I got home from my travels last night around 10:30pm. Summer was at work service all day and still managed to straighten up the house and have sushi and saki waiting for us when I got home. It was awesome and it is awesome to be hanging with summer again (although she is at work service all day today).
I started sorting and packing this morning after a surf with Conner, the Smythe, Ford and Noah. The waves were small but it was good to get wet. I always have a hard time starting projects, but once I get going and am in motion, it is hard for me to stop until they are done.
I started organizing my surfboards and packing my t-shirts, shorts, jeans etc when I decided I wanted some music. My computer stereo is already at the office in Puerto Rico so I went out to the van, got the RCA plug to hook my iPod into my stereo and opened up my back pack (reminds me of a Dora the Explorer episode, that’s another story though) and started foraging through all the pockets looking for the ipod and guess what i found? My christmas present from shawn…a kershaw lock blade that I have been using on the daily basis in Puerto Rico around the house. It was quite ironic, because I was just thinking, (me thinking) “where did i leave my knife? I don’t want that to get misplaced while the guys are moving the stuff around in the house to finish screwing in the drywall.”
I couldn’t believe it, my big ass knife made it through airport security all the way from Puerto Rico to San Diego. It is ironic that i was held up in san diego by airport security for a box of surf wax on the last trip and this time, I had a (potentially deadly) weapon and it made it through no problem. I am thankful no one found it or i would have had to throw it away…but it is pretty scary that the Airport Security missed that one.
See the knife at the bottom of the bag?
I know you see the knife now
How did security miss this?
I am heading back to San Diego for 6 days to help pack, sell or throw away everything Summer and I have left (which is a lot). I am in the JFK airport kicking it on Jet Blues wireless access plugged into a “Samsung” sponsored outlet station.
While I am gone, Mark and Jerry will be working on;
1. Screwing all of the drywall/greenboard in to get ready for the taper/mudder (tray) that will start his first of 3 coats on Monday (including top edging and round bullnose corners on all the open doorways/walls).
2. Hang T-111 around the new master closet along with the “foil insulation”
3. Replacing all the mud rings on the electrical/rj-45 sockets downstairs to accomodate a 1/4 inch of smoothed cement to cover the block
4. Jerry and Papo will start applying a finish coat of cement to the block walls in Summers office (to be) then mine, then the bathroom.
Before I left;
1. I met up with Louis a woodworker in Rincon…he has some amazing old Mahogony french doors that he is going to refinish so we can use them to get to our back porch.
2. Set up an estimate for custom cabinets from him (cheaper than Home Depot particle cabinets)
3. Got the plumber to come and size up where the toilet and 2nd sink holes need to be drilled and the piping
4. Met with Gino who is going to put in our shower pan in the Master (double drain)
5. Paid the parking ticket Summer and I got while we were at the Lawyers office in Rincon
There are two things that made redesigning the Master Bedroom and guest bath possible.
1. Our house is all wood framed upstairs
2. The only weight bearing walls are the two off the great room and the outside of the house.
With that in mind, look at the first before picture before we re framed the wet room, removed the closet, enclosed the little porch, and built the walk-in closet.
I didn’t really notice this until afterwards, but look how long and skinny the bathroom was. We would have been squeezing in any kind of “over sized tub” into the corner and it would have looked ghetto. We also wouldn’t have had room for a his and hers sinks and I don’t ‘think’ we would have had enough closet space for summer and I.
Now, we have a walk-in closet that we will have to do some cedar built-ins because of the high humidity down here. We opened up two windows to the bedroom that were blocked by the old wall. If we left the wall up, we would have lost all of our cross breezes entering the front of the house (where the trade winds blow from) and getting sucked out the back windows. We also wouldn’t have had the bad ass set-up we have now. It might be hard to see this in the below pictures (maybe a video will make it easier to picture…or a visit!) but the way the room is set up now, when we sit in the jacuzzi now we will be able to see out the windows with the crossbreeze and still have the rest of the vaulted ceilings and master bedroom making you feel like you are in a giant room (as opposed to boxed in like the old set-up).
The water closet will have a door (our old plan was to leave it all open), the toilet and a two headed shower that will take up the entire back end of the room. It will be 5ft wide by 4.5 ft long. Frame it in a little and big clear glass doors with the river rock floor and travertine walls…it is going to be an insane bathroom!
We are looking into what type of granite we can get down here (and how much) so we can do a teak or mahagony finish on the front of the jacuzzi and top it/back splash it with granite. Hardwood floors throughout the entire house (to make it feel more open/big) with no interuption right to the woodwork at the bottom of the jacuzzi. Very exciting stuff…i’ll stop yapping. Check out the other pictures.
Trying to envision the house complete is much harder than I thought now that I have been in there working everyday. We are ready to tile the guest bath and get the entire guest side of the house up and ready to go so we can live in a completed part of the house while we finish the rest of it. While Brian was down here he suggested we do river rock floors in the bathrooms and travertine walls. Here are some pictures to give you an idea of what we may do.
