Casa de Sueños - Quick Update

A friend reminded me yesterday that I had not posted anything about the house since October, and he was right, October 22nd to be exact.  It's not that there was nothing to post.  Things were just going so slow that you could not really see the day-to-day progress.

Then everything seemed to just happen all at once.  It had been MY goal to move in before Christmas Eve.  Note the emphasis on the word MY.  Macho Man didn't want to pin moving to a definite date, but I decided I wanted to have Christmas in my own house.  So, I just started packing things up and getting ready to go.

Well, I was ready, MM said he was ready, but the house, not so much.  We moved in with the kitchen sink set up on concrete blocks, but we do have hot water. The windows have no glass in them, just screens and security bars.  So what's new?  We haven't had actual windows in over two years.  We have two functioning bathrooms, as far as toilets go,  and the shower and tub are working in the master bath, but no bathroom sinks in place.  Okay, so I am using the kitchen sink to wash my face and brush my teeth. 

There are no kitchen cabinets  or bathroom vanities, but that's not new either.  The baths in the condo have a mirror over the sink, but no vanity; and the kitchen has no cabinets or counter space, just one shelf over the stove and one over the sink.  Here I have a big pantry.and for the present a full sheet of plywood set up on two sawhorses. doubles as counter space and kitchen island.

I have plenty of room to work in, so I did.  We had our first Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) at  Casa de Sueños, and not one person complained about the kitchen not being finished.  We just ate and had a good time.  Nobody fussed because there are no doors in the master bathroom, just a shower curtain over the opening.  Nobody went into the bedroom when someone else was in there.  

We did have a Christmas tree, the first in two years, and Christmas decorations.  Two of the nieces helped me decorate, and they did a great job. I almost hate to take it down after the 6th. Christmas trees in Latin countries stay up until after Three Kings Day, or Epiphany.  New Year's Eve the family here in Trujillo came up and spent a little while.  The balcony is a great place to congregate.  It is big enough for all  ages to find a place and enjoy each other while still being together.  Ditto for my birthday yesterday.  The only thing missing was the family from Tocoa.

Now it is time to get back to business.  Right now my living room and bedroom look like the storeroom at Goodwill or the Salvation Army Store.  We have boxes everywhere, and the answer to  "Where is _________?" is still, "In a box somewhere.".  The good news is, by tomorrow afternoon everything will be out of the condo and into the house.  Then Friday we will spend the day cleaning the condo so we can return the keys.

So, family and friends, we are in the new house, and it is ours.  It might still be a work in progress, but it is our work in progress.  Best of all, it took us two years to get here, but there is no mortgage, IT IS OURS!.

Oh. where are the pictures?  In the camera.  Where is the camera?  All together now....The camera is in a box, somewhere.  When I find it there will be a new profile picture.  It will be the view from our balcony.

We are truly blessed.

We're Making Progress - Moving Day is Closer Every Day

We have reached a point where you can see progress.  I like to brag about the workmanship, because although it is exasperating to live with a perfectionist, it can be an asset when you are building the last house you will ever own.  You cannot imagine how happy it makes us to know  this house belongs to us, with no mortgage, no loan, no debt of any kind..

I guess the place to start is outside.  The railings and security bars are finally up on the balcony, and they are perfect.  Not quite 'N'awlins lace', but close enough to suit us.

This is the west side of the house from the road. It is late afternoon. The door on the balcony goes into the kitchen.  My sink will between the two windows.

The post in the foreground is for the fence.  For now it will be strung with barbed wire just to keep the neighbor's horses and cows out of the yard.  Jose and Marvin have plastered the colonnade, and it is ready to paint. The walls will have to wait 'til another time.

I took this picture to show how large the balcony really is.  The picture explains why the living room is small; we plan to do most of our living out here.  Since the temperature hardly ever gets below 72 degrees, it gives us a lot of outdoor living (read hammock) time.

You can see the security bars on the windows.  The frames of the windows are made of rosita.  Each of them have been planned, evened out, planed, shaped, and put together by hand.  Jose learns very quickly, so once Macho Man showed him how to rip the boards he was able to help a lot.  These frames are bolted into the concrete about 4 inches and the bars bolted into the frames.

This window is looking into the living room toward the portico door.  The picture shows more of the detail of the security bars.  Macho Man is working on the screens.  He is also working on the doors.  Once those are up, we will move in.  We can hang the windows  after we move in.

We supplied the wood and hired a carpenter to make the door from the kitchen to the balcony.  This is the natural color of the wood.  The tabs at the top of the door will be cut off before it is hung.  They are there so if the carpenter made the door too short you can layer in another piece of wood to snug up the fit.  I really like this door.

Lights on the balcony are in, and the wiring is in for the fans.  We have carriage lights at the front doors, upstairs and down. 

