Septic is IN

Wow, last week was very productive! Many thanks to Rob, Kent and our crew who gave up time off on Holy Week to put in our septic.

This is mostly a photo blog, so no real text to add. But the system is in, so one more item in getting our place to its first version of habitable.

One of the things we need to begin to scope out are details of our grey water system. But the urgency right now is low, with other priorities of the place to be done.

Our finishing plans are beginning to come together. Our 2009 trips are likely to be 4th of July week and Christmas week. Our work schedules make combining with the other holidays unworkable. But our desire is to be able to stay in our place over the fourth of July week, and enjoy being there to get things done. We hope to complete bedroom/bath #2 (lower right, next to the stair) before 2009 ends. We are intentionally deferring bedroom/bath #3 until 2010 since it is the shower chase that will be how we will manage electrical for Air Conditioning if we pursue that. Both trips this year (after the April trip) will be spent getting bedroom/bath #2 completed, and of course other details upstairs.

Assuming we're done on this trip, we can begin making our upper space rentable to vacationers.

So that's the report this week, updates within the week!


Ricardo y Jeeeem

Kitchen going in...

Hola!



The significant update is the kitchen going in just going into Holy Week in Costa Rica. The cabinets were delivered on Friday April 3rd. This first photo shows all the the items in Room #3 (Selva) since that is our standard staging room in the place. That is, Selva will be the last room completed.

While the windows are not yet in, all is weather secure and windows are next on the list of things happening, so the next Blog post should be showing progress putting those in place.

It is true, these cabinets have legs! They are safely off the floor and away from spills. Below them are these beautiful stainless panels that can be popped off for cleaning.

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The material, whose pattern you can see here, is a man-made material with a simulated wood finish. This particular cabinet is in the photo not only because it is a good closeup to see the finish, but that door pull in the middle is actually a really cool cabinet design. Inside is an S shaped part that holds a bunch of stuff.

This is the virtually completed cabinet installation. We think you can follow the locations of the refrigerator, stove with microwave above. The sink will be just under that wall cabinet on the left.

Windows should be going in shortly, no later than next week. I'll have another update on the 12th.

Ricardo y Jeeeem

Look Ma! No pictures!

A quick update on our project.

Much has come together in the past week or so. Our windows will begin going in fairly soon, probably starting between April 1 and April 6.

Dada Cucine, our kitchen contractor will begin installing the kitchen on April 1. Either along with the cabinets, or soon thereafter, the appliances will be delivered. So we've a lot going on!

Rob and Kent have been on their mandatory 90 day sabatical but will be back at Alazan Monday March 30.

Meanwhile, Dick and Jim have been busily organizing the major transfer of goods that will occur in late April. During this trip, Dick's sister/bro-in-law/mom will fly down for a couple of days. Since their needs are light, we've asked them to take bags down for us as well. We'll take four checked bags, they'll take five. But we'll be accomplishing a lot with that trip.

The things we're transporting are light fixtures, tools, plumbing fittings, etc, so that we can get started (and, regrettably only started), making the place habitable. We rehabbed our older Dewalt Cordless drill and so that will get its new home in CR. Dick bought an electric chain saw last Summer which we thoroughly cleaned up for transport, and are checking that as well.

Dick's family will largely have pots/pans; linens; dishes; flatware; towels and other items we don't need quite so quickly this trip.

Our goals are to get the upper toilet functioning, and upper shower; get our initial furniture delivered, and install many of the light fixtures. Ideally, we'll pick up a tank of propane, and set that up in the generator room - and if we're fortunate will get the stove running. We also plan to get the kitchen sink connected. Finally, we hope to work with Gerardo to get our upper bath vanity table built so we can start tiling that, and hook up a sink.

It is unlikely we'll be able to stay there this trip however. We land April 25th right around noon. We need to get to Sarchi - the furniture making town first so that we can settle on our furniture, and arrange transport to the coast early the following week. Then we'll return to San Jose, stay overnight at Casa Bella Rita; pick up our stowed items there and drive to the coast Sunday morning.

