Author Archives: Britton

New Trail Near Ramseier Farm Park in Greeley

They are building a new trail/path  near our house. The trail is by the Ramseier Farm Park that they just recently finished. The park has a nice long walking path that circles the 15 acres. On one side of the park is an irrigation ditch, ditch #4 I believe. Cassie and I often walked the ditch after visiting the park.

What they are doing is making a concrete trail that links the park’s trails with the ditch. I have a feeling they may eventually link that up with the Poudre River trail which would be awesome for us!


New Concrete Pathway


Before…This is what it looked like a few years ago -just a weedy ditch trail

The Poudre Trail goes along the Poudre River all the way to neighboring towns of Windsor and Fort Collins.  This would link our neighborhood with it!  It makes walking or biking a lot easier/safer to get to other areas. I think we may have been one of the first to use it as it hasn’t been advertised as open yet. We are ready for summer bike riding once again!


Putting America to Work

Ideas for the Wood House in Rincón

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

Schnoodle Takes a Digger

Lately Schnoodle has been waking up at around 1-3am and wanting to be let out.  She barks until someone wakes up.   Her vision is deteriorating, her hearing is gone and it makes it really hard to communicate with her.  Her sense of touch works, and her nose still works pretty well.   Overall she still seems pretty happy to be around and spends most of her day asleep.


Schnoodle near the window well outside

Last night it was my turn to let her out.  I imagine taking care of old Schnoodle is sort of like caring for a newborn baby. So I let her out and she ran around in the fresh snow in the backyard.  I wait until she barks to be let back in and in a few minutes she did bark.  She wasn’t at the back door though.  She was about 10 feet off and standing near the window well.  I could sense what was about to happen.  She thought that the edge of the window well was the back step.

I put my slippers on and started to go outside to stop her.  Sadly there was no way I could have gotten to her in time.  She fell straight down into the window well.

She hit with a thud and then let out a yelp.  I ran inside and downstairs as quickly as I could.  I wasn’t sure how bad a 3-4 foot fall would be on our poor old Schnoodle!  I called for Cassie and opened the window in the basement. She had already gotten up so I figured she wasn’t too bad off.  I got a towel and wrapped her up and took her inside.

When I saw her fall head first and heard that thump, I really though that was the end of poor ol Schnood.  Amazingly, though she is doing just fine today like nothing ever happened.

Rincon House Considerations and Updates

Well Cassie and I are still in the afterglow of our time in Rincon especially since we are in the depths of winter here in Colorado. Lately we have been going over plans on how to remodel the wood house.  If we move a bathroom, pour some concrete and redo the interior and roof we think we could make something pretty cool.  We would save quite a bit of money and make something special.  Saving money would put us a lot closer to moving, which is the goal.


The house from the road in (with the ocean view as a backdrop)

We haven’t seen a whole lot of wood houses in PR.  In Rincon however, they do exist throughout Puntas so it is do-able, possible and not entirely crazy.  Our first thoughts about keeping the wood house revolved around the idea that, wood houses in tropical areas don’t last.  After seeing the current wood house that has been there 20+ years and the wood that has been protected still looks fresh, we are starting to change our opinion.

Not a whole lot going on here.  It’s winter and most people are staying inside.  We had a good time with friends watching the super bowl and having get togethers, but we are ready for spring already!