Virtual 360-Degree Tour Of The House!!*

*To get the full, 360-degree effect, be sure to set your monitor to "full resolution." Then, point your screen at the ceiling and walk in circles around your computer a few times while looking at each picture.

Well, the Gringiticasa is finally done, and we're living in it now. There will always be small little crap to finish like hanging up a towel rack here and there or chasing lizards out of the living room, but that's just part of owning a home, I guess. In any case, here are the definitive "done" pictures of the Gringiticasa, and with them, I will also just about call this blog "done"! Thanks for reading, and we hope to have you visit soon!

Front Door.

A view of the back patio.

Taken from the Crappy Casita (subject of a future blog, hopefully!).

A view from the side of the house where we apparently store random sacks of gravel, for some reason.

The Gringiticasa looms imperiously over the Crappy Casita.

A different view from the street.

Even our loser cat Cucho likes the new place.

The garage. Not the classiest part of the tour, but still, not that bad...

My "office"/guest room/future emergency baby storage.

In the same room. Angela's sister made the curtains for the house.
Thank God.

The little bathroom, where you can see the little green pitcher next to a bucket of water in the shower. That's cause the incompetent hick employed by Berlín's junta de agua is still shutting off our [I can't think of an expletive bad enough to fill this space] water every night around 5 or 6 while it's still "summer." It's also why we've not had a housewarming party yet... guests tend to not like filling up a toilet tank with a pitcher of water from the bathtub after using the john.

Angela's office. She's jealous of my kick-ass decorating ability (ie, the Colorado flag). Having said that, though, her office does look a bit scrappy. As in, 's crappy. Ha ha just kidding if you're reading this baby looks like I'm not getting any tonight then, right?

Inside the front door, looking into the living room. I should have probably reordered these, but Blogger only lets you put pictures up in batches of 5, and the order gets all inverted and weird.

The entry hallway.

Our bathroom.

Our bedroom. I should have opened the curtains for a view of the Gulf of Nicoya, but what do you expect from me? I'm not Anne freaking Leibowitz.

The TV room in the middle of the house. Maybe also a guest room. What's certain is it's not a laundry room as we had originally planned, and we're very thankful for my one stroke of genius on this project, when I moved that crap to the garage.

Living room.

A view out the back. And no stunning view would be complete without the Crappy Casita.

Sure, why not?

Anyhow, come here, and we will make you eat rice and beans at this table.

So, that's about it for now for this blog. I'll see about expanding it or creating a new one related to the landscaping or the Crappy Casita, if anyone would be interested in that (possibly not). In the meantime, please receive my warmest thanks for checking out the blog and for all the time and encouragement you've given while I've been writing this blog. It was fun to do, and a good idea at that (Thanks, Kris!).

We'll hope to see you in Berlín de San Rafaél de San Ramón de Alajuela de Costa Rica very soon!

"The Phylis Sitzman Special": Cabinet Pictures

My mom--Phylis Sitzman--did the main design and layout for our kitchen cabinets (maybe this could be a nice side-job, ma...be sure to send me kickbacks!). In any case, they're really nice, and I've been telling her for weeks now that I'd put up some pictures of the cabinets so that she could see them. So, here they are, mom (and notice that we hung up the towel you made us!). For everyone else, you can take a look or just go somewhere else in the cybersphere (preferably here).

The one to the right of the oven and the left of the sink. They pull out.

One side of the island (your butt would be close to the stove here).

The other side of the island (butt would be close to the fidge here). This is our "wine cellar/tool holder." Send wine and tools!

The main cupboard and some bookshelves.

The Lazy Susan in the corner. I tell you, that Susan is a real lazy-ass.

The stuff by the fridge.

So mom, hope you enjoyed them! Thanks for all the help!

A Few More Pictures

Well, the house is basically finished, and the only thing left to do--besides getting the kitchen sink properly hooked up--is to move our crap in!

I've got a few more pictures for you, and that may almost be it. I'll try to put up a few more when we're living inside, but until then, thanks again to everyone who's checked out this blog and encouraged me to keep it up. Hope you liked seeing the slow building process, and remember that you're always welcome to come visit us!

Angela in the kitchen, now with furniture.

Here I am in our door/mirror.

The (simulated) view from our toilet.

Angela's brothers are staining the doors.

Angela and I in our new house (I'm leaning back 'cause the auto-picture kept cutting off my head). In any case, thanks again for checking out the blog!

Almost Done... Right??

Hi Construction Fans!
We're getting closer and closer every day to the completion of the house. The biggest things in the last week or two were the shower doors being installed, and the outside getting painted. Angela's brothers did the latter, along with a guy named Ligier or something like that. One way or another, the three of them did a great job, as you'll see directly:

The frosty shower in our bathroom. It reminds me of a nice, cool drink on a hot summer day. Next to a thing used to wash your butt.