On Wednesday April 29th Dick's family will arrive. We'll head back to San Jose, pick them up; stay overnight at Casa Bella Rita and return to the coast Thursday. We should have two days of enjoying Costa Rica before heading back to SJO Saturday (May 2) afternoon. It will be a whirlwind week.

So April, the 12th month of construction, seems like most will come together. Ideally we'll have a septic system by the time we get there, and a local and more talented electrician will ensure the power is ready to our box.

Tentatively thinking of a July trip where we would actually stay at our casa, and jump in finishing all things upstairs, and perhaps start on the lower right bedroom finishing work. We would no doubt get back to Sarchi to arrange to get our upper storage closet built, and probably a few more things as well. If it seems like that trip won't happen, we'll have a design in hand for that cabinet for this April trip.

All for now!

Ricardo y Jeeeem

When the heck will this project be done already???

Hola!

Thank you all for following this blog for now close to 11 months. As predicted the time from getting the place undercover to finish appears to go very slow, even though many things are happening.

We have contracted for creation and installation of our windows and hope they will go in before March ends.

We have also been in touch with Dada Cocine, our kitchen place, and the GE Appliance store in San Jose. The kitchen is ready to go in and so is now in Dada's expediters hands. With tile and roof in place, even if windows are not done, they can install the kitchen cabinets. We are hoping that will be done yet in March as well.

What we hope will also occur before April 25th is installation of our septic tank/field. But the crews are very hard at work on other needs at Alazan, and that detail might not be finished by then. Since we've many, many things to do before plumbing will be online and fully ready for use, not having a septic will not be the worst thing.

Our friends Rob and Kent are hard at work with the crew down at the base of the mountain building the Guard House, and absent any photos from our project, please enjoy these views. Rob, Kent and Jim spent some time in concept about what sort of look that building might have. It has to serve multiple purposes. The upper floor is a residence for our new Alazan Concierge and his family. So that is a simple two bedroom, one bath home.

The lower portion is actually divided into two main sections. The portion behind the corrugated panels in the photo will be the new home for our SIX water entry tanks. Water comes from the water line along the road, and slowly fills the tanks below. Water is then pumped up to the top of the mountain to another six holding tanks, and is then gravity fed to the home sites. Managing it this way means we're not drawing high volume water from the main water line, so it can fill up slowly and not cause a hardship to others enjoying the water supply. The tanks ensure that if water supply is disrupted, we will still have water to Alazan. In the absolute worst case scenario, we might have to pay to have water trucked in to our tanks - but this beefy system should handle our needs.

The other half of the lower part is to hold future Alazan vehicles when we finally get them. It would be lovely to have our own back hoe down there. So if any of you are in a gifting mood, by all means, consider that to our little community. :-)

These final two photos are showing the great progress on the inside of the gate house. The white tile are the walls of the shower area, the red clay tiles the floor of one of the bedrooms.

Thanks for reading!

Ricardo y Jeeeem

Wow! The upstairs bath is tiled!

At last, we have tile in our upstairs bathroom. A beautiful looking job as well. Marvin was an exquisite hire for this job. He is pretty careful in finding level, and setting in place all this detail. Now, I acknowledge that in some of the closeup photos you'll observe some cases where lines are imperfect.


Understand thought that Marvin was doing this with fairly basic tools - eg: hand tools.


So, photo explainations. This first photo is of the shower stall area. That wood square right about showerhead level is actually looking through the window opening at the underside of the roof overhang. When the sideways louver glass window goes in, the fact that this wood is outside will be more apparent. For now, you can just catch that thin sliver of daylight at the bottom of that rectangle.


That color strip of small tiles is the same as we used on the shower floor. By doing this, we pretty much guaranteed that bathroom #3 will have somewhat different tile. No worries though, some variation will be nice.


