Category Archives: Work

Are We Hillbillies or What?

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We are nearing the very end of the house demolition project. However, now that the house is basically just pieces of wood on the ground, everything else about our life is totally disordered. That’s what happens when you live “on-site,” I suppose.

Working in Paradise

Thursday was the craziest with activity and lots of hammer drilling from about 7am to 7pm, so Friday we needed a break (and I think the workers did too)!

But it wasn’t a true break, because I still needed to get laundry done amidst all the chaos that was left behind. I was getting a bit snippy with Britton about my “less than ideal” ability to wash and hang laundry and he stopped me in my tracks and said, “Wait, I need to get a photo of this.” Yep, it is pretty hilarious. And a good reminder to not take things too seriously. Everything will get sorted out….eventually! And if we turn into hillbillies in the process, so be it!

Crazy laundry and turkeys
Crazy acres is the life for me! 🙂

The cool thing about living amidst all the construction progress is that you get to know everyone pretty well. Well enough that when the guys heard that I had never had “pitorro” (which they pronounced pitojo), the next day they brought a bottle of it for us and a bottle for them and we all took shots (a very small one for me) from the same metal cup and said “salud!” Pitorro is like Puerto Rican moonshine and everyone has a different recipe for it. This one tasted pretty good and sweet and was made with tamarind and parcha juice, but it did pack a punch. An only in Puerto Rico experience for sure.

PitorroYou can’t be a true hillbilly until you’re drinking the local moonshine, right? 🙂

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House is Nearly Gone and New Electric Project

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Life has been pretty hectic around here lately. We are used to a pretty mellow and peaceful pace, but lately we have had crews of people in and around the property from sun up until sometimes past dark. While Britton and I are not doing very much of the labor ourselves (a major difference as well!), it is still pretty chaotic and stressful to have everything around you totally disrupted and noisy. Still,  things must get messy before they get pretty; it is how progress gets made after all. And we are very thankful for all the help we have had in moving towards these goals.

Missing house
Not much left!

The house is nearly gone. They are down to just the very last few beams and posts and a little clean up work. We plan to keep the lower shed room as a storage space and laundry room for the time being, but otherwise, everything will be gone super soon. It is so weird how much it is already transforming this space.

Ugly old electric line

The next thing we had to consider was the electrical line that runs from the wood house to our cabana. If we were to leave it, it would just be a pole sticking up connected to the street pole that traversed from the house through a tube under ground to the cabana. In order to take down the rest of the house, we need to remove it as well and have an electrical pedestal installed that connects directly to the cabana. We talked with an electrician who happens to be the father of one of the workers and he said he would be able to fix it. So in addition to our house demolition team hammering and tossing boards, we also had the electrical team digging trenches and sawing into our little concrete cabana. Talk about chaos!

Drilling into the house
Dust flying as the house was being sawed to the breaker box

The pedestal will be installed near the gate and will be very close to the road electrical line thereby removing the line that shoots downward where the house once stood.

work site and Pedestal from the road

After the house is down, the wood is stacked and protected from the rain, the shed is finished and the electrical system is rigged up, I think Britton and I are ready for a bit of a Christmas break! Whew!

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Back to Work: Cabana Bridge

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Britton slowly has been recovering from his recent illness and so we wanted to take it easy on our next project around the property. We decided it was time to work on the cabana bridge. This was a relatively small project and almost completely done under shade, a definite plus in the heat of this time of year.

Bridge 2
The bridge before (with a little help from our feathered turkey friends)

The cabana bridge connects to the roof of the cabana that we live in and is accessed near the gate of the property under the big mango tree. The wood boards that were on the bridge were starting to decay at the nail head area and some of the wood in other areas as well.

Because we have been doing some deconstruction on the wood house, we have quite a bit of extra nice treated wood lying around. So we counted and cut some of the pieces and then set about waterproofing them with sealant.

Cassie and Boards

Then Britton peeled up most of the boards leaving just a few to stand on while he painted the lower beams.

BK spray

Finally he nailed in the “new” non-rotted boards and waterproofed the long hand railing board as well.

Bridge 1 after

I think it turned out really nice and will be much sturdier to cross. The turkeys had fun crossing the bridge and playing on the cabana while we were up there working. They like to follow us wherever we go. They climbed to the top railing of the cabana (another future project) and took turns jumping and flapping down. It was pretty funny.

Turkey on the cabana roof
The turkeys are always our companions on outdoor projects

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Gutting the Wood House

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We have made some major progress on the deconstruction/cleaning/gutting of the wooden house. We hired our friend Dave again, who had helped us remove the deck bathroom and he is a champ! I know we wouldn’t be nearly as far as we are now without his help and knowledgeable advice.

BK and Dave 1
Lots of stuff to remove

Britton worked with him about half the time, and they managed to tear down all the walls and floors of the upstairs bedroom as well as the whole kitchen area. Then they cleaned out the wall cavities which was a dirty job.

stairway
Stairwell

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Kitchen/Living area during deconstruction

The upstairs bedroom had at one point in time been inhabited by bats (though there were no living ones that we could find) and so the wall cavities were filled with about 4 trash bags worth of bat guano! There had also been five huge bee hives in the walls too, and while we had earlier had those removed, there was still some old dirty honeycomb left as well. I guess when no one lives in a house for 10+ years, nature starts to reclaim it!

IMG_0676
Upstairs bedroom with the bathroom removed and all the wall paneling

There is now a huge pile of wood that we have to sort and stack and we still have some major decisions to make about the wooden house. We haven’t put any money into its renovation yet, and so many choices still float out there.

IMG_0673

But it is moving along finally, and we love to see progress. The house is clearing out and feeling much better.

(And in case you were wondering, this- in and of itself, is not the teaser creative project though it is a part of it…)

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