Gino started laying the marble in the kitchen yesterday. He checked the level of the floor and thought it looked good so he started setting our 24 inch tiles. He set 3 of them, and on his fourth he had a hard time getting the joints to line up (Butt Joint) and he decided to tear up the three tiles he already set (it took him 2 hours) and to put down a floor leveler to make his job easier down the line.
I went to the Home Depot and bought UltraPlan, another Mapei product. UltraPlan is a high performance, quick setting, self-leveling underlayment for tile floors. The purpose of it is to level the floors to make butt jointing tile much easier and less time consuming. If the floor isn’t even after we lay the tile, marble tile can break. We used up 4 bags ($40 a bag) to level the floor in the kitchen.
This morning, we went back to home depot, bought a new 1/2 inch drill to replace the one that burnt out yesterday (i also bough it yesterday..so I exchanged the busted one for a new one), picked up 14 bags of Marmolina to plaster the walls (we should finish up this afternoon) and a new trow to apply the UltraPlex 2 marble grout / thinset.
The twins are supposed to show back up today at 2:30 to finish up with the wall plastering downstairs…it took about a week and a half. They said 4 days. I am really glad Summer and I discussed this one ahead of time and decided to pay them for the entire job (payment at the completion of the job) as opposed to the per day charge they suggested.
Summer talked me out of being a PC guy and into a mac guy about 7 months ago. If you are a Mac user, you might find some of these Macintosh vs. PC commercials pretty funny. So anywho, I haven’t looked at this site with anything besides Safari and Firefox until Summer told me the navigation to the right is all messed up for Internet Explorer users!
It should look like this:
If what you are looking at doesn’t look like this, you are missing out….and you are most likely using a horrible Microsoft product. If you are on a PC you will not be able to download Safari, because that is specifically for Macs, but you can download a browser called FireFox. It has a built in virus protector and cuts out about 85% of the STD’s (Surfing Transmitted Diseases) you can get from surfing around on the web. You can DOWNLOAD FIREFOX BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK! It’s free and it is very easy to install.
What I want to know is this: What browser are you using to view this site?
I put together a little movie of the work going on downstairs. The movie really makes it seem like this stuff is getting done in a day or so…but in actuality all of these tasks take a while. If your on schedule with labor, finding the materials throws you off. If you are on schedule with material, the guys that are supposed to be doing the work don’t show up. In order to stay on schedule, the stars need to be aligned…big time.
Another example of thinks taking longer than expected is the pain/sealer we are going to put over the plaster downstairs. The sealer is called “WaterTite.” From the research I have done, it is a great product that can actually seal out water that has a PSI of 32! It costs $38 bucks a gallon, and there is only one store on the West side of the island where I could find it. I went there yesterday (so we could start painting the plaster), purchased the last 16 gallons they had and brought it home. Jerry was here, taping up the floors with plastic and we were planning on starting the job last night. After I read the fine print on the container, I found out that you need to wait 30 days before applying WaterTite to new masonry. Well, I’ll calendar that one for November 10th.
Last Christmas I got a stocking stuffer that I never thought would be so useful…but since I moved out into the sticks in Puerto Rico, along with having a house with no electricity, this little key chain flashlight has been the most useful thing I’ve gotten for Christmas in years! Walking down dirt paths at night, walking down the street at night (potholes everywhere), looking for my toothbrush, looking for the light switch…I could go on forever…this thing was a great Christmas present that I use every single day. I can’t believe the battery hasn’t gone dead yet.
I’m looking at flights to fly back to Puerto Rico, and it looks like JetBlue is about to make the flight from San Diego, California to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico a whole lot easier. Currently, this is my only choice in flight patterns:
12:30 PM - Depart - San Diego, CA (SAN)
8:59 PM - Arrive - New York, NY (JFK)
11:50 PM - Depart - New York, NY (JFK)
3:39 AM - Arrive - Aguadilla, PR (BQN)(next day)
Total travel time, including layover in NY: 12 hours, 9 minutes.
It appears that starting October 31st, JetBlue is offering a red eye to Puerto Rico:
9:10 PM - Depart - San Diego, CA (SAN)
5:20 AM - Arrive - New York, NY (JFK)
6:00 AM - Depart - New York, NY (JFK)
9:38 AM - Arrive - Aguadilla, PR (BQN)(next day)
Total travel time, including layover in NY: 9 hours, 28 minutes.
This new schedule is way better, as it not only shaves 3 hours off the travel time, but your flight also arrives in Puerto Rico at a decent hour: 9:30am. Flying into Puerto Rico at 3:30am, sucks. 3:30am is just a little too late to stay up to pick someone up at the airport and a little too early to be ready to wake up for the day. Plus, arriving a 3:30am screws up your internal clock just enough to ruin your entire 1st day in Puerto Rico. Whenever I arrive on the 3:30am plane, I always go to bed right as the sun comes up and would prefer to sleep all day. It’s annoying. Which is why I’m happy to hear about the new flight pattern that JetBlue will be offering. Of course, the new flight pattern is offered 2 days too late for me…oh well, at least we won’t have to pick up visitors at the airport at 3:30am any more
Jerry and the twins have been working on plastering the downstairs walls and they are almost done! Here is a picture of Stefans office with one wall complete:
Unfortunately, the yard doesn’t look as nice…
It looks like the downstairs is going to be ready to rock by the time I get back down to Puerto Rico, so I’ve been trying to decide how I’m going to paint and decorate my office. I bought a book on painting and different techniques as I think I want to do a distressed finish on the walls…
I am going to drive to San Juan today to try to track down some epoxy mortar so we can start laying the marble in the kitchen and bathroom. This is really slowing us down (at least two weeks now) otherwise I would not be driving out there. San Juan is a pretty big city and very confusing to get around in.
