My dad hooked up the tankless hot water heater he brought down and it is SO nice to have a hot shower again! It’s easy to think, “Why do you even need hot water? Puerto Rico is already so hot, it probably is nice to take a cold shower!” Well, cold showers got old real quick. Our showers had pretty much come down to this:
Jump in shower. Turn on water. EEEEKKKKK. Scrubscrubscrubscrub. Jump out of shower. Sigh.
The tankless water heater is pretty cool from what I’ve experianced so far. Plus, you never run out of hot water since it’s heated on demand. The only thing that is slightly negative is that I love to take SCALDING hot showers and while the on demand tankless water heater does heat up the water to a nice hot temp, it’s not scalding enough for me at times :D.
When my dad built the piping, etc. for the hot water heater, I learned how to turn off the hot water to the house, where the hot and cold water bibs are and I learned about P/T valves (pressure/temperature values). Essentually a P/T value will release the water if it gets too much pressure or heat. So we can go away and not worry about the house exploding (at least not due to the hot water).
We have been preparing our back yard for some concrete for about a week now. We framed up the area where we are going to pour concrete, measured out how / where the slab is going to be poured, twisted up rebarb and of course, jackhammered out the old giant concrete footings.
The concrete truck was scheduled to show up at 7:00am this morning. We ordered 8 yards of concrete and a pump truck. The pump truck showed up at 6:30am. Jerry was here as well, he got the truck and is picking up his crew. Gino rolled in around 7:15 and now we are waiting on Jerry’s crew and the concrete truck.
I’ve been playing the roll of gardener for the past week or two, since the guys are concentrating on the inside of the house. As I’ve been watering, weeding and planting, (I’ll leave the pica pica to Stefan ;)…) I’ve been getting ideas for how we are going to lay out the garden(s) and outside living areas. There is a HUGE mango tree near the back of the house that I want to put a swing in and I got the idea that I wanted to clear out an area under the tree for a table and chairs as well. So, I raked out under the tree, pulled the weeds and was prepping to dig out a decent sized tree to transplant into the front yard. I grabbed the pickaxe and round nose shovel and went to work.
On my first swing of the pickaxe, I hit the BIGGEST centipede I have ever seen. Lucky for me, I chopped it in half, otherwise I could have been in big trouble. I went up to the house and grabbed my camera, but the pictures came out too dark, so I photoshopped this reenactment for you…
Behold! Summer the giant centipede slayer!!!
Seriously, though, the centipede I came across under the mango tree was pretty close in size to the one pictured above. Scary! It makes me a little nervous having the dogs running around, being as a centipede that size could easily kill a dog. I’m going to have to fashion some sort of centipede-proof doggy boots for Kuta and Monkey…
I entered us in a contest for home remodeling blogs/websites over at RemodelingMySpace.com. There are a lot of cool blogs that are in the running, so pop on over and check them out (but vote for us!!!! Just kidding ;)…). It’s cool to see home projects from all over the country/world varying from minor home improvements to major overhauls. RemodelingMySpace.com also has all kinds of home improvement resources like DIY videos and an idea blog for when you are designed-out (like I am right now!).
If there is one thing Puerto Rico isn’t lacking, it’s coffee. The hospitality industry in Puerto Rico is completely different than the California Starbucks on every corner of the city we moved from, but none the less, you can get decent coffee in every bakery. It is served local style in a small styrofoam cup.
If I decide to get a coffee at the bakery, I always get a Cafe con Leche; Half espresso and half hot creme. Not that there is anything wrong with the small cups of coffee the Rincon Panadaria’s serve, but sometimes you really feel like a full American Size Cup of Coffee and powering through four little cups from the bakery just isn’t going to cut it. Some would say go back to the U.S. if that’s what you want. I say, go to Surfs Up Coffee in Rincon. It is located on the 115 about a mile towards Mayaguez from the Econo Grocery story (that is, a mile in the opposite direction of Puntas, The Lazy Parot, Marias, The Calypso and Dog Mans Deli). Look for the sign (see below). The coffee is epic and the owners are really cool.
Surfs Up Coffee serves delicious coffees, espressos, cappuccinos, smoothies and my favorite daytime drink; frozen mocha coffee. If you get there early in the morning, you can also get muffins and toasted bagels. Yum. Tell Justin and Sarah we said hello!
Rincon Coffee Shop - Surfs Up Coffee
Coffee Done Right at this cafe in Rincon Puerto Rico
What I haven’t been doing with my time is painting the sealer on the walls downstairs. Summer and I wanted to get the sealer on the walls downstairs this week so we could get rolling on decorating her office and getting the tv room downstairs ready for the couch (which arrived today).
