I was driving into work today while day dreaming about the house in Rincon. I was thinking about what to do with the wood house and specifically about what to do about the interior walls.
The wall cavity between the outer siding and the inner panels/drywall seems to make a great place for bees, rats and bats to live. This is a problem, because while I don’t have anything against any of those things in general, I don’t want them to live with me.
We know we are going to paint the inside of the house white to brighten it up. The inside has never been painted and is all a natural wood color so it tends to be pretty dark. I thought…”well who the hell needs drywall? Or wood paneling?”. Here in Colorado we need that space to insulate us from the outside which gets pretty darn cold. The only purpose it really serves in our Rincon house is to cover up the studs and apparently make nice nests for pests.
It is fairly hard to locate pictures of what I have in mind but I did find a few. Here is the idea
Basically remove the existing panels and drywall, clean everything out and paint. Done. It also provides shelf space.
Now, I am not sure we would do this in every room, but we don’t have to. Some of the wood paneling can just be painted white and some can removed and the empty cavity painted.
Snow’s been coming down and it has been pretty cold. That means lots of movies and reading. And thinking about Puerto Rico.
For a peek into our mind, here are some of our books:
I think these monthly reflections on why we continue to stay in Colorado working are especially helpful this month. Britton’s work load has dramatically increased as his team has decreased from five people to two. At the same time, we have realized that really we have enough resources to move to Puerto Rico now, if we want to.
That’s a great feeling, after all, who can argue with having too many choices?! But sometimes it makes the choices a little harder than when your hand is forced. So, even with the added stress, we continue on day by day, week by week, month by month, and hopefully within about one year, we will be there. But I told Britton that if we need to adjust the time table for any reason, I am completely flexible. After all, it’s just us! We can create our lives however we want! Isn’t that awesome (and a little scary)!?
This isn’t our bathroom, but it’s kind of cool in a strange jungly way
So this month we are focusing on working and saving for the bathroom remodels that desperately need completed in all three of the bathrooms at the property in Puerto Rico.
The first bathroom we will finish up is in the concrete cabana. Really, this bathroom is not too bad. It needs a new toilet because it is cracked and leaks a little water. I would also like to tile the shower area and add a better hot water solution rather than just the Duromatic electric water heater. Maybe we could even add shelving or a vanity stand for the sink. I don’t know if I have any pictures of the bathroom the way it is now, but you can see it a little in this video we took of the cabana.
If you’ve already seen this video, you can skip to 2:35 to see the cabana bathroom again
Those changes shouldn’t take too long or be too costly and will be some of the first things we do when we arrive. The bathroom in the upstairs bedroom of the wooden house and the bathroom that is located on the northern deck are much bigger projects. For one thing, the upstairs bathroom will need to be completely remodeled. The toilet is disgusting and the sink is tiny. But the biggest thing about a “master bathroom” that would be nice would be to have a shower of some sort. The bathroom on the deck will either need to also be completely dismantled and/or remodeled.
Here is the video of the wood house and the bathroom on the deck as it is now as well as a video that shows the upstairs bedroom immediately after the bee removal:
Wooden house main level with deck outdoor bathroom @ about 2:00
Upstairs after bee removal including tearing into the bathroom wall -bathroom at about :50
Suffice it to say it is a big mess and a big project. But it is not impossible. Britton and I have done many a bathroom remodel in our rentals. Houses are not magical things. They are just a sum of their parts. It’s just for the purpose of saving up of the sum -of money- that we continue to work in Colorado. But as this weather continues to get chillier and the saving gap closes, we are getting really close to leaving!
Well we’ve completed another month and as such we are coming up with another goal that we are working for. In previous months we’ve worekd for a new roof and to pay our taxes. This month we decided that it would be a good idea to come up with a solution to what appears to be high energy bills in PR.
We are planning on living on a budget and it would appear that the utilities might take up quite a bit of that. So this month I figured it would be a good idea to save up for some solar panels.
We don’t plan on using too much electricity other than for a few fans, a new refrigerator, music, charging laptops and using computers and lights. Of course there will be other things like dishwashers, various kitchen appliances and the like. I don’t even need to be off grid, I just want to off-set some of the long term subscription costs so I will have to start thinking about a design.
From what I read on CA2PR’s blog, electricity in Puerto Rico costs 29¢ a kilowatt-hour. I think we pay around 4¢ here in colorado if you stay under 500kwh, everything above that gets billed at 9¢. So the cost of electricity is quite a bit higher!