The place that carries the product we need is right across from the Mercedes Benz dealership by the airport. Easy enough right? All I have to do is find the Mercedes Benz dealership in San Juan and I am there! Wrong Answer! The Mercedes Benz dealership in San Juan doesn’t have a website, I can’t find them listed anywhere and because Dal Tile isn’t listed online or in the phone book either, I will be flying blind…which is not easy when your native language is English…and everyone you will ask for direction speaks Spanish.
Oh well, hopefully I’ll get it done and it will just be a day of driving. hmmmm…will the transmission get me there and back? Better to test it out now than when we are on a tight schedule on the way to the airport or something.
WAIT! Marble and Mortar Update:
I am pulling an audible! I found the telephone number for Dal Tile in San Juan and that don’t have any Jamo Products in stock. They told me that the mortar they recommend for Marble Tile is called UltraFlex 1. The only warning it gives, is not to use it on Green Marble or Green Granite. This could mean that we are getting this show back on the road today (since I will only have to drive to Mayaguez Home Depot), but we’ll see. I am not holding my breath. Here is some more information I found online about UltraFlex 1 Mortar
Well, everything I heard about DSL being a great service here in Puerto Rico went out the door yesterday. Download speeds dropped to below 50k and upload speeds were at 1k. I called customer service, was on hold for about an hour only to find out that there is a problem in the area (Sector Vargas) and they were working on it.
I went to a buddies house last night to upload all of the work I had done yesterday (including fixing the style sheets of www.ca2pr.com which only uploaded halfway before timing out because of the slow speed) hoping that I would be able to get some work done this morning…but…the Internet speed is still all messed up.
My connection is too slow to upload pictures…but I will update you with pictures on the plaster walls downstairs, the master bathroom and all of our other new projects ASAP.
Since we are getting close to having a complete bathroom, I picked out all of the accessories for the guest bathroom. Here are a few of the things I picked out at Target.com:
Here is the bathroom that above accoutrements will be going into:
I picked out chocolate brown and sky blue towels, mother of pearl soap dispenser, toothbrush holder, waste basket and shower curtain rings, brown bathmat, crinkled cream fabric shower curtain, a fabric shower curtain liner and a bamboo reed diffuser in Bamboo Flower scent.
I love shopping online! I actually bought a few of the items above at the local Target store today, but I’m going to take them back so I don’t have to pack them to ship down to PR. Shipping at Target.com was free, so I figured I’ll save myself the time and hassle and have Target ship everything together, to Puerto Rico.
The final things we need for the guest bathroom now, are a towel bar and permanent shower rod. Woohoo!
It seems that I am thinking about something that has to do with the house 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Walking through the kitchen to the fridge or down the hallway to the bathroom something always pops into my head about how I am going to complete this project and in what fashion.
Are the three-way light switches layed out in a user friendly way (light switches at the top and bottom of the steps)?
What kind of wood should we use to build the shelves in the hallway closet?
If it takes 6 weeks to get the counter tops cut, delivered, installed, polished and sealed and we can’t start that until the kitchen floors are installed so we can permanently attach the lower cabinets….how many weeks will it be until the kitchen is 100% complete? The amount of time it will take to finish the kitchen will dictate the time line for everything else (master bath, steps, hardwood floors)…hmmm, so does that put us on schedule with the rest of the house projects?
Will I rent a car to get to San Juan on Monday to find the epoxy grout for the marble tiles?
What can we realistically spend on landscaping to achieve the tropical landscaped yard we want?
Will ARPE grant us our Permiso de Uso by January?
So, while building our dream house in Puerto Rico is an amazing experience, I am keeping my eyes on the prize; A completed house/home office where Summer and I can kick it, work and plan our next adventure.
I decided that I should put a list together of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly emotions/experiences that is involved in Puerto Rico construction life. If you have had a similar experience with construction (anywhere) or with Puerto Rico in general, post it below I’d love to hear about them.
The Good
Seeing your construction project evolve into a home
Knowing your property and house inside and out
Choosing all of your finish items (kitchen, bath etc)
Laying in your hammock on your own front porch with a cup of coffee and a book
Meeting new people that help work on the house
Learning how to navigate around the island (looking for materials)
Seeing your home as an investment and the value you are adding to it with all your work
Daydreaming about your home and your life in it 10 years from now
The intellectual stimulation that comes with managing a project that is completely alien to all of your life’s experiences
Cutting out of the house and surfing while the guys keep working
Getting Electricity/Water/DSL
The Bad
Going over budget
Doing the dishes in the bath tub (and clogging the drain)
Lack of instant gratification
Being thousands of miles from Summer
No alone time
Difficult to work (on my business) because of constant interruptions
Learning the right way to do something after you have already done it
Waiting on deliveries
Driving every day to the same store more than once to buy more items because you didn’t plan well enough
Dealing with the dogs and strangers on our property (barking, growling, biting and locking them up
Having to bring a flashlight into the closet to find your clothes (and having to walk through plastic to get in there)
Knowing that if you cut out for a surf while the guys are working, productivity with drop 40%
Daily clean up
Trying to get electricity
The Ugly
Mud (in the yard, in the house, on your clothes, your shoes, on the dogs)
Bad Transmissions
Fried food and lack of healthy options
All the liter bugs in Puerto Rico
All the stray dogs/cats
The giant 5 and 6 story condos going up all over Rincon
Finding a knowledgeable associate to help at Home Depot
Punctuality
Urchins
Surf School
The pile of scrap, trash and trash in the back yard
