Monthly Archives: February 2012

Photo Concepts of Wooden Tropical Houses

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It’s kind of fun to start thinking about how the wood house could transform from a sort of scary (no help from bats, bees and a dead lady), dark and stale place to a light, airy, fun and inviting home. But sometimes I need a little help “seeing” the end result. It is for that reason that Britton and I make sketches and I also look for comparables. I found these photos of other wooden houses in the tropics and thought they were really cool. I could totally imagine aspects of these in our house in Rincón.


I like the deck and staircase in this one. Sort of a Swiss-Family Robinson look


I like the nice floors and the white contrast against the wood. I also like the open and light feeling and the ceiling fan would be a must in the current high ceilings of both the living room and the upstairs bedroom/loft


I like the way this looks underneath. Not sure where this would incorporate in with our wooden house though


I like the contrast of the tropical vegetation against the wood. Britton says he would like to paint the house a blue color, but I kind of like the stained wood look found in these pictures.

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Ideas for the Wood House in Rincón

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Cassie and I have been brainstorming for what we’d like to do with the house.  We’ve told how we go back and forth on either tearing it down and building a concrete place from scratch or working with what we’ve got.

Lately we have been leaning towards working with what we’ve got.  It would move us quicker to our goal of moving to Rincón to keep what we have and simply remodel it.  There are a few things we would like to achieve.

  • A main floor bathroom.
  • A better bathroom in the master bedroom
  • More space / Separate living space
  • More light / brighten it up

We are pretty much certain that we’d take the bathroom that was built on the deck down.  It seems like too much of an add-on and doesn’t really fit.  So what we’d do is just move it to the side of the house and integrate it into the main house structure.  We can make an entrance to it from the inside of the house and from the deck.

The bathroom in the upstairs bedroom is only a toilet and a sink.  We can extend the room and reconfigure that bathroom to take up more space.  We can put in a shower or bath so that the master bedroom upstairs is a bit more complete.  We are thinking about also adding an upper deck off the master bedroom.

We can pour a concrete floor under the house, then close in the lower area and frame rooms and a bathroom.   This would provide more living space and/or a separate living area which could be used for visitors when they stay with us.

As far as more light, we will take out some of the shutter windows and put in more traditional glass windows on the ocean side.  We are thinking about also putting in a glass sliding door to let more light in.  I’ve seen some of them that are rated for hurricane force impacts.  I’d have to do more research on the windows available and how they hold up in high winds, but adding slots for storm shutters /plywood would be part of the plan.

Here is a rough sketch of what we were thinking.


Bathroom on side and deck off upstairs master

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Our Fast Fast

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We finished our juice fast a little earlier than we had planned. We went 5 days instead of 7. The weekend is much more difficult to fast than during the week because a lot of our activities on the weekend revolve around food: making breakfast together, going out to lunch, getting coffee or frozen yogurt, hanging out with friends (and food of course), etc. And this weekend was a three-day one with the holiday. So we went all of Saturday through Sunday night when we broke the fast with some Orange Roughy fish as our first non-fruit or vegetable.


Orange roughy and vegetables for dinner

I think we did pretty good overall. We feel a lot lighter and cleaned out. As we added more food today such as an omelet from our chickens’ eggs, we noticed flavors a lot more. It feels really good to  be cleaned out and start fresh. It definitely makes you want to eat healthier and without added sugars, salts and oils/fats. We made an avocado, tomato, pepper salad (in photo) and didn’t even need to add any salt. We just put a little cumin, garlic and lime juice into it and it was great!

I think I would do another juice fast sometime in the future if we start to feel lethargic or like we are getting into our old eating patterns. Britton said he would start to feel pretty hungry around 3pm in the afternoon but once we drank more juice he would feel a lot better. We also found the fruits and vegetables that we really like including carrot juice! We found this 25 lb bag of carrots at King Soopers for only $9!

We are planning on continuing to juice daily as a replacement for some of our meals or as a supplement. These juices are really great and give a lot of the benefits of the whole plant. In addition, Britton lost about 10 lbs and I lost about 5! That wasn’t the main purpose of this fast, but a nice side benefit. We have also been a lot more appreciative of food in general and especially of good,  healthy food in particular. If you’ve ever been curious about a juice fast, I would recommend it whole-heartedly, especially if you have a surplus of fresh fruits or veggies.

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Our House in Rincon Circa 1990

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When we closed on our house in Rincon, the owner gave us an envelope with some pictures of the wood house during its construction and when it was just finished. We think it was built around 1990 based on what we’ve heard and a diary we found left in the house written by the previous owner. These pictures are pretty cool, so I thought I would share them with you so you can get an idea of what it looked like fresh and new.


Unpainted and no windows but pretty much the same otherwise


The house during construction from the road


Look how fresh the deck was! (And the cute puppy!)


Upstairs bedroom during construction


Living room area during construction


Looking toward the kitchen and back bedroom


The house shortly after it first went for sale (2001)

What’s really surprising is how well it has lasted over 20+ years! It does need a new roof and a new deck for sure, but otherwise, everything that was protected from the rain has stayed remarkably well-preserved. It definitely could look at least this good again, and I think Britton and I have pretty good “vision” for properties, so we could make it even cooler. It’s kind of fun looking at old pictures like this and thinking about what we were doing in elementary school at that time. And how our life paths merged to this point. Kind of neat.

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