The shower in the smaller, guest bathroom.

The lovely Angela demonstrating the door.

The east side of the house. From left, the rooms are: our bedroom (also with a smaller window above), our bathroom, and the garage.

The back of the house, with the dining and kitchen area to the left, our bedroom on the right, and the living room in the middle.

Angela in the back. You can sort of see in this picture and the next one how my brother-in-law Ronald's wife's brothers--did you catch that?--leveled out a lot of the property and filled in some of the parts that had gotten compacted and washed away in last year's rainy season. In any case, it's a lot more level these days, without as many huge, jagged chunks of cement and metal bars sticking up through the ground. Soon we'll have to plant a lawn, and the Central American Dream will be complete!

March 10, 2009.

So, it's been almost a year since we started, but we're almost there. In the next week, the kitchen furniture (counter, cupboards, etc) is supposed to get installed, and that's about the only thing keeping us out for now. So, check back soon, and maybe we can wrap up this little "temporary" blog!

Quick Update: Solar Panel Works!

I don't really have any new pictures for you, oh faithful Gringiticasa fan, but as a bonus for checking the site, I'll still write a little something.

We've still not moved into the house, mainly because we're waiting for the kitchen furniture to get finished (otherwise it's a lot harder to wash and store dishes without cabinets and a sink). So that's taking quite some time.

But last weekend our power went out quite a few times due to some terrible wind storms, and the Gringiticasa proved to be a nice refuge when it came time to bathe. The shower in the house where we're currently staying--as is the case with most showers in Coast Tasty--is electrical. You may be thinking, "But can you really mix electricity and water and hope for good results?" The answer is yes, you can hope for good results, but you don't always get them. Angela was half- electrocuted in her old house, so they disconnected their electrical shower and have been bathing in cold water for a decade or so. And, as is always the case when the electricity is down, the showers don't work, either. But not in our house!

The solar panel on the roof seems to work excellently, and I was able to take a steaming hot shower at 5 in the morning, despite the fact that no light had hit the panels for about 11 hours!

That alone makes it the most awesome house in Berlín.

A New Year, A New House...Eventually

By now, you're probably wondering when we'll finish this damn house already. So are we! As you know, we went to Colorado and Mexico, and were gone for a month. That didn't speed things up. So, about half of these pictures are from early December, and the other half are from early January. Still, nothing's really been done recently, but we're getting back into the swing of things, and we're hoping for a final push to finsh the house within a few weeks. We'll see! Until then, hope you enjoy these pictures:

Here I am putting some primer on the outside of the house in December. Unfortunately it rained later that day, and a good deal of the sealer below knee level was washed away. You know what's even more depressing than that? My hairline in this picture.
But now that we're finally entering into the dry season, that kind of crap should be a thing of the past, and now we'll get to focus on the matter at hand: upcoming droughts.
And hair replacement solutions.

My brother-in-law Arnoldo, painting the outside of the garage. We were surprised how fast, dedicated, and good Angela's brothers were at painting. We had tried to avoid contracting family members, in case there were any sort of disputes, but we caved and let them paint. And we're glad we did.

My other brother-in-law, Ronald.

November 29, 2008, amid painting.

Our bathroom nearing its completion, with a tub and everything. One of the two final, major steps before we move in (besides kitchen cabinets and counters) is getting shower doors.

Looking nicer: January 11, 2009

Angela in the garage.

The small bathroom. If you come visit us, you are more than welcome to use the facilities (again, once we get those shower doors).

The view into the living and dining room, from the entry hall. This time of year in Berlín almost makes you forget how crappy the weather is a good 8 or 9 months of the year.

This picture makes me just want to walk into the frame, lay down on the floor, and wrap some of that paint-covered newspaper around me for a wonderful little catnap.

Angela demonstrating one of the big-ass doors/panels in our house. This one is to separate the TV/guest room from the living room. It's gigantic--remember, Angela isn't short--and I love it!

The other big panel/door, this one separating our bedroom from our bathroom. It's not as cool, but we are pretty sure that we now have the biggest mirror in Berlín, by a factor of about 10.

Oh crack! We think that the recent earthquake caused this crack in a window outside the dining room. Or it could have just been shoddily done. Nice out, boys! Either way, though, if it was the earthquake, we were lucky, since that seems to be the brunt of the damage. Many people lost much, much more.

A nice view from behind (and also the back of the house--he he). Hopefully by the time I get the next post ready, we'll be living in this beast. Stay tuned to see...Until then, thanks for reading and looking!