Bath and beyond

Bath and beyond

How hard can it be to finish a bathroom, particularly a quite small one? The whole space is only 1.5 by 2.5 meters, and the fundamental layout -- door on the short side, a sink, then toilet, then shower along the left (south) wall, a window on the west in the shower -- has been set in concrete for a long time. Well when it is time to pick tiles and patterns there is no end to the possibilities. By remote control, we stayed mostly with fairly basic simple solids and a band of the same Mexican cross- or floral- patterned tiles used for the kitchen backsplash. I think we came out OK, though I imagine we might have been able to be a little more imaginitive had we actually been there to play with it,

One thing on the plan but not yet in reality is the wall that divides the toilet from the shower. Not that you really need one -- I had a college basement apartment that lacked that particular feature and the only real problem was remembering to move the toilet paper before showering. But we hope to find or bring a tempered glass panel to divide those functions a bit more effectively. A shower curtain will have to do as plan B. Still under consideration is the problem of bathroom storage. Some shelves over the toilet and maybe a medicine chest should solve that.

Storage in general is an issue up there, but that's probably good. There is plenty of secure storage in the bodega way downstairs but the palapa level is pretty much impossible to really secure, without full walls on three sides. We ran the stairs and entry around to the south full wall to make it non-trivial to break in, but any determined thief with a short ladder or strong pull-up should be able to clamber in without much trouble. The lower levels will at least take breaking a window or something. Oh well. The price of open-air freedom is not keeping much valuable stuff around. There will be a safe for cash & passports. I've been thinking up a way to make it big enough for a laptop.

My lovely driveway down to the parking slab might wind up being a bit hard to use, it turns out. Aside from the lousy dirt public road down the east boundary, it is a steep angle down to the parking below the terrace. Maybe you recall, many blog entries ago, the lets say "dynamic" way the decisions got made to put the parking below the 1st level, to expand the terrace a bit to the east, and so on. All of this makes for little headroom for a tall vehicle coming off a steep hill. Derek tried running his Nissan Xterra down there and he barely got it down and up with the roof rack unharmed. If I bring a minivan instead of a Sentra it might be a problem. But if we wind up leaving the van there someday, problem solved -- the worlds first minivan convertable. Meanwhile it might have to park on the road or the slope instead of in the intended shade of the terrace.

Kitchen and more

Kitchen & other stuff

Within a few days after the palapa was finished about september 10th, the summer rains came back to test it -- all was well and dry. Now it was time to start getting the top level ready for occupancy. There had been a lot of back and forth about the kitchen design, but it was about to become real. The counters are to be concrete, which after some deliberation will be colored (green) but not tiled, except the backsplash. The shelves, everything, are concrete, in the local style, and in this case without doors, just open shelves below the counter and also above on the one wall. The kitchen is planned against the bath wall and around a corner to the west wall for the view. The fridge space and stove are along the wall and the sink and counters on either side look out over the short wall to the ocean. In addition the rest of the short walls around the west, north, and east are topped with a ledge about a foot wide, also in green contrete. There are round pillars holding up the concrete beams which support the roof on three sides (the south wall is the fourth). The bath is along the west part of the south wall (like on the other level) and the entry is also in the south wall. The palapa plan makes it all clear.

I wish I could go on about the crew members and the little adventures in building that go on but since all this is going on without me I don't know much. Maybe I'll get Derek to write a guest blog entry sometime. For now I can write a few other notes.

Besides actually building the kitchen and bath upstairs, getting the place ready to live in requires some work below. Like to get upstairs you need stairs, for example. The main stairs already exist (and I hope are all covered with yellow stucco by now) but there are doorways from the first floor out the South and East sides, and a way is needed to get from the 1st floor terrace down to the west and, the trickiest, a way to get from the driveway up to the east side of the first floor so 2nd and 3rd floor occupants do not need to go through the 1st floor to access their stairs up. Derek's solution is a step down from the east entry and a stairway drops one step to a landing and then wraps around to the north and drops down to the (rising) driveway with six more steps. It is tight because the property line is only 2 meters back from the east door so if a wall is eventually added to enclose the property it will close in the landing at the same time. The other stairs (south, west) are fairly normal and haven't been made yet. December?

