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 









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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

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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.





We Are Blocked in By Angry Protesters

It has been raining  for several weeks now.  The campesinos have disrupted life in Colon while protesting  that a bridge that was washed out several weeks ago still has not been fixed.  They protest by taking over all the roads, including the back roads leading to a town, and cut off all traffic.  What causes this type of protest?  The campesinos feel, and rightly so, that this is the only way they will be heard.

Macho Man says there is  no gasoline in Trujillo.  That makes three days now and the taxistas are unable to pick up fares.  Buses cannot travel between here and Tocoa, the nearest town of any size.  It also means that no fresh produce was delivered  yesterday, so the produce market is pretty much empty.  The bread trucks cannot get through, so there is no bread.  The dairy delivery trucks......well, you get the picture.   MM just came from the market and the grocery store.  He says there is very little to be had, even rice and beans.  The citizens of Trujillo are angry.  They say the campesinos have kidnapped Trujillo and are holding her for ransom

There are semi's from Dole lined up for miles on either side of the road block.  If they are there too much longer you can expect to pay more for bananas, pineapple and other tropical fruits.  Dole uses Puerta Castilla as its biggest port in Central America, and the trucks headed this way are loaded with perishables.

The ambulance from our little hospital cannot get to Tocoa or La Ceiba and we have no ICU, orthopedic surgeons or other specialists, nor the ability to take care of trauma.  There is no CT scanner, no MRI, no NICU nor many other things you expect in a modern hospital.  There certainly is no air rescue. The government has promised in the past not to allow the campesinos to tie up the roads and take cities hostage, but the government knows this could get very ugly very quickly.  They are not doing anything right now because the Human Rights inspectors are coming tomorrow. 



Courtesy La Prensa
Campesinos blocking the road to Trujillo



Human Rights would love to report that Honduras abuses the rights of its citizens.  They will not report that soldiers and police officers are facing a large group of men armed with rifles, shotguns and machetes, along with big sticks and rocks, and have not made any type of aggressive move.

I don't know where this is going, but I hope it will be resolved peaceably.  That is not always the case. 

I will try to write about the construction and post some pictures this week end.

Please pray this will not end in bloodshed. 

We have food in the house.  We are blessed.'

Update:

This morning the Army and the National Police broke up the blockade.  It ended very peacefully, with the campesinos jusst walking away.  The government is going to set up a permanent  post at the entrance to the back road to prevent this from happening again.  That means that everyone going that way will be stopped, and if they don't like you, your car will be searched.  That's OK by me.  I would rather spend a few minutes telling the police who I am and where I live, than to have people blocking the road so that we cannot even get food into Trujillo.  The people here deserve better than that.

There was no bloodshed, so 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

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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

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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.

Customer Service in Honduras - Not

I wrote once before about how long it took Claro to come install the satellite dish. here  I did not tell you much about long it took them to come fix it after we lost the signal. 

To make a long story short, we called them the first week of June because  the World Cup started the 10th of June.  Nothing is more important to a Honduran  than the World Cup, unless it is when Maraton is playing against Olimpia..  Every time we called, they told us they would be here within the next seven days. The seventh day finally came the 13th of October

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Macho Man missed seeing his games, which made him very depressed.  He doesn't like going to his father's house to watch them, because Don Miguel likes to talk and Juan and Lito like to scream and yell at the game, pretty much like we yell and scream at our favorite teams.  His children say their father could talk if he was under water, and that is probably true ;-D.

Almost a month ago my washer went kaput.  Some kind of  seal broke and I ended up with all the water, soap, bleach and softener in the load on the floor, and it was a large load.

We called the store where we bought the machine and told them the problem.  The owner said,  "Please be patient with us.  The technician has to come from San Pedro.  Because your machine is still under warranty, only a GE technician can fix it."  Then it was, "Oh, he didn't make it last week because the bridge between Tocoa and Trujillo is still out, but he will be here Tuesday.  And he is our technician because the GE Technician can't come".  Huh?  

Tuesday came and went. Of course he didn't make it because a bridge between Tocoa and Trujillo is still not repaired. Then we found out he was coming on a motorcycle because they don't fix your problem the first day.  They make a service call, diagnose the problem, and then they come back and fix the machine, after the part is ordered and received.  The next day.  Not!!

Macho Man called the company and they assured him the technician would come today, Wednesday, at 8:00 AM..  This is Wednesday 8:46 PM, 11:46 PM EST, and guess  who hasn't shown up.  Guess who won't answer the phone, because when he looks at his caller ID, he doesn't want to have to tell us another version of the truth.  I told MM to call them back and tell them his wife is running around naked because she doesn't have any clean clothes.

Thank God for sisters-in-law.  Chayna came today to wish MM Happy Birthday and went home with two loads of work clothes. Guess who will be washing clothes tomorrow by hand. 

We are still blessed.