Yeah, I know, we have been talking up Ipe hard wood floors for months now. The problem is, we couldn’t find anyone to mill it for us and none of the distributors on the island had it in stock. As a matter of a fact, the only supplier I could find that even had hard wood flooring in the past two months only had Mahogany and was charging $14 per square foot. Let’s see, that’s $14 X 1,750 square feet = $24,500 for floors! Holy Cow! Aaaaack!
Tray (built our steps) and I drove out to Cabo Rojo to one of his wood suppliers and got a catalog from them…they had Ipe, Walnut, Brazilian Cherry, Teak. What a relief, we are going to be able to get our floors (I already booked the tickets for Jamie and Brian to fly down and install them) because this company seems legitimate with a big glossy catalog. BZZZZZZZZZT! Wrong Answer! I called the supplier to order our IPE and they didn’t have any type of flooring in large quantities. They could offer us a couple hundred square feet, but not what we needed.
So now, it was the mad rush again calling every one (in spanish) I could track down that may have hardwood floors. After a stressful couple of days I found a place called Ferreteria Tesero Evenista in San Jaun that stocks hard wood flooring. Their pricing was good ($6.50sq ft) and they had Ipe in stock. The day before delivery (a week before the arrival of Brian…the wood needs to sit in the house for a week to get acclimated) they called me and said they didn’t have enough Ipe. The only thing they had 1,800 square feet of was Brazilian Teak. It is still a very hard wood, it is naturally resistant to rot and termites, but it isn’t Ipe.
Lacking other options, I pulled the trigger on the Brazilian Teak. They delivered the Patagonia Brazilian Teak yesterday. One hundred boxes on a flatbed. Yesterday was a Saturday so there wasn’t anyone here working that could drop what they were doing and help so I unloaded all of it in a little under two hours. I have bruises all over my shoulders and arms from HEAVE HOEING them up onto my shoulder.
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Where is Matador’s (surfing spot) in relation to your crib? If you don’t know, find out… it looks sick!
Van,
I asked a couple of locals, and none of them have heard of it.
Here’s a good page to check out: http://www.surfpr.com
The only place I really try to avoid is La Perla, only because the area has a truly bad reputation for crime against gringos