River Rock for the floors
Travertine for the walls
Not much time to post today, but I wanted to show you this video walk through of the house. Brian has been working us hard and has brought a new life to the house. He has re-designed our master bath to fit a big jacuzzi tub, enclosed the double headed shower and toilet into a “wet closet” and ripped down the old walls that led to the closet and old bath. We then framed in the little deck off of the master bedroom and have made that into the master walk-in closet.
We finished drywalling the kitchen, guest bedroom, guest bathroom (including cement board and prepping for the tile) and the master bedroom, bathroom and closet. Lots of work…check it out.
I happened upon josplumbing, which I think is an EXCELLENT internet marketing idea by Kohler.
The interactive website let’s you pick items from the bathroom and flush them down a toilet. Sounds strange, but check it out. After flushing random items (including a bra, rubber duckie, flowers, dog food and more), I thought, “I want a toilet like this!”, and just so happens we are in the market for a toilet for the master bathroom…Very slick marketing, indeed!
I’m getting a lot more comfortable with speaking Spanish. Even though I’m back in California, I’ve been speaking Spanish to anyone that will listen :). Today I ordered a burrito in Spanish (baby steps…haha):
“Quisera un burrito de frijoles, arroz, lechuga y tomate. Y zanahorias tambien, por favor. Para llevar. Gracias”
“I would like a burrito of bean, rice, lettuce and tomato. And hot carrots too, please. To go. Thank you!”
I’ve always been somewhat shy to bust out Spanish (at least in CA), because I’ve always felt like people whose 1st language is Spanish are a part of this secret club that I don’t belong to. I’m joining your club damn it! Like it or not! Actually, I’ve found that when I speak Spanish, it surprises people at 1st and then they are really nice to me and are happy to help me learn, which is really cool.
I’ve been doing work service for San Diego county lately and there is almost always a communication gap between the men that speak only Spanish and the officers who speak only English, so I’ve been trying to help them communicate and it’s actually getting much easier for me. And then I bug the people that speak English and Spanish with questions all day:
“Como se dice spider en Espanol” (How do you say spider in Spanish?)
I found out that “spider” is araña in Spanish and araña is also commonly used for soft leaf rakes. Learn something new everyday, eh?
When Brian Mangen showed up, we had just finished most of the rough in work (electricity, plumbing etc) and we didn’t really have much direction. I knew it was time for drywall and we were getting quotes, but that was about where we were. Summer came down for the week and we didn’t work much in that time. It was great spending time together, we don’t get to do that much these days, so I was guilt free shopping for fixtures and kicking it with Summer.
My plan was to finish the bathroom downstairs (we are going to make it all white and sterile looking so I couldn’t mess up the decor), finish up the offices (so I can stop renting an office once we got power/phone/DSL) and get the kitchen started (custom wood worker, appliances, etc).
Brian has been remodeling houses for a long time and has done quite a few of his own homes while living in them, like I am doing now. He re prioritized my list. Our goal this week is to finish the Guest Bath and Guest room so I can have at least one part of the house that is done in order to keep my sanity. Also, when summer comes down we will have a full bath (Bathtub and all!) to enjoy instead of using the outside shower and the toilet in a framed off soon to be a bathroom. From there we will finish drywalling the great room and master (we are framing in the walk in closet and water closet) and I will move my be into the master and have the guest room as an office. Simultaniously (hopefully) we will be getting electricity and I will be able to put a fridge in the house (no more dirty coolers and 3 bags of ice a day) and wait for our cabinets. From there, when the money is there, we’ll open up the floor, put in the staircase and finish the offices, bathroom and great room (Media Room) downstairs.
The only thing we will complete downstairs is screening all the windows and covering all the holes critters and mosquitos can fly in through so we can start sleeping without nets….and the laundry room.
Here are some pictures of the guest bath upstairs.
Want a bathtub for your house? Easy enough right? Ehhhhhhh, wrong answer. Brian and I drove around the entire West side of Puerto Rico for almost 8 hours the other day looking for the Greenboard and a bathtub! It seems like an easy thing to find, but we could not find a nice cast iron bath tub (banera) anywhere. There were plastic and fiberglass ones everywhere…but bathrooms need to be done right the first time…or we would loose in the long run. We finally found one and a matching drain (not as easy as you think) and were able to get the guest bathroom started.
There just isn’t much surf down here this time of the year unless you drive north or even to the other coast (Gulf Side). We have been so busy with the house we can’t really dedicate a full day to track down waste to chest high surf. Once the tropical storms and Hurricanes start passing by (hopefully over the ocean and not Puerto Rico) we should start getting some swell that I will be able to post about. If by chance we do catch some surf, I’ll be sure to post some pictures and descriptions.
I’m joining your club damn it! Like it or not! Actually, I’ve found that when I speak Spanish, it surprises people at 1st and then they are really nice to me and are happy to help me learn, which is really cool.