Marvin did a perfect job getting the shower floor slope done in a way that runs all that water to the corner drain. Now, you may ask yourself, "why does he mention this?"... One of our observations for many places in Costa Rica is that whomever installs showeer floors often slopes it AWAY from the drain, not toward it. Yup, should be obvious but... Speaking of that

corner drain, why is it in the USA we tend to put those drains right below the spigot? We had noticed a number of places in Costa Rica favor corner drains and have come to really like them. That little square fitting is available right in Parrita, and is what we'll use in each of our bathrooms...

The other thing you'll notice in both of these photos is that not only is there a showerhead, but there is also a knee level spigot. We noticed this as a

popular option in Costa Rica as well. And where they are used, we found it a great way to adjust the shower temperature before having that spray of cool or ultra hot water hit our bodies. Plus, it is very useful if one is just washing feet (probably more useful in the lower levels). I think this second photo does a great job of showing the floor coloring.

When all is done, separating the shower space to the rest of the room will be a section of tempered glass with some sort of etched design on it rather than a full shower curtain. We've seen that in our friends Rob/Kent's place and really like the look. When we arrive in April, one of our early tasks will be to install the faucet and spigot/shower head. However, that tempered glass will have to wait. We have packed a spring loaded shower rod that will see duty as it makes its way into each of the bathrooms as this project unfolds.

This next photo is just a closeup of the faucet and showing, close-up, the look and texture of this tile. It does look like there is some cleanup opportunity that we'll probably work on from trip to trip over the next year. But on balance, a great job.

This next photo shows the shower space transitioning to the toilet (first black pipe coming back from the shower space). The second black pipe, smaller diameter, is where the sink drains to. This will put the rest of the pipe from the sink above the floor. We weren't too excited by this, but realize that the table holding the sink, towels, and storage will cover this pipe; and found that to be a more desirable option than boxing in the ceiling of the bedroom below to accomodate this drain.

The tile above the color strip was supposed to be textured wall. Our hope was to be able to introduce other colors in the space there, and make hanging a mirror easier. Unfortunately, it is tiled. Now, having said that, we still are loving the look, and think that the result will be at least equally beautiful if not more so. Imagine a dark wood framed mirror above the sink.

None of these photos will do well to show the two light fixtures that will go on these walls. But we purchased them on Feb 22nd while doing other errands in Milwaukee. The are technically an exterior light, but with a brushed nickel finish and a bit of nautical touch to their look. In a future post I'll show all the light fixtures. Then we can have a contest to match the fixtures to locations in the casita.

For the record, the toilet and sink are white. There is a fourth tile you've already seen in the finishes post; two posts ago; that will go onto the vanity top that will add a texture which combines the colors of the accent wall tile, and the shapes of the floor tile to draw this all together.


We're excited about the prospect of the completed photos since that is not horribly far away! However, while I had this particular blog post waiting for publication time; Rob sent the photo of the now finished shower. Those two larger tiles below the color band were added in after the photos above were taken. So this bathroom is shaping up to a finish!


Thanks for reading!


Ciao!



Ricardo y Jeeeem



ps - this final photo shows the two missing pieces now installed in the upstairs shower.

Furniture

During our January trip we had a GREAT furniture shopping trip to Sarchi - and town northwest of San Jose known for furniture builders. We spent the better part of a day checking out the various merchants looking for items we thought we would enjoy. There were a bunch of things we looked at, and where they would allow us, we took photos to remind us of things we liked.



We also got some ideas from friends homes in Costa Rica, and figure we'll apply some of those concepts as well.



After some hours of shopping, we saw the bed below, made of Guanacaste (a native Costa Rican tree; protected so it must be from a natural fall to obtain). The wood is much nicer in person than this photo conveys, but we really loved the detail and finish of this piece. We talked with the builder, and agreed to have him make complimentary side stands, taking some of the design queues he applied to this bed. This set then is the first of the furniture we bought.

