I recently got a hot tip from The Kruses on where to get some great plants, here in Puerto Rico. Karina recommended Montoso Gardens, which is in Maricao:
Popularity: 37% [?]
Brian and I both woke up early this morning. It was pouring rain all night…beating on our commercial grade corrugated metal roof. We wanted to surf before he started working and I had to leave for the airport to pick up Summer….but the waves were really bad so Brian opted to start work and I opted to blog about the back deck and start carrying extra hardwood out of our living room to my office where it will be stored until we are ready to use it.
I could be wrong, but it sure looks like that rainbow ends at our house.
Brian is leaving today. His flight is out of Aguadilla at 5:15 on Spirit Airlines. That basically means that we have to leave here around 2:15 to get him there early enough to not stress. Saturday traffic is always a wildcard down here in Puerto Rico. You either luck out and get the holeshot…or you get stuck behind every weekend driver that isn’t in a hurry to get anywhere. The only guarantee is that there won’t be pimped out Puerto Rican school buses stopping every couple of minutes.
Brian has a short list of things he would like to get done in the next 6 hours.
Yesterday, Brian and Jerry worked a full day (10:30am - 6:00pm) completing the back deck. Since he has been here, Brian completely rebuilt the back deck, laid the hardwood floors, built the knee wall (taking into account a 62″ opening (French Door) dead center to our future back deck and a 36″ opening all the way to the right for our future steps up to the back porch (we would like to train all of our guests to use the back door), framed in where the screens will go (all I have to do is trim out the PT with a hardwood) and put T-111 plywood around the outside so it matches the rest of the house (once we paint).
Back Porch at 60% done
Opening for the French Screen Doors in the center
Enclosed back porch from the outside
Building this house really has been a marathon accompanied by a series of sprints. The work is slow and steady when I am the General Contractor but as soon as someone that knows what they are doing shows up to help, the progress gets shifted into high gear for the duration of their stay. Jamie and Brian really got so much work done while they were here that the only two major things we have left to deal with is the master bath/jacuzzi area and the 3rd bathroom downstairs.
Popularity: 24% [?]
By request, I actually went in to the Econo in Rincon today to take pictures of the produce section. I also took a couple snap shots of the fish section.
We really were just so spoiled in California. We had so many options. Here, if you want to make a salad, you can! You just won’t have the same options from the local grocer. For example…you can always get iceberg lettuce and the carrots are always ripe. However, you may not be able to get spinach or spring mix and the tomatoes may all be green.
Here are a couple of pictures for you (by request):
Popularity: 26% [?]
Summer has been back in California all week taking care of business related stuff. She leaves San Diego today. She arrives in Aguadilla tomorrow. Check out the beautiful purple nail polish (provided by 2.5 year old Isabella Buondano) she was sporting at Villa Cofresi in Rincon before she left.
Popularity: 23% [?]
I have to leave for the airport in less than ten minutes, so this is going to be short as sweet.
There is a ying and a yang to ordering pre-finished tongue and groove hardwood floors. If you order too little, you’ll slow the job down by a few days at best waiting for more wood to arrive or at worst, the supplier won’t have any of the type of wood you are using left. Jamie and Brian told me when this happens, you are forced to switch the type of wood you are using halfway through the job.
We estimated at we would need 1,780 square feet to cover all of upstairs. That included an extra 10% for waste for bad cuts, bad boards, broken tongues etc. For 1,780 square feet we received 100 of these boxes (that weigh about 70lbs each).
By the time Jamie and Brian installed the floor in the two bedrooms and great room we had 39 boxes of flooring left. Wow, that is about $4,500 in extra flooring that can’t be returned!!!! So, we decided to put the hardwoods in the guest loft where Summer and I have been sleeping, on our soon to be enclosed screened in back porch and built a platform in my office for my desk and files. We still have enough wood left over to put tongue and groove above the closet in the master bedroom and above the bathroom. I’ll also be able to use it to trim out above the closets/great room.
Depending on how good I get with these tools I have here, I may even use it to build the shelves in the hallway closet and in the master closet. Heck, its good expensive wood that is going to last forever…and we have it…so we’re gonna use it.
In retrospect, we wouldn’t have spent the extra money if we had known we didn’t need to have this much hardwood flooring to finish the house, but it is allowing us to add a bunch of extras all out of beautiful teak.
Gotto go to the airport and then SURF!
Popularity: 26% [?]
When I first moved into the house back in January the list of things to do was so unbelievably long that it was overwhelming. As a first timer, I tried to make the right decision on a bunch of things that I had absolutely no experience handling.
For example: The house had no electricity and was scorching hot every night when the sun went down. We had no back doors to where the back porch would eventually be and the guy who started the construction had a couple pieces of scrap plywood down (some of them overlapping seams…whatever would fit) so he could walk around. I decided that we needed to put down something safe (5/8 sheets of plywood) with railings knowing that we would be under construction in the heat for the next 4 months (we are at 6 months of construction today).