I set up the brushes, paint tray, moved all the furniture to the center of my office and did a last minute read of the directions on the Water Tite Sealer Paint. The small print mentions that you need to spray a combination of water and muriatic acid on the walls and scrub off the white residue that is often left after concrete work. I don’t have everything I need so I think I am going to check the surf.
Scrubbing the acid on the wall is going to take some time…instead of just being careful with the paint, we are going to have to cover everything in plastic. Gotta make sure we’re good…..I’ll buy the supplies we need tomorrow.
The Surf
The surf has been good for the past two or three weeks now…work was really slowing down until Mike showed up. Now, under Mikes supervision, we’re moving again…although the posts are a little slow. I’ll try to be better with keeping you guys in the loop.
Here is a video I took when I was spying on Stefan jackhammering the cement footings in the backyard:
We are reducing the size of the footings because we are going to pour a cement slab under the porch and the formerly big square footings would have been the perfect ankle-biting height. You can thank us next time you are stumbling around under our back porch and you don’t smash your foot into them.
Although Stefan did put in his time with the jackhammer, I can’t give him all the credit. Jerry did most of the work and my dad took his turn playing with the jackhammer too. If jackhammering looks fun to you, we know where to rent one for $60 a day. Come on down to Puerto Rico and we can find something for you to jackhammer!
Lately, it seems that I am in more of a hurry to finish the house and have grown a little impatient, but I think it is just a phase. It will get done, and we are doing it right.
There are two things that slowed down our progress as far as the master bath goes;
1. We are using Marble
2. We are but jointing the tiles
I’ll explain #1 to you. Marble is a natural stone which requires special expoxy mortars and can crack easily when cutting. If you use ceramic tile, slice ‘em and stick. Much quicker.
The fact that we are pushing all the tiles up against each other without any kind of seam means that the tile installation needs to be done on a perfectly flat wall/floor. There is no ‘fudge’ room that a seam allows you to have. Most houses aren’t framed or stacked (Puerto Rican concrete style) perfectly straight which means you need to add concrete board to the walls, float the floors with a floor leveling compound and apply extra mud to the walls to ensure a tight fit (but joints).
Here is the current progress of the marble installation in the Master Bathroom:
In Puerto Rico, if you wear a green shirt on a Thursday, that is a supposed to be a symbol of your gay pride. At least that is what we’ve heard from a few Puerto Ricans.
I certainly noticed an abundance of gay guys in San Juan, when we stayed at the El San Juan hotel. I was not expecting to see so many gay Puerto Ricans, maybe because I’m used to Mexico, which is very machismo.
Our downstairs offices are finally coming together enough that we have moved into them. Here is a sneak preview of the Vicious Enterprises - Puerto Rico office:
The polished concrete floors have been sealed three times and the walls have been plastered, but we have to wait 1 - 2 more weeks to apply the wall sealer (to avoid moisture problems in the future) and then we can paint. We returned the ceiling fan since we found out that the expensive fans we bought for the offices don’t actually circulate any air (unfortunately for Stefan his office was the 1st one to get the fan, where we discovered how bad they suck). I’m thinking of putting in an awesomely gaudy chandelier instead, plus air conditioning. If you can’t tell, my office is going to be decorated in a “modern vintage international Parisian flea market” theme. I’m using black, white and a bold accent color as the color palate, but I can decide what color I’m going to use yet. I was going to do pink, but every girl does pink nowadays, so now I’m leaning towards a deep purple or bright tealish blue.
It’s nice to have a somewhat private space again, so we can get back to work without distractions and interuptions. Contrary to popular opinion, Stefan and I do actually have jobs :).
My dad hooked up the tankless hot water heater he brought down and it is SO nice to have a hot shower again! It’s easy to think, “Why do you even need hot water? Puerto Rico is already so hot, it probably is nice to take a cold shower!” Well, cold showers got old real quick. Our showers had pretty much come down to this:
If there is one thing Puerto Rico isn’t lacking, it’s coffee. The hospitality industry in Puerto Rico is completely different than the California Starbucks on every corner of the city we moved from, but none the less, you can get decent coffee in every bakery. It is served local style in a small styrofoam cup. 
In Puerto Rico, if you wear a green shirt on a Thursday, that is a supposed to be a symbol of your gay pride. At least that is what we’ve heard from a few Puerto Ricans. 