Another needed effort is for electricity. My lawyer's husband works with CFE the electric utility, so he was the natural contact to arrange that. It got complicated as the power might have com from any of three directions, and in two cases the cost could be shared with the neightbor building two lots to the south. But when the time came to put up the cash, it did not appear so my power, at least for now, is coming up the east property line, buried, from a meter installed at the bottom. As I write this I am wondering how it is getting past the driveway; on the street side I hope, and without hitting my water service pipe.

With some discussion, Derek and I decided not to put in a pressure tank, at least yet, but just a pump and the typical arrangement of a water storage tank, or tinaco, located above the highest bath. In this case right above, as you will note in the photo. So the shower up there has maybe 4 feet of water pressure (about 2 PSI) and the 2nd floor will have 14 feet and the 1st floor 25 feet. The pump will lift the water from the basement-level cistern to the tinaco, with the usual system of dual float switches to operate the pump -- it runs when the upper tank needs water and the lower tank has water. The other trick is that it stops when either of those if false, rather than overflowing the upper tank or running the pump dry in the basement. By the way, already installed is a gas on-demand water heater. There are two pipes out to the deck on the south for an eventual solar water heater, which would feed the gas one, with the hope that the incoming solar water would be hot enough that the gas isn't needed.

We've picked out the basic plumbing items -- a standard toilet, single stainless kitchen sink with dish drain area, a bath pedastal seat, and basic faucets. We are vacilating on the purchase of a clothes washer as we are told they have short life spans there. We will need one if we start actively having renters, for sheets, maybe as soon as this spring, but meanwhile we are thinking of just a utility sink to rinse a few clothes in. it's not like you need many bulky clothes; swim trunks and a tank top are good for most days for me, so even if laundry has to be done in town it won't be unbearable.

Palapa, or Raising the roof

April to August. It wouldn't be fair to say that nothing went on during this time, because there was a lot of planning, learning about rainy season runoff flows, the first vegetation planting -- bouganvillas along the west boundary in by the neighbor's house -- all of that happened. But lets say the cash flow rate was radically decreased for a while. As the calendar pages turned, however, the goal of having the top level -- the palapa level -- ready for occupancy this winter, started to look attainable (because my workload increased enough for the cash flow to resume). We decided to stick with the plan of mixing yellow colorant in the top layer of stucco, and we figured that the upper beams needed that treatment before they built the palapa. A linguistic note: a palapa roof is the local type of thatched roof, made from palm fronds (specifically from the royal palm) tied down to small sticks laid horizontally over larger wooden rafters. The word palapa refers both to the roof and to the structure, or in this case the top floor of the structure, it shelters. The palapa system sheds water perfectly, and looks great. It is hoped to last 10-15 years which doesn't seem long, but the other choices -- metal, spanish tile, concrete, -- all cost more and do not have indefinite lives in that climate either. One real advantage is in hurricanes: the palms will rip from the small sticks, and the small sticks from the big ones, sequentially. Imagine being anywhere the destruction of a metal or tile roof in a hurricane for a moment and the advantage is clear.

In August the palperos started to get the wood -- amazing long straight trunks, 5 or 6" diameter, of a tropical hardwood too dense to float in water which is chosen for termite resistance -- and Lencho's crew got busy stuccoing the beams. The photos show the progress, from wood to framing to inside and outside views of the finished work. I just wished I could have been there to see it happen. Derek had the idea of adding the gable-type vents on the east and west to encourage ventilation, which can't hurt, though with no walls on three sides it's not clear to me just how hot it could really get in there. Anyway I should have the chance to see some palapa construction later as there will also be shed roofs like this over the west and north parts of the 2nd floor deck, hopefully this winter sometime.

Liz and I have stayed in 2nd and 3rd floor apartments in different parts of Puerto several times over the years and always enjoyed the open air, views, and just lying back looking at the roof details. There are no metal fasteners above the threaded rods which hold each rafter to the concrete beam; all joints are tied together with natural fibers, mostly palm leaves, I think. It is a trade and craft one can appreciate from several angles.

Long time no blog. When was summer?

Hi!