We put down the cheapest stuff (non-treated) because I figured we would just be tearing it up to put down decking for our screened in porch. Well, now that we built up the knee wall around the porch (and made it weather proof), and we had enough extra wood…we decided to continue the teak out onto the porch…but we couldn’t install the teak over top of non treated lumber because the termites would make quick work of it down here.
I went to Home Depot in Mayaguez and forked out a bunch more cash to put down 5/8’s treated plywood and build up the knee wall (actually 4ft) and build the jams and jacks for the screen doors. The top half of the porch will be screened in. Two doors…french doors leading straight out to the deck (that will be there eventually) and one off to the right with a lock that will be a back entrance on the second floor.
We really pushed the Toyota to its limits bringing home lumber for Home Depot.
Popularity: 12% [?]
I’m currently back in San Diego for work and one thing we’ve taken for granted, when living in California, is how awesome the grocery stores in California are. The Vons’ and Ralphs’ are pretty nice, but nothing compares to Trader Joes, Henrys, Boneys and Bristol Farms. Here are some snaps that I took of the Bristol Farms in La Jolla, California:
They even have Vicious Cookies!! 
Look at all that amazing produce! The local grocery store in Rincon, Puerto Rico (the Econo), pretty much sucks. The produce is horrible, the meat is bad and they run out of shit for long periods of time (who runs out of bagels for 5 weeks?!). I do understand that being on an island means that items need to be imported, but come on…It took me 2 days to ship my computers from California to Puerto Rico. Why can’t you keep bagels in stock?! Or yummy produce?! Sigh…
Popularity: 74% [?]
When we first picked out the colors for the house (seems like months ago…wait, it may have been) we were still staring at drywall (actually, 5/8’s fire resistant greenboard) trying to imagine what the house would look like when it was done…which helped us enough to pick out the paint colors. I really think we did a great job with picking out all of the colors except for one, the kitchen. Once we were done painting it, it looked pretty much exactly the same as the greenboard that we just finished painting on three layers of base coat to make white!
Today, Mark came by and painted the entire kitchen white. Well, it is some fancy name for white…antique white, or albatross or something. I was sure to pick out the correct color white from our pile of new paint bucket cans (similar to college pyramids of Old Milwaukee beer cans) because we also bought three shades of grey for my office and have a white for summers office and a bunch of other colors and concrete sealers for downstairs. Seems like a small time mistake, but painting a room the wrong color really sucks.
Popularity: 18% [?]
We’ve heard a lot of this and that about pitbulls and hearsay about Puerto Rican laws regards owning pitbulls, since one of our dogs is sometimes mistaken for a pitbull. So, here are the facts:
In 1998, a bill (HB585) was signed by the Governor of Puerto Rico, which bans introduction, importation, possession, acquisition, breeding, sale, and transfer of Pitbull Terriers or hybrids resulting from a breed of these dogs or with dogs from other races, are all prohibited. The banned race of canine is defined as “a race of bull terriers that include the Stafforshire Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terriers, American Pit Bull Terriers and combinations of these and other terrier races.”
The bill also states the following:
“Any person, as of the date of enactment of this Act, who owns any of the canines mentioned, shall register said dog or dogs in a registry intended for those purposes, at the Agriculture Department. The registration will take place within the eight (8) months following the approval of this law. After that grace period has expired, the opportunity to register them will cease and the Registry will be closed. The registration application must contain the name, address, and telephone numbers of the owner, the location where the animal will be kept, and all the information needed to identify the dog. Said application must be accompanied by a registration fee of twenty-five (25.00) dollars. Every dog so registered will be assigned a registration number which will be engraved on a small metal plate to be affixed to said dog’s collar. The owner of the dog will receive, in addition to the duly engraved plaque with the registration number, a certificate of registration as evidence of the dog having been duly registered with the Department of Agriculture. In the case of a female, she is to be sterilized, tattooed with an indelible mark indicating this surgical procedure has been performed, and the corroborative document signed by a veterinarian will be required by the department of agriculture prior to her registration. Any dog that fails to carry a plaque indicating its registration number and whose owner fails to produce the registration certificate after the eight (9) month grace period shall be immediately confiscated by the pertinent authorities.”
So this is the just of it: Pitbulls were officially banned from Puerto Rico, when the bill was passed in 1998. There was a 8-month window where they allowed you to register your Pitbull with the Department of Agriculture. You can no longer register a Pitbull or bull terriers and they are illegal to possess if they are not already registered. If you are caught with an unregistered Pitbull or bull terrier, the dog will be confiscated and you will be charged with a misdemeanor.
Popularity: 43% [?]
Jerry did the work on the downstairs shower pan and also the shower pan for the outside shower. They both came out pretty darn good! Here is a picture of the outside shower and the new shower pan:
:
I also planted a foxtail palm and some purple flowery plants around the shower, for that “Yes, I am showering in the jungle” feeling :D.
Popularity: 32% [?]