In mid-May we focused the hombres on finishing up the back apartment so we could move in on June 1st. We were very excited to actually move from Heather's into our new place so we stuck with our target date even though there were still some 'issues'. One issue was we found out that neither calentador (hot water heater) was working (after we moved in). Kevin referred us to a guy (Pito) who had a brother-in-law (Willman) who is an electrician. Pito and Willman came on a Sunday and checked out both units (they are tankless, on-demand calentadors). Willman discovered that both needed larger circuit breakers and maybe there were other problems, so he took both units with him for testing. A few days later he brought one back and installed it - this gave us agua caliente (hot water) in the outside sink where we wash dishes. Still only agua fria (cold water) at the outside ducha (shower), but it's really not THAT fria - if you wait until the afternoon when it's fairly calor (hot as in air temperature) outside, the ducha con solo agua fria (shower with only cold water) is welcome.
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| Interesting re-installation of a calentador on the kitchen wall |
The other calentador had a different problem - Pito (through his English-speaking esposa Annmarie) informed us that he didn't think the plumbing was right. The unit should have a tubo (pipe) with agua fria going in, and a tubo with agua caliente coming out. Pito said it seemed like both tubos were agua fria input, and he would have to open up walls to search for the problem. One noche, when I couldn't sleep, it suddenly dawned on me where the problem was. I could picturie how the tubos for the outside ducha were installed. The faucet was not a mixer which would have required two inputs - hot and cold. This faucet only had one input, so a hot water tubo and a cold water tubo had been joined to form one input tubo. That meant the cold water was able to run right into the hot water piping system. When Pito and Willman came to work on it, I told them where to open the wall and, sure enough, it was as I had pictured in the noche.
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| Check out this plumbing! The fatter white tubos are cold water and the thinner ecru tubos are hot water - they join somewhere out of sight on the left. |
Willman re-installed the calentador while Pito and I went to the ferrateria to purchase a mixing faucet. I'd say it was probably the 3rd week of Junio when we had an outside ducha with agua fria AND agua caliente. Pura vida!
By the time we moved in we had a baño (bathroom) with a toilet and lavamano (sink), a refrigerator, stove, and TV. We also had beautiful twin beds made out of cedro by our woodworking friend Kevin. Cedro is cedar, but it's not the same as the cedar in the US. We bought the mattresses at a local place in Tilaran called Curacao and asked Eduardo, the sales guy, for measurements to give to Kevin for the beds. You can't really count on standards here in Costa Rica. Eduardo gave me measurements that we passed on to Kevin, and, voila! the bed frames are too narrow for the mattresses. Pura vida! For now the mattresses are kind of perched on top of the frames instead of nestling down onto the slats. We have come up with a few solutions but we haven't been motivated enough to implement any of them.
We also had two front puertas (doors) made out of cedro by Hernan's brother Ronald. Hernan seems to have countless brothers who do beautiful woodworking, as does Hernan himself, but Hernan is currently muy occupado (very busy) on another construction site so he recommended Ronald. We have two front puertas because the house can be used as two units... eventually. In the photo below you can see the main front puerta as well as a couple of the new ventanas (windows) and one of the sliders. The ventana in the middle is an old one that hadn't been replaced yet. You can also see that the materials on the floor are primarily metal. The only madeira (wood) in the casa (so far) is the door frames and doors. Eventually we'll also have shelves and furniture made out of madeira, but nothing structural. The termites will NOT eat this casa again! The parts of the paredes (walls) that have color are part of the original casa.
For the two back puertas (one out of each bathroom to get to the outside shower) we cheated to save money and bought unfinished pino (pine) puertas at the ferreteria. Sue did the sanding, staining, and varnishing so that they are the same color as the puertas de cedro, although not the same quality. Termites don't eat cedro - it's too hard - we'll have to see how long the puertas de pino last. Sorry for the messy room in the photo below, but you can see the cedro beds and one of the puertas de pino. This room is the main room of the back (studio) apartment. The small cocina (kitchen) is the room to the left, and the baño is straight ahead on the right. There was no door on the baño yet - that took us about 3 weeks to get - another puerta de pino LOL.
Another issue when we moved in was that we had no screens in the seven 'clerestory windows' high up in the ceilo raso (ceiling). Michael-the-window-guy was apparently muy occupado with other orders and hadn't delivered them yet. This was no biggie during the day, but those nighttime insectos were a bother. We would sleep with our sheets pulled up over our heads. Some nights there were pretty large beetles, some nights there were mosquitos, and some nights flying ants. I really can't remember how many days (nights) this lasted before Michael came and installed the screens, but I do remember I was just about to buy real mosquito netting when he showed up and we no longer had to hide from los insectos de noches.
For the whole month of Junio, we had the hombres work on the front half of the house while we lived in the back apartment. They had to finish the paredes (walls), the cielo raso, and also seal up openings in the techo (roof) under the eaves. Finishing one wall had to wait for a momma clay-colored robin to finally decide her eggs were never going to hatch. They got all that done, and they installed canoas (gutters) on two sides of our techo, and then we called it quit. We are continuing to do small, targeted projects, but anything big will have to wait until proximo añ
o (next year).
On the wildlife front, we are very excited to have perezosos (sloths) and monos (monkeys) make appearances in the trees behind our casa. There's a momma perezoso carrying a baby that we've seen 2 or 3 times, plus a solo perezoso.