One of two hanging lamps we brought from Miramar.  Macho Man hung one at the back end of         the balcony on the east and west sides of.  This one provides light just outside the kitchen door; the other outside the master bath.

The ceilings are up.  We chose knotty pine rather than rosita or mahogany.  We want the house to be as light as possible and both the other woods get very dark as they age.  To me it is beautiful.

There over 600 boards, 1" x3" x10', in the ceiling. Each board  has been worked by hand, first to get it dry because it doesn't come kiln dried from the lumber yard. Then it has to be straightened and the tongues and grooves made. Jose and Marvin hand sanded and varnished each piece before it was hung.  MM showed Jose how to nail it into place, fitting the tongues and groves together. Jose and Marvin did a really good job while MM worked on something else.. 

The master bath.  The shower and tub surround are Macho Man's design.  If you look closely, all the grout lines and all the decorative tiles line up exactly.  There was a lot of effort put into this room.  The base cabinets and mirror still need to be installed and I need to paint it.

The grout lines in the tile from the balcony through the house,onto the rear portico, and down the back steps are all in one straight line.  I told you Macho Man is a perfectionist.

I am blessed. 

José is sick :-(

Yesterday, about 1:00 PM, José, our best worker, came and told Juan he was in pain and needed to go home.  We took him to his house and gave him L100 (about $5.00 USD) in case he went to the ER.  When we called to check on him he said the ER doctor referred him to the hospital in Tocoa because there is no surgeon in Trujillo.  Tocoa is about an hour away by car, about two hours away by bus, over some of the worst roads you will ever see. 

My SIL, Magda, is a nurse in Tocoa, so Macho Man called her.  She says there is only one surgeon on Tocoa, and he is on vacation.  The next nearest surgeon is in La Ceiba, about 3 hours by car,  4-6 by bus, depending on which bus you take.  I think the best deal is for us to put down the back seats in the Xterra and take him ourselves. We'll see.

When Juan called about 9 PM, José told him the pain was coming back, but he was going to try and ride it out until Monday, when the surgeon gets back off vacation.  I am really afraid this young man has a hernia, and I am not sure he can wait until Monday.

If José needs surgery, he will need to stay off work for 4-6 weeks.  We will continue to pay at least a part of his salary so his wife and child won't do without.  We are trying to figure out how to work around him, so we can continue with the construction.  For sure, he will have a job when he is able to return to work.

The next time you want to complain about long waits at the doctor's office, stop and be thankful that you have a doctor close by, not six hours away.  If you need surgery, most likely your need can be met at your local hospital.  If you need to go to another hospital for treatment, and it is far away, most likely you will be transported by ambulance, not told to take the bus for a six hour trip. 

I ask you to pray for José.

Americans are blessed

Another Update on La Casa de Sueños

We have reached several milestones on in construction since the last time I posted on the subject.  We have all but finished the painting.  I'm just waiting for a dry day to go do the trim outside.  Juan has started making the window frames.

Marvin and Jose have learned to cut ceramic tile and lay them.



 

Jose learned how to cut the tile to fit around the columns




The finished job on the balcony floor

The real owner of the house inspects the finished job on the balcony floor

The welder has designed the railings for the balcony and for the security bars over the windows.These railings don't come prefab. The welder has to puut together all the pieces so they fit the space exactly nd everything is on center.



We were very pleased with the design the welder produced.  The only change is that we want the paint changed from glossy to matte

This is a close up of the medalions.  This is a security bar, so the medalions are on every otherd upright.  On the balcony railings they are on every third upright.



This is approximately how the security bars on the windows will look

Today MM started laying the tile in the great room. 



We laid out almost the whole living room floor last night; played with  tile, and moved tile.  This pattern is too busy.  This pattern doesn't show off the decorative tiles.  At 7 PM we said, Eureka, this is it!!!!

We are blessed



We Have a Roof!!!!!

We have a roof!! It is such a great feeling.  To celebrate, we had the first, but not the last, barbecue on the balcony.  What a great day Sunday was!!

Macho Man, Pablo, Marvin, Jose, and two others actually started this project on Saturday, but it rained really hard and they didn't get much done.  Sunday morning we woke up to a glorious, bright, sunshiny day and back to work they went.  Here is what it looked like Saturday morning. 





The boards laying across the rafters are what the men are using for scaffolding.  Pablo, my brother-in- law, is the one in the Honduran Safety harness.  It consists of one heavy duty extension cord wrapped around the waist of one person, with another person holding on to the other end.  It works.  Pablo fell and would have hit the ground from about 25' feet up if he hadn't had it on.  OSHA would have shut this down a long time ago, if they had anything to say about it.

Sunday morning was so beautiful that the crew was working in overdrive.

