California 2 Puerto Rico

My mom gifted me with a $300 Home Depot gift certificate for my birthday and this is what is turned into:

I bought a ceiling fan for the guest bedroom, 6 bags of potting soil, 30 pots, 3 bags of grass seed, a spreader, gardening tool, gloves, 4 large citronella candles and some bug spray! The two plants in the picture are actually plants that Stefan pulled out of the cabrada (the little stream on our property) that we potted. I want to start growing some plants so we can landscape the hell out of our property. I want it to be lush, lush, lush! Thanks Robin! Woohoo!

Here is palm that I dug out of the cabrada and transplanted next to the front porch:

Although, I’ve received word that the poor palm is not doing so hot, so don’t get too attached to it…

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Last week when I was in Puerto Rico, Stefan and I bought all of the ceiling fans so that Florida Brian could install them. We spent close to $2000 on 8 fans (Have I mentioned how expensive building a house is lately?!), but having good fans in such a hot climate is essential. Well, just so has it, I got an email from Home Depot today announcing their big 4th of July sale, where all ceiling fans are 20% off…Damn the poor timing!! Oh well, I’m still happy with the fans that we picked out. Here is a picture of the ceiling fans that Brian installed for us in the great room:

I was a bit baffled when I received the picture above, since the fans are obviously on and as far as I know, we have no power to the house, but it turns out that Brian rigged some sort of converter so that we can power the house via our generator (although the generator is too loud to run at night).

Also note that the kitchen has drywall! Yay!

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Stefan, Brian and Brian have been busting their butts working on the house this last week (Stefan has been too tired to update the blog each night, but he said he would post all the new pictures tonight). They are currently working on drywalling the upstairs guest bedroom, guest bathroom and kitchen, installing shower/tub/sink and tiling the guest bath. I think they are also knocking out walls and rearranging the master bedroom/bathroom.

After talking to Stefan last night, it looks like we are burning through the $30K that we saved for this project, pretty damn quickly. So, I got this idea! I made the “Help Build Casa Descanso Verano” widget, which will allow people to donate cash to help us build our house! It will be a sort of “Sponsor a Piece of our House” type deal, where when a donation is made, I will list who made the donation (or it can be anonymous), how much was donated and what part of the house that donation paid for (The list can be viewed on our “Contributors” page). Doesn’t that sound like fun?!

Stefan and I don’t desperately need donations and if push comes to shove, we can get a loan, but I just thought that this would be a fun way to get our family, friends and blog readers directly involved in the construction of our house :). (If you’re looking for a charity, here are a few good ones: Surfrider, ASPCA, Canine Companions and Charity Navigator)

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The Spanish word of the day is: Cascasda, which means “waterfall”.

Cascada is “waterfall” in Spanish. It’s actually a small waterfall, a large waterfall is a “catarata”.

Example of how to use “cascada”:

En mi cumpleaño, Stefan, Josh y yo fui a la catarata - On my birthday, Stefan, Josh and I went to the waterfall.

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This week Brian and Brian are flying in to help apply their expertise to the house. Brian (from Florida) has already been down once and kicked ass wiring the house and hooking up all of the electrical to help it pass inspection and get it ready to go. He is flying in today to finish up the electrical work and help us install all of our ceiling fans, lighting, major appliances and help finish wiring the house for a central stereo system and our CAT5.

Brian (from California) is flying in on Monday (same day Summer leaves) and he is going to help with everything. Brian’s is going to help us plan the finishing stages of the house (before we close up the walls), help us make a decision on the Dry Wall dilemma and hopefully either help us build the steps (we need to figure out which wood we are going to use to trim out the rest of the house with so we can use that on the steps) or help us start the bathrooms.

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We went on an all day adventure to Mayaguez two days ago looking for the plumbing we needed for our new showers. We have 3 bathrooms to buy for and the master bath has a double headed shower. We checked out Home Depot and Sears but couldn’t find anything we liked. The options down here are very limited, so we are going to have to buy them online, have them shipped and then get our plumber to install the fixtures.

While we were at Sears, we took a walk through of the Borders looking for magazines that could give us some ideas for our kitchens and bathrooms. Luckily, Summer happened upon this book, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Building Your Own Home”, so we are now clear as far as knowing how to build our house. Phew….

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Happy Birthday Summer, let’s go to the waterfalls and enjoy a day off from the house and work. I love you baby!

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After making 2 runs to aguadilla (I forgot the bank check the first time)we paid for our new poles and got our paperwork from the elec companies payment center. Now I have to take our paperwork to the other office on Friday to get the ball rolling. Once we get the poles and lines(anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months) and our letter stating it is done I then have to go back and apply for a meter box.This will allow them to charge me for electricity through the lines and poles I just paid them to put in.
It just all seems a bit backwards to me.

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At this point in the construction phase, we need to get our walls upstairs closed up. We looked into doing stucco walls just because everyone around here uses stucco on their block constructed houses, but we really didn’t want to have all cement style walls. We both grew up with with drywall and we really think it would feel more like home with drywall. The only problem down here with using drywall in such a humid climate is we could potentially have moisture/mold problems in a couple of years. Our solution is to use “green board”, the same type of material used on the walls of bathrooms. It is moisture resistant and has the same finish as drywall once it is in. It costs about $1.50 more per sheet (4×8) but is well worth the extra couple of hundred bucks once all is said and done.

We have contacted 3 drywall contractors for estimates, but two of them have been hard to tie down for an estimate. The one guy that showed up last week gave us an estimate yesterday. For supplies, we are looking at about $3,000. Here is where it gets kinda screwy, he wants $12,000 for the labor. When he told us, I though we may have lost something in translation, but when he handed over the paperwork, there it was…a 12 with three zeros. With that said, we NEED to get more estimates or consider doing the work ourselves. There is no way we are going to be able to drop $15k on this phase of the house. If we did that, we would have to skip one of the other steps…like the kitchen!

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Today we have a few things on the agenda.
1. See custom woodworker about doors to back porch and interior doors (we need the back porch door so we can stucko the back wall and paint it white
2. Go to Sears and Home Depot to pick out our Shower fixtures (for the plummer)
3. Meet Mark to transplant a bunch of plants
4. Pots/Potting Soil for our plants at home depot
5. Meet with Electrician to get “Official” certification
6. Meet with Popo for another Dry Wall Estimate

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