The monos (actually, mono congos - howler monkeys) move around based on the food supply, so they show up for a few days, and then show up again.
This huge iguana was totally camoflaged way up in the trees in back until he started wagging his wattle. Check him out!
And that's pretty much what fills our time. We are in a very safe area here in CR - out in the campo (countryside) where there are more vacas (cows) than personas. Our canton of Tilaran (like a county) has only 2 active cases of the virus right now, and the whole country has had just over 11,000 cases with about 60 deaths. Masks are mandatory and the border is closed to all but CR citizens returning home.
Oh! A couple more things! Here's Sue having her first EVAH meet-and-greet with a vaca (pronounced baca)! Our neighbor Jorge is holding her (the vaca, not Sue).
Here's the carro (gotta really roll those double r's!) that 5 of us chipped in on - a 1998 (or 97?) Honda CRV. You would be shocked at how expensive very-used cars are here!
And lastly, here's me picking aguacates (avacados) at Heather's casa.
PURA VIDA!
By the time we moved in we had a baño (bathroom) with a toilet and lavamano (sink), a refrigerator, stove, and TV. We also had beautiful twin beds made out of cedro by our woodworking friend Kevin. Cedro is cedar, but it's not the same as the cedar in the US. We bought the mattresses at a local place in Tilaran called Curacao and asked Eduardo, the sales guy, for measurements to give to Kevin for the beds. You can't really count on standards here in Costa Rica. Eduardo gave me measurements that we passed on to Kevin, and, voila! the bed frames are too narrow for the mattresses. Pura vida! For now the mattresses are kind of perched on top of the frames instead of nestling down onto the slats. We have come up with a few solutions but we haven't been motivated enough to implement any of them.
We also had two front puertas (doors) made out of cedro by Hernan's brother Ronald. Hernan seems to have countless brothers who do beautiful woodworking, as does Hernan himself, but Hernan is currently muy occupado (very busy) on another construction site so he recommended Ronald. We have two front puertas because the house can be used as two units... eventually. In the photo below you can see the main front puerta as well as a couple of the new ventanas (windows) and one of the sliders. The ventana in the middle is an old one that hadn't been replaced yet. You can also see that the materials on the floor are primarily metal. The only madeira (wood) in the casa (so far) is the door frames and doors. Eventually we'll also have shelves and furniture made out of madeira, but nothing structural. The termites will NOT eat this casa again! The parts of the paredes (walls) that have color are part of the original casa.
For the two back puertas (one out of each bathroom to get to the outside shower) we cheated to save money and bought unfinished pino (pine) puertas at the ferreteria. Sue did the sanding, staining, and varnishing so that they are the same color as the puertas de cedro, although not the same quality. Termites don't eat cedro - it's too hard - we'll have to see how long the puertas de pino last. Sorry for the messy room in the photo below, but you can see the cedro beds and one of the puertas de pino. This room is the main room of the back (studio) apartment. The small cocina (kitchen) is the room to the left, and the baño is straight ahead on the right. There was no door on the baño yet - that took us about 3 weeks to get - another puerta de pino LOL.
Another issue when we moved in was that we had no screens in the seven 'clerestory windows' high up in the ceilo raso (ceiling). Michael-the-window-guy was apparently muy occupado with other orders and hadn't delivered them yet. This was no biggie during the day, but those nighttime insectos were a bother. We would sleep with our sheets pulled up over our heads. Some nights there were pretty large beetles, some nights there were mosquitos, and some nights flying ants. I really can't remember how many days (nights) this lasted before Michael came and installed the screens, but I do remember I was just about to buy real mosquito netting when he showed up and we no longer had to hide from los insectos de noches.
For the whole month of Junio, we had the hombres work on the front half of the house while we lived in the back apartment. They had to finish the paredes (walls), the cielo raso, and also seal up openings in the techo (roof) under the eaves. Finishing one wall had to wait for a momma clay-colored robin to finally decide her eggs were never going to hatch. They got all that done, and they installed canoas (gutters) on two sides of our techo, and then we called it quit. We are continuing to do small, targeted projects, but anything big will have to wait until proximo añ
o (next year).
On the wildlife front, we are very excited to have perezosos (sloths) and monos (monkeys) make appearances in the trees behind our casa. There's a momma perezoso carrying a baby that we've seen 2 or 3 times, plus a solo perezoso.
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| A lone two-toed perozoso (sloth) behind the casa |
The monos (actually, mono congos - howler monkeys) move around based on the food supply, so they show up for a few days, and then show up again.
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| Howler monkey hanging around behind the casa |
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| Three howler monkeys taking an afternoon siesta |
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| The big male of the troop howling (no audio - use your imagination) |
And that's pretty much what fills our time. We are in a very safe area here in CR - out in the campo (countryside) where there are more vacas (cows) than personas. Our canton of Tilaran (like a county) has only 2 active cases of the virus right now, and the whole country has had just over 11,000 cases with about 60 deaths. Masks are mandatory and the border is closed to all but CR citizens returning home.
Oh! A couple more things! Here's Sue having her first EVAH meet-and-greet with a vaca (pronounced baca)! Our neighbor Jorge is holding her (the vaca, not Sue).
Here's the carro (gotta really roll those double r's!) that 5 of us chipped in on - a 1998 (or 97?) Honda CRV. You would be shocked at how expensive very-used cars are here!
And lastly, here's me picking aguacates (avacados) at Heather's casa.
PURA VIDA!