 After the guys were a little over half way through, we fired up the grill and my sister-in-law Chena cooked us a stupendous barbecue.  We had chicken, beef, beans, tortillas, chips, and Pepsi.  My niece, Jeisy and my grand niece Nicole, were there to celebrate with us.

Chena is cooking tortillas on the grill, and heating up the beans   while Jeisy plays with Nicole.  If anyone went away hungry, it was their own fault

Then it was back to work.  The guys got all the lamina  up on the trusses and screwed down in a couple places.  MM, Jose and Marvelous Marvin have been up on the roof yesterday and today putting in more screws. They should  be finished by tomorrow.

We never could have done this job without all the help from MM's family and friends.  It almost felt like an old fashioned  barn raising.  They sure did eat a lot over three days, but it was worth it.  :>D

We are blessed



The Trusses Are Up, the Roof is Next

The trusses, ceiling joists, etc. are up!!!  Hooray!! Hurrah!!!

These are the ceiling joists and trusses before



These are  the ceiling joists and trusses after 









.

MM calls this wood San Juan Chin.  It is a very hard, dense wood that termites do not attack.  That is very important here in the tropics.  Termites can destroy a property in a very short time-space.  Once this wood dries you cannot nail it without drilling a hole first.



This is the roof system from the ground

If you are wondering why so many pictures of the trusses, it is because I am so very, very proud of my little Honduran Honey  Bun and Marvin and Jose. These are not prefab, machine-made structural components.   Macho Man is a Master Carpenter, but all his adult experience has been on cruise ships and yachts, not houses.  Marvin and Jose are getting a lot of OJT.  The three of them have constructed the roof support system with a carpenter's square, fishing line, hammers and nails, and a table saw.  Yet, look how precise it is all  put together, how perfectly aligned it is.  It is truly magnificent.  It is a work of art. 



This is my new roof, before.  The after pictures will come next week.  My BIL is going to try to come next week and bring some helpers.  If they come it will certainly speed things up

.

These are my door and window frames, and even my doors.  Part of this may even become part of the ceiling.  The wood is Rosita.  It  has a beautiful grain.  It is another dense,  heavy hardwood.  Once you get a nail into it, you can't take it back out.  It is also too hard for termites to chew. 

This house is truly a house built out of love.  To me, not even the Taj Mahal is more beautiful.  The best part is that when it is finished, the house is paid for.  It cannot be foreclosed on.  It cannot be repossessed.  It is ours.  Thank you, Macho Man.

We are blessed. 

We Are About Ready to Dry It In

I haven't written anything lately about our construction because we lost a lot of time due to two weeks  rain and then the holidays.  Macho Man was doing some work, along with Marvelous Marvin and another of the faithful crew building forms for yet more bigas and columns and the molds to go over the windows and doors on the second floor; and pouring concrete whenever there was a break in the rain.  Things are going on well enough that you can began to separate the different rooms.  



Marvin is carrying cement through the back door to fill in the short biga on the left.  The forms for the other two have not yet been put up.  This holds up the roof over the portico.  The ends of rebar that are sticking out of the biga in the background will eventually be bent down and attach the roof to the biga.  The octagonal wooden form on the left is where MM will have to break through the wall to make a window in the half bath.  Okay, so I forgot to plan a window  there.  Who cares?  ;-P  We're fixing it, aren't we? 

This is looking toward the west end of the great room.  This is the kitchen.  The door on the left goes out onto a corridor that goes to the balcony on the front of the house.  MM miscalculated the height of the windows so they now have another round of blocks to accommodate the counter space and the backslash.  The door on the extreme left, with the scaffolding over it, is the pantry.  I am so looking forward to pantry.  It will also have a place to put my pots and pans so that I don't have to lean over to try and wrestle a frying pan off a lower shelf in a base cabinet.  YEA!!!





This is the west end of the great room.  The square door on the right leads into the Master Bedroom.



This is the master bath.  The shower goes in this corner and the tub will be next that.  We do need to put two more layers of block in that window, or the neighbors will have a show whenever we take a shower.  Yes, this is another error, but we are not doing so bad when we have floor plans by someone who never drew a plan in her life and a man who has never build a house by himself.



This is the view looking through the back door to the front door.   No, no, I am not talking about Miss PittyPat.  She is looking at the view from the portico, her beloved mountains.  As I have said many times, it is all about the view in Trujillo.

We are going to Tocoa tomorrow to pick out lamina for the roof.

We are blessed.





I Believe in Angels

I believe in angels. I am sure they are sent to us by God to protect us, and sometimes they are sent to us by the prayers of others.  What happened last week  makes me believe in angels more than ever.

Last Sunday I found a white feather on the staircase going to the third floor.  We have no birds in the house.  We don't have feather dusters, feather pillows, or down comforters, so there is no logical reason for that feather to have been in the house.   I picked it up and said, "Thank you, Lord, for the gift of this angel" and then forgot about it.

