The Shack: Our Dream in the Ghetto

Humbolt Walkthrough 13: So Close, Yet So Far

2012-10-08T07:57:00.001-07:00

Well as you will all note, this video was shot more than a month ago and i am pleased to say that things are going great! We did not get the how to video of the countertops done but they turned out awesome! For anyone following on facebook, this vid is way behind onthe pictures ive posted but i hope there is some entertainment in it anyways. The next video should be the final walkthrough!

Humbolt Walkthrough 12: Having Fun Through the Crap

2012-07-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

Well folks sorry for the long wait once again. This is totally because I'm lazy...we had this one up on youtube two weeks ago. My bad. This week there is a much more upbeat feeling to the video! We got some of the base boards down, the crown completed in the master and living/kitchen, the tile in the guest bath laid and some more of the plugs and switches in. After watching the video I noticed something kind of disturbing in the background....I really gotta pay more attention to who I let in the house :). Thanks to my brother, Jon Jon, and JTyree for acting/singing in this one...like I said more fun in this video. Enjoy friends!

Eleventh Walk through: The Dark Side of Mr. Webb

2012-05-26T21:35:00.001-07:00

Once again I find myself making apologies to you out there in internets land. We have had a rough month. My contractor has been slacking majorly and has yet again fallen behind. Our original date of completion was April 1...it is now May 26. We had only budgeted for making it through May 1 at the worst case so now we are out of money and cannot afford two rent checks going out every month. We are out of our current rent house July 1 whether we are done with The Shack or not. This means we have no place to live if it isn't done by then. We have given the contractor until June 15 to finish so we have a cushion. I highly doubt he will be done with everything he has to do by then, especially with all the days he has taken off the last couple of weeks! The thing is we don't have enough money to finish and he is having to pull the rest of the money out of his pocket. This means I cant fire him because another contractor wouldn't be able to finish it for the money that is left. Rock meet hard place. I have been very good up to this point with not talking bad about the contractor, giving him the benefit of a doubt, that time is over. This video shows my frustration. Its not the most upbeat one but I do hope its entertaining. O yea and we have some really cool stuff that got done this past month too.

Tenth Walk Through: FINALLY I know...

2012-04-17T22:25:00.001-07:00

I know, I know. I am very sorry to all of you loyal fans out there, but we had very good reason for going on sabbatical. If you recall, we had to get the garage approved by the Historical Council of Fort Worth. I went and had to sit through the meeting. I watched them put person after person through the ringer! I realized while listening to them, that almost everything that we had done to the outside of the shack needed to be approved and i had already spent the money and time to get them done. With all the friends that I have at the city I was worried that the wrong person would see the videos and we would be shut down. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they actually do have souls and are actually human beings down at city hall. They were quite personable and accommodating. Turns out that if you actually try hard and work with them they will help you in any way they can! Well lets get to it folks. Here is the tenth (should be fifteenth) video. Tons of stuff has changed and I hope you like the result. Here goes nothing.....

Ninth Walk Through : We've been bamboozled!

2012-03-06T21:44:00.000-08:00

Well this week brought few changes....because all the hard work that we put in last week was undone by a clever theif! You remember that access panel in the floor that went under the house? Well so did wire mctheiferson! They came up through the hole and made off with a good bit of wire and worst of all they cut my home runs(explqined in the video) going to my panel at the ceiling which means all of the runs are now three foot too short. I was fit to be tied and came to the realization that i might get the chance to protect my proprty by any means necessary. I was a little disappointed that it is illegal (thanks neal) to place an old school bear trap under my house, burried so its not visible, to deter(catch) said theif next time he crawls under my house. We did however get a good bit fixed this week, so we are now just a little bit ahead of where we were when you last saw it. Watch this one to the end, its good and its Johnny Cash too. That one is for you Uncle Glenn!

Eighth Walk Through: Wiring and the Internets!

2012-02-28T19:36:00.000-08:00

This week has proven to be fun and nerve racking! Sunday morning I got a text or six from Gerald (lives down the street) that one of the abandoned houses next door was on fire. Apparently having an open fire in a wood frame house ON THE FLOOR sets a house abalze. They must not teach this little known fact in homeless people school! Anyways The Shack is fine and the cops now know who he is and are on the lookout. This week we got down a dirty with wiring. Most of the back is wired and all of the house is now wired for internet and phone thanks to my boy Alex, nerd extrordianare! On a lighter note, this weeks video was rough for me due to the fact that i was extremely distracted because of the police activity at the burned house while we were shooting so I promise next week I will be back on my game. We had some fun with the mess ups and by that i mean Jtyree had fun with the editing, good times.

Seventh Walk Through: Windows and Walls and Wire O MY!

2012-02-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

Here we are back again in the third week of February, and yes we missed a week. We are deeply sorry to have subjected you, our dear and loyal fans, to such torture. We will do our best not to let it happen again! Anyways, while you were waiting ever so patiently for the next installment, we were busy getting things done. We got most of the windows in now, all the walls are up, and some of the electrical is wired. He had a very long punch out list (list of little piddly, finish up stuff) of stuff to finish this past week and for the most part, got it done. I hope that all of you got your lady and/or man something for Valentines Day, Misty gave me chocolate covered bacon roses that she made. I just got her roses, so I got the better end of that deal. OK without further adieu here is another awesomely beautiful video put together by the talented JTyree.

