enough we had to get another 12 foot one and there’s still stuff to bring to the new house.

Getting the priorities right - T.V.. couch and computer (not visible here). These show just the beginning of unloading all our stuff. It’ll be a few days until everything is in its place and the house looks good. New address is 933 Butterfly Falls Court - the rest of the address is the same as Panther Place. I’ll be sending cards out to everyone.

This room is full of stacks of boxes now.

Moving in today…pictures to follow.

I filled out a customer service questionaire a few weeks ago and this is what we got as a thankyou! It’s a cookie bouquet - the cookies are very substantial. We thought the mailbox with our name was a nice touch.

They’ve started building the retaining wall down the west side of the house and have poured back patio.

The front diveway has been poured too. They ran into some caliche so had to get the big digger back to break it up before they could grade the ground. Caliche is a very hard compacted soil layer - it’s where the salts and minerals have been washed down to and it’s almost impossible to dig through. It should be fun trying to plant in our back garden. We had to deal with it at 1824 Panther place too. When planting trees and shrubs you’re supposed to break right through so that the drainage is good. Ofcourse they only found the caliche in the strip of land where our house is.

This photo was taken from the upstairs of the house opposite

Inside all the carpet has been laid and the banisters have their finish. The knobs are on all the doors and drawers of the cabinetry. It’s almost done.

…….our home (note the date and sing along)
Here’s the kitchen. The counter tops are in but covered with protective film. The floors are all tiled. The whole downstairs, except the small bedroom behind the kitchen, is tiled. Our bathroom also has the same tiles.

Here’s the bottom of the stairs - pantry door then small cabinet next to the fridge space, then door to the laundry room and garage (how nice not to have to carry the groceries all through the house to the kitchen) You can just see the door to the downstairs bathroom next.
The banisters are oak and have no finish on them yet.

Our bathroom - shower next to whirlpool tub. We also have a taller vanity with two wash basins.
Rather cleverly, the door to the small toilet room has been installed so that the lock is on the outside making it a good place to hold someone prisoner! What’s really happened is that the wrong door has been hung - there’s one loose in the closet that we think should be there.

This shows the top of the stairs.

The usual view except now the roof has been tiled.

The heading refers to the fact that our kitchen cabinets were delivered last Wednesday and were promptly stolen that nght before they had been installed. There is a lot of theft from building sites here in Vegas. It’s now almost a week later and the replacement cabinets are sitting in the house today waiting to be installed. There’s been a lot of activity in the past few days - inside and outside painted, roof tiles being put on, tile floor being laid, light fixtures in, smoke detectors in, door handles on and the side wall between us and our next door neighbor is up. Those aren’t the right garage doors however. The ones we chose have windows along the top so we’re not sure if these are just temporary for security. Seems like a lot of work to go to just for that.

Just some exterior pictures - I’ll take some of the interior next time we’re there.

They’ve done a bit of earth moving and have taken away the slope at the side. I’m not sure that this is quite right - I have visions of the next door neighbors wall falling down, but they are going to put in a low retaining wall. When the building superintendent spoke about this, I imagined they were only going to put the retainer beside the house and leave the rest of the slope. We’ll see how it develops in the next few days.

We have a coat of stucco! Here are the two usual photos and one more from the south east corner of the back yard. Our front door is on and so are the french doors at the back. The cabinets are supposed to be put in on Wednesday. We will get a builders key this week so that we can get inside while they are still working. A lot of things are stolen from houses being built here so it’s good to know that KB actually lock up the houses once they start fitting out the inside.

We set the date today for signing the final papers - January 10th 2006. The sales lady said then we could move in the following weekend. A good but rather pricey birthday present for Tony, even if it is one he’s buying himself. Now the question is, do you think that the builder really will be finished by that date? Our faith in builders will be renewed if this one actually meets his projected deadline.