Rapido Progress!

Things are progressing muy rapido at the casa! It's very busy there whenever we walk up to observe and ask (or answer) preguntas.

The main electrical caja (box) at the street (with the meter) is not in front of our property, so they are moving it and making a rectangular posta to mount it on. Lenny dug all the trenches in the front yard for the terrestrial (underground) cable - it looked like a miserable job!

 
















Henry and Sergio are putting up walls, covering one side with cement board, then Estaban and his son Estaban put in the electrical tomas (outlets), cajas (junction boxes), and interruptors (switches). All the cable is run inside plastic conduit so the ceiling looks like a spider web with all the conduit and junction boxes! Here's Estaban and his hijo (EE-ho) (son) installing a toma plus a view of part of the ceiling.

From left to right: Estaban, Estaban 

One of ceiling spider webs

Next, the other side of the wall gets its cement board and Lenny tapes and muds the seams. Lastly, Sergio (or Lenny) puts on a skim coat of repero and it's such a bonito (beautiful), rustic finish that we're not doing anything on top of it for now. Below Henry is raising a heavy piece of durock (cement board) over a door opening - Sergio is helping him while Sue and Joe hold the tall ladder. In the middle Lenny is mudding the seams and on the right is a partially repero'd pared (wall).

 








It is also interesting that we cannot get haircuts (as I'm sure is true everywhere these days). Last week Sue got the name of a woman in Tilaran who cuts hair and made an appointment using Whatsapp (everyone here uses Whatsapp). The day of the appointment, the woman messaged her that she had to cancel because of the stay home order. My hair has also been getting long and that drives me loco. Today Heather said "want me to cut your hair?", I said "yes", and she did!

I look kind of scared, don't I! 

The hardware stores are also open, except at lunchtime which is when we tried to go to Colono the other day. To kill some time, we went to Pollolandia for fried chicken at the walk-up window. The parks and playgrounds are all roped off so we found a shady spot to park on the road and ate the pollo in the carro. The hardware stores have all installed temporary lavamanos (hand washing sinks) in front and ask that you wash your hands before entering. A pex water pipe runs across the ceiling and out the door to the sink, and a plastic drain pipe runs the water into the street gutter.

Heather washing her hands before entering the Rafa ferreterria

We needed to buy door knob / lock sets for the 2 front doors. Hernan's hermano (brother) Roland is going to make them. The wood will be cedro (cedar) and will be varnished but not stained - we like the natural look. He expects to have them done in una semana (1 week)!

Sergio explaining the front door to Roland

Cedro with different finishes

There are 2 front doors because our design allows us to divide the casa into 2 apartments. That way we can rent the 'front' and stay in the 'back' which will have a 'mini-cocina' (mini-kitchen) and its own baño (bathroom).

'Cocina' reminds me of a story from last year that I don't think I mentioned yet. The word for kitchen in Italian is (we think) cuchina, and, right or wrong, we pronounce it koo-CHEE-nah. We mistakenly used that word with Hernan last year and he turned 50 shades of red. Apparen0tly in Espanol, that's not a kitchen - that pronounciation refers to a woman 'down there' LOL! The Spanish word for kitchen is cocina (pronounced co-SEE-nah). We are very careful about that now!

Another thing we're very careful about (now) is remembering to take the house keys when we go to town. Below is Joe using a piece of wire to try to unlock the latch that keeps the upper and lower parts of Heather's dutch door together. By the way, check out that puerta! It's cedro and it is MUY BONITA!

Joe has also been working on several projects at Heather's casa. First he expanded her outside bodega. This entailed laying concrete blocks, enclosing the top with durock, and building a shelf to store her tools and paints.

He also made a really cool mesa de cafe (coffee table) for the patio out of an old door.

The madeira (wood) store is one of our favorite places to go! The lumber is not cut into standard sizes (e.g. 2x4, 2x6) like at home. It's all random widths and thicknesses so you just go in, browse until you find something that'll work. Cristian (the madeira man) will cut any length you need and the prices are very reasonable. We usually buy laurel (prounced lah-oh-REL).

No, the bus does not stop here! 

There's not a lot of other news. The government has issued a 'stay home order' because of the coronavirus. The pickleball court is closed, as are any restaurants that don't have takeout. Fortunately the little shop in Tilaran that we call the 'Everything Shop' is usually open - that's where we buy our yarn and other craft materials. We just bought some canvases, acrylic paints, and paint brushes - this should be interesting!

Oh! Here's what the guys who hauled away all our construction trash found in the pile in the front yard!

PURA VIDA!