Tuesday, Macho Man decided it was safe to take down the  2x4 supports to the form for the terrazzo, and then take down the 1 x12 boards that make up the form.  You can see pictures of those here.

MM did not like the way the crew was removing the supports, so he went over to show them a safer, better way to do this.  Well, it turned out to be a lesson in how not to take down supports.  All of the 2 x 4's and a lot of the 1 x 12's, which were studded with long nails, fell in on top of him, completely burying him underneath.    He says his first though was, "I am going to die, right here and now."  Then he thought, "No, I can't do that, not now."  Thank goodness he was in one of the smaller rooms.

Part of the crew started scrambling to dig him out, while others were running to the neighbors for help.  The neighbors turned out in full force with blankets, wet towels, ibuprofen, and anything else they could find to bring they thought would help.  These are people with little or nothing, but they will share what they have with those who have need.  Not only do I classify these as angels, but they truly live their Christianity. 

When  my sweet little Honduran Honeybun surfaced, the score was  boards = 0;  Macho Man = 1 split lip, 1 goose egg on his head, and 1 cut on his hand where one of the nails brushed him.  We both believe God's heavenly angels were there to cover him when the ceiling fell in, and God's earthly angels were there to get him out of what could have been a very serious situation.

Thank God for the angels, and if you are one of those who prays for us, please don't ever stop.

We are blessed

Hallelujah, The Second Floor Terrazzo is Poured!!

I have been promising this would happen 'soon' for a long time  The holdup has been the weather.  We have not had a single dry day since September 23 and there have been torrential rains since then.

The professional man who was going to supply the materials and manpower for the job told us it would take forty hours with 30-35 men and we would have to feed the men every 3-4 hours.  After figuring out the costs, MM decided that it was cheaper to rent a small mixing machine and hire our own manpower.

Monday the 18th, Macho Man made a command decision that it was now or never, even if it was raining.  When he got to the site at 4:40 in the morning there were about forty people waiting to start work.  MM and our usual crew, along with about thirty day workers, started pouring cement.  They did in about 10-11 hours what the professionals said would take 40 hours nonstop.  And they did it cheaper.

These poles are holding up the form for the terrazzo.  Before we can start pouring each of these poles must be equidistant from each other and perfectly straight; the rows must be absolutely straight; and they must all be exactly the same height.  The form for the terrazzo has to also be level, with no cracks between the boards, and the conduits for the electricity and water have to be in place. Before the pour, every room on the first floor must have these poles in place.  They will hold up a little over 2000 sq ft of concrete poured 5" thick.

  

This is the cement mixer.  Quite a bit different than the big cement trucks we are use to seeing.  You can believe this was filled many times Monday.  After filling the mixer and getting the mix to the right consistency, it is poured into wheel barrows and taken up to the form to be emptied and spread, then finished with a trowel to get it level

. 

The red flex pipes are for the electrical lines.  The white PVC  pipes are the water lines.  You can see the form and the rebar for the floor. You can also see the rebar for one of the columns in the background.  The columns around the house are what tie the first and second floors together

.

The oblong box with no rebar in it is to keep an opening in this spot for the staircase.  The boards are for the wheel barrows to travel over to take the cement where it needs to be.

You can see here where part of the pour has already been completed and smoothed out.  Because of the rain, everything had to be covered with tarps, cardboard boxes, cement bags and anything else that would keep the rain off the cement.

This is lunch break.  My sister-in-law, Cheyna, cooked chicken and rice .  We provided Pepsi by the liters.  They seemed to enjoy it, since there was nothing left when they finished.  Look at the faces of these men.  These are not boys, even though most of them are between 17 and 25.  They were there Monday morning at 4:30 AM and they worked in pouring, cold rain most of the day.  Not one of them walked off saying it was too hard a job.  They didn't want to take a morning break or a lunch break until they were done.

Pablo and some of the crew

                                                                                                                               



Getting a little bit of a break

This is what happens when the boss's wife tries to back up in the rain, goes off in the ditch, and hits a big rock.

This is what happens when there are 30-35 men on the job who know they have been treated well and that they are going to get paid at the end of the day; and the boss's wife backed into the ditch

So, now we wait until the cement is cured and we can start laying block again.  We can do a few little things on the first floor.  We can also do some grading so that we can see where the gardens go.  It is not time for the little house to go yet, because we still need it to store supplies and tools in.  

We have had a great work crew, even the temporary help.  The economy is very bad, and there essentially is no work. When there are rumors of work being available, the people will come to you. We have people every day come and ask if there is anything they can do.  The word is already out that Macho Man runs a tight ship, but that he also pays on time and he treats people like humans. 

We are blessed.