Second to be purchased was a pair of leather/wood rockers along with a folding leather stool (get the image of a camp stool in your head). The leather is heavy and tooled, so presents an interesting finish. Our friends Rob and Kent have similar rockers, but with smooth leather. In part to not copy them, and in part because we like how the tooling looked, we bought a pair. But, regrettably, did not get a photo of them as the store wouldn't allow it, and we would have had to unpackage them to do a photo shoot before we left. So you'll have to wait until our late April trip to learn more.



Then we returned to one of the first stores we came to. During the day our concept of dining tables was to have a matching pair of square tables. But in the end we were liking either round or rectangular tables. The one below really caught our eye, and so we decided we would purchase it. In the same store they had some nice wood chairs with padded seat, in a pattern we could live with for a time (we assume we'll change that out before too many years pass). The backs were VERY comfortable, so we could imagine enjoying sitting in them for a long leasurely meal. We are assuming we will keep this near our kitchen, and that surface will do double duty when we need an expanded work surface. So we'll need to get a table for the veranda as well, but all in due time...







We liked this bed for its rustic feel, and are thinking of getting it or one similar for one of the first floor bedroom suites. There were complimentary side tables but I couldn't fit both the bed and side table photos in the same shot. Limited space in that store...


If we got this bed, our thinking would be to get a armour similar to this one which has hanging space above, some drawers, and a nice cabinet space with shelves. We could see this being useful for guests for who stay for a few days.

Finally, amongst Jim's favorites was this rocker we managed to get a photo of before the store owner chastised us for taking photos. This sort of style though might wind up on the lower verandas for one of the bedrooms.

Over time we'll buy more furniture and will post some of those photos when purchased, if they don't hit the casa too quickly and wind up on a completed room shot.

Anyway, thanks for visiting!

Ricardo y Jeeeem

Finishes

This is largely another photo blog. But in all our posting, we never shared the finishes that are now going into the place.

This first photo is of the main floor tile going on both first and second floors, and the steps. You've seen them at a distance since tiling started, but none so close up as this one. Still, colors aren't exactly true in this one, but at least show the detail and texture.

This next tile is a photo of that which will go on the bathroom walls, including the shower walls. We have two tile sizes, one larger, roughly 12x24 and these smaller 6x6 tiles.

This tile is for the shower floors (at least two of them). We may do something different in the third bathroom depending on how the supply lasts. During our last trip we decided to put a wainscoat of seven of these tiles behind the toilet and sink upstairs, and in the shower.

All of our lavatory sinks are the bowl on the countertop style. We have more than enough of this tile to do three counter tops, and still have some leftover. So potentially this will be the floor of bath #3 shower space. But the purchase was as table tops for our vanity. The tables will be steel (built by Gerardo) with white American Standard sinks and a very euro-looking Moen faucet mounted on the table deck.

All through Costa Rica are people who make baskets. So our intention is to have an upper towel glass shelf below the table, with a couple or three wicker basket "drawers" below those, and some free floor space below that. When the design moves beyond concept, will share that!

Our laundry will serve as the entry vestibule to the two lower bedroom suites. So we need it to have a clean finish, and to serve some utility beyond just being a laundry. The washer and dryer are energy efficient GE units that will go below a built in counter with tile on top and left side, and about 2" relief on front fascia.

In the center of this will be a stainless steel sink good for handwashing. We'll fashion a drying bar above so some things can be hung to dry, and others hung while taking out of the dryer.

We expect the counter to be deep enough to allow us to add some doors below to conceal the washer and dryer, along with plumbing of the sink; and to allow us to put a waste basket below for dryer lint... When we do this, we figure we'll build a similar item to obscure the water heater (which is small and handsome, but, still is a water heater). But initially these little finishes won't be in place...

So that's the start of our finishes.

thanks for reading!

Ricardo y Jeeeem