(We cant change the thumbnail, it chooses it for you. This is NOT the preferred thumbnail.)

Sixth Walk Through: Playing in the Mud

2012-02-07T16:45:00.000-08:00

Well another week has past and as promised, the house is levelish! Apparently it is not as easy to level a house as i had hoped it to be :/ but we got it done. I spent two days underneath the house IN THE MUD trying to level it and failed, so Nathan, the contractor, came and showed me what I was doing wrong. I then felt stupid because, turns out, I had been doing it wrong. Whatever, I've never had to level a house before because they were all slabs. I'm not bitter....With the end of this week came a nice little surprise when I got to The Shack to shoot this video. Guess you will just have to watch and find out. This one is the best put together piece we have done so far, in my opinion. Anyways hope you guys enjoy the newest installment and remember to like The Shack on facebook and check in if your driving past or stop to take a gander!

Fifth Walk Through: So How Tall is YOUR Ceiling?

2012-01-31T19:10:00.000-08:00

This week not too much got done due to all the rain we had. The Shacks yard turns into a mud pit when it rains. They made it out on Thursday and Friday and finished the ceilings as much as they could without leveling the house. The vaulted ceiling in the living room turned out better than I ever could have imagined! Check it out!

Here is a little different video for you to enjoy and maybe learn something from. As I stated in the above video, I made a bunyip and this is the making and how to use it video. This is my shot at an educational/how to video.

Fourth Walk Through: Framing, Framing, Framing

2012-01-26T18:16:00.000-08:00

This week it has taken a bit longer to get this video up but its because we have been playing with HD capabilities and more editing options from the amazing Mr. Tyree! This week has seen a lot more framing, and more framing, and more framing. It would have been completed but the generator died and they had to get it fixed, which takes time. Its OK though, we are still thrilled with the progress! Some of this is kind of dark because we waited too late to start filming due to some of my buddies wanting a private tour...none-the-less it turned out wonderfully. We want feedback so if you cant comment on here due to not having an account, comment on Youtube. Thanks to everyone and keep watching, they will only get better from here. Tyree has knocked the rust off!

Third Walk Through: Progress, Real Progress!

2012-01-17T21:52:00.000-08:00

This has been a long time coming! We have been getting a lot of you asking for a new update, and we are sorry that it has taken this long to get it to you. We have tried more than once to get this done and it just never came together. This one was cut and edited by my buddy Jason Tyree so I hope you like the new style. We are trying really hard to get a video done every Saturday night, get it edited on Sunday and Monday then hopefully get it up by Tuesday night from now on. There is A LOT that has changed since the last time so prepare to be blown away!

Second Walk Through: Cleaned and Torn Apart

2011-12-29T18:57:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to shooting the second video! I have had all the intentions to get another vlog up much sooner but the lighting (weather or waiting too late) never worked out. With my brothers reminder, we got it done. Misty, Chris, and myself spent Christmas Eve cleaning out the pee pee soaked heck hole (literally cups of hobo pee, contraceptives, feminine products, and a douche all of which were used... PUKE) and got it ready for what we started this week. My father and I have been here most of the week tearing down the walls and today he stayed outside to cut all of the brush away from the house so that we can actually see the house now! Reilly and Chris showed up today and helped to....well just watch and see.

I have been told that some couldn't see the video or it wasn't full size. The picture you see below is the link for the video, click on it, if you want a larger size and it wont expand, click on the youtube button and watch it there. POST COMMENTS AND FOLLOW THIS BLOG/VLOG!!!

The Vision

2011-12-23T21:13:00.000-08:00

We realized that you have now seen the shack in all its glory but no one but us knows what the vision looks like for where we want it to end up. Here are some ideas we have for what we want to do.

These are the current and future floor plan

We drew these out about two months ago upon Misty's first walk through of the house when it was still just a pipe dream. I asked her if she could knock down all the walls in the house and start over what she would do save for the main load bearing walls. She was kind to the budget and left most in tact. As you can see we plan to take it from a 4 bed 1 bath to a 3 bed 2 bath. The master will be a nice size and we are adding the hall bath. We are also moving the water heater to the utility room and take the linen closet out to make the master bath more "mastery".

We have found this picture to show what we want the outside of the shack to look like, I will give a side by side for those of you who are less than visionaries.

Glorious isn't it! This is the vision and now you are in on the details. We start clean up tomorrow, yes on Christmas Eve, so if anyone wants to join, me and the wife will be there sweeping and putting the first of the loads into the dumpster which was delivered on Thursday. New vlog probably tomorrow so stay tuned.

The First and Unexpected Walk Through

2011-12-18T17:13:00.000-08:00

I decided to do this due to the great number of you out there that were very interested in what we are going to do and the process in which we were going to do this project. As you can imagine, we have run into some people that didn't think this was a good idea, you might be one of them, but non-the-less we kept fighting and moving forward. Our hope for this vlog is to get people excited about this project and hopefully, bring in more people to the 'hood to do the same thing we are doing.

I'm giving all credit to the Lord on this one because there were many, MANY road blocks along the way that were lifted when we thought it was over. Anyways, we close on the property Wednesday the 21st so today we went to put up no trespassing signs as to give the "residents" sufficient warning to the fact that they will not be welcome in our shack in the coming days. To our pleasant surprise, they were not home but in the house two doors down. This was Chris' first time at the shack so it was a great day.

I now present to you The Shack