OK, so you might think that nothing has happened on Casa Den for months, but in fact it's just that nothing has been posted on this blog. Work has definitely gone on. In my defense, a bunch of the work that has gone on is me being busy making money in California and Oregon to support this whole venture (and our life in general) instead of updating blogspot. So how to bring this up to date? Clearly I was going to have to go back through my email to remember what happened in what order. So the new, expedient plan is go through my email exchanges with Derek from the last 8+ months and paste some relevant passages and photos into the blog. Just so you know, there are about 400 emails, so I will be sparing you a lot of them. I'll put messages from me in my usual Arial text such as this and Derek will be speaking in this font.

February 19, 2009

Railings were still being worked on as of midday today. You will see we added two more posts on the curve as the points we chose for posts were not enough to make a smooth curve. I think Lencho really went over and above with the labor being included for the railings they are even touching up the posts with polido.....looks nice.

February 22, 2009 Peso headed for 1/15 dollar soon. 14.75 today. (Hindsight, 11/09: Those were the days. It's 13.15 now) I'm working on another list of stuff to do, in categories like "before occupancy" (referring to stuff I maybe could have you do by remote control this fall before we get there, and "Landscaping" (some of which might be good to do sooner), and "finish 1st and 2nd floor" (like be done with the place completely, still a uncertain dream for 2009-10.

February 22, 2009 Thanks for the pictures. I like curved railing shots, and the laundry closet shots make that more clear. Maybe you should measure the inside width of the laundry to see if a washer will actually fit in there.

I gather they mixed the concrete for the driveway right there on top of the fosa. Hope it cleans up OK. In the fosa (septic tank) we obviously need two Ts and some pipe.

I can't tell if the driveway slab is the shape and size on your pdf plan from a few weeks ago, looking at the angles of these photos. It seems like it should slant more to the north than it does.
You're absolutely right that I want to be there. Thanks for being my eyes.

Over the next few days there were a lot of messages about the driveway work, the laundry closet dimensions, and the need for some plumbing Ts in the fosa (septic) which Derek wound up installing....

February 27, 2009 So now we know for sure why Alvaro didn't go down in that hole. I think I could have had another inch or so around my waist and still made it. The step ladder was not going to fit so I had to separate my extension and use the smaller piece. The trouble was it stuck out of the hole by a few feet so I had to fit me+the ladder through!!

March 1, 2009 Stones looking good they will be cleaning up, moving sand /gravel and reattaching the fence Monday and Tuesday then all done.

Just a couple days left, eh. I will need to keep thinking up excuses to stay in touch, for my vicarious life. By the way I've just heard that I'm about to be paid for work last September in California. Now I just have to do my taxes and bill for Oregon trip and maybe I can afford a palapa. When is the exchange rate planning to peak?

Around the first week of March, work wound up for the spring, with the all the major concrete work done, from the driveway to the main roof beams. The pipes and conduits were in, but without wiring or plumbing fixtures. The water was connected (and running three times a week for a few hours) but not the electricity. This came on March 12:

I sent pics of the stuff again in the bodega moved to the north side of the room and the tools etc. covered with a conc. bag in the home theater.

I met Lencho there yesterday for a teary eyed farewell last payment and check of all. The total pesos paid to him ended up being 358,420. Additional costs being, Pollo 600, galvinzed tubes for rails 6930, PVC for post forms - 400, driveway stones - 1400, Fosa & bodega covers - 1000, Welded wire mesh for fencing - 670, and we deducted 2000 for not doing the bench around the palapa wall. I now just realised he did not charge for the 4 new fence posts. He did make a plea for a "regalo" for the extra labor that he did not think would be that much on the railings. I told him I would ask you. Maybe a couple or 3 mils would be the right thing to do, he did not really have that in his price and that would be about half of the total labor cost for the railings. Not a requirement though.... he will be fine without it.

Goat protection is in. Both Lencho and I agree that riffraf protection will be a lot of work and people do not sue each other here when a kid gets hurt on someone elses job site, the place is fenced sneak in and you are trespassing so if you get hurt tough luck.

We wound up giving Lencho a 2500 Peso "regalo" and started planning the fall efforts.

Through the rest of March and into April we worked on plans for the palapa (upper) level kitchen and bath, and commiserated about the slow pace of road work down there and winter in Canada, taxes, and my work trips out west. Enough for now. The saga will continue, hopefully soon.