A Busy Week

This week was very productive in terms of getting some of the details done on our house. Angela had talked with her brothers to see if they could get one of their brothers-in-law to varnish the ceilings, since that's something her brothers' brothers-in-law do, evidently. So on Saturday morning at 6:30, the painters showed up at our house. But the painters were her brothers.

I like my brothers-in-law very much, which is why I didn't really want them to varnish the ceiling: it's basically just a really tedious, crappy job. But they said they wanted to do it, and they convinced us to let them. And they did a great, efficient job. Here are some pictures of the painting, and some of the other stuff that was done this week:

Angela's brothers and a friend of theirs, hard at work.

Using screws to attach the paintbrushes to a stick?? Dammit, why didn't we think of that?!

Freddy installed some of the outlets.

Me and Angela's room, with the circuit breaker looking like some sort of gutted bionic animal.

The workers also put in these steps in the back...

...and these steps in the front.

The master bathroom, nearing completion.

These guys were good.

Freddy (right) and Carney--yes, I think that's his real name--installing some of the sockets.

So, that's it for this week. I'll try to get some more pictures up as soon as possible, since things are advancing so quickly now. Thanks for reading!

October Update

October was a busy month, at least on the inside of our house. I know that our builder has been saying "Only two more weeks" for the last few months, but this time it might actually be true! About 95% of the ceiling is up, and most of the rooms have tile now (I'll put up those pics soon). We obviously need to paint the house, but that will probably be the last step of all. And of course, we still need to put in the doors, but that will probably be done this week. So, all in all, we may be moving in sooner than later.

In the meantime, please have a look at these recent pictures. Hope you enjoy!

The living room when they were putting up the ceiling.

Our in-house model, Angela Rosa de los Angeles Jimenez Mora de Sitzman, demonstrating the beauty and classiness of the tile in our bathroom. The naysayers said we couldn't put tile up to the ceiling, but we nary say "nay"; nay, we say "Yea!" Plus, this makes it have the same tile-filled ambience of a bus station bathroom.

October 5, 2008: It still looks the same, but at least they're doing stuff on the inside.

The finished ceiling on the back porch.

The living room/kitchen/dining room, before the first coat.

I now hate varnish.

Oh, sure, it'll be easy to put varnish on the ceiling... at least we had music, though. And once I changed from "Shuffle" to exclusively Bon Jovi, productivity--especially among Ticas--increased markedly.

Kati, one of our neices who we suckered into helping us varnish the ceiling. She was the one who cleaned a lot of it with a mop before the painting.

Angela, varnish-ing.

Kati flips out and stages a Mop Rebellion in order to escape from the work. We later replaced her with Mariela, another niece who naively wandered into the construction.

Kati cleaning the ceiling.

The room after the first coat. Sure, it kills your neck and arms to look up and paint for 6 or 7 hours with a roller on a broomstick, but the fumes get you so high that you don't really notice after the first two hours or so.

So, that's it for this time. I'll try to get some more pictures up ASAP, but with the novel writing, it may take more time. In the meantime, hope everyone is well!

Nothing Lasts Forever, Even Cold September Rain (Cue The Cold October Rain!)

September was a long, rainy month for our house construction. Fortunately, things are getting back on track, and they're making some progress in quite a few areas. Check out the pictures below:

Here you can see that most of the windows are almost completed. They look really dark in this weather, but in reality they're only slightly tinted black. We asked for that to make the house look more bad-ass and Darth Vader-y.

The house from the back. They also were putting up this structure to go around the bottom of the roof, to hold the gutters. That was also a long, slow process.

The house on September 25, 2008. Getting there...

The living room-kitchen area. The white stuff on the bottom of the rafters is a sort of insulation. We bought it mainly to reduce the noise of the rain, which sounds like a jet engine when it really gets going. Hopefully it'll also help with humidity and mold prevention, as well.

On the outside of the house, there is an overhang of a meter or so in some places, so we decided to put wood panels there, since that's one of the common ways to go about covering them. Once again, another long, slow process. But at least it looks nice.

The area in front of the main entry to the house.

Here you can see how they put it together, one piece at a time.

Finally, a picture from today, October 5th, 2008. As you can see, they've got the garage door up. That whole process took only about half a day, and it covers around 18 square meters of wall space. My free advice to you: If you ever decide to build a house, build the whole thing out of garage doors.

Anyhow, hope you enjoyed the pictures a bit. I'll try to get some more up for you soon! Thanks for reading!
-Ryan