We have been searching for a cool tile for downstairs for a couple weeks now, but aren’t really having any luck finding anything in our budget. We narrowed our choices down to about 6 different tiles that range from porcelain tile to slate. We are going to keep the tile 12”x12” to help reduce the cracking and tiles coming up in the future due to our floor being uneven. The basement was never designed to be apart of the house so the floor wasn’t poured level. Another thing we are going to have to do is strip the concrete polish/sealer up from the floor. From what I understand, if you pour water on concrete and it beads, the mortar you use for the tiles will never stick to the floor and you will waste a lot of time and money.

Help us choose! Which tile do you like the most?

Building materials and labor are much more expensive than we ever expected and although we are ‘do-it yourselfers’ on many of these projects, some of them become too expensive trying to get it right…over and over and over and over and over again.

Our current BIG project is finishing downstairs. We have been slowly saving our money and finishing one project at a time and are really making progress. We recently paid one of our buddies Jerry to come over and install the last two windows downstairs.

After this, we have to:

Before Pictures of the Basement Openings (sort of)

Pictures of the Project in Progress

After Photos of the Window Installation

Downstairs is soooo close to being done. We need to go to San Juan and buy two windows and french doors. Once we have those, we’ll be able to take down the steel cage we have down there now, empenatar the block and install tile. Then we’re done (except for the tile, baby proofing, the back porch, garage with granny flat, swimming pool, decorative rock walls, waterfalls, yard stairs, trails, landscaping).

Going to San Juan to go shopping used to be an easy task, we just needed to motivate enough to just go. Get there in the morning, spend the day and then drive back. Well, that is no longer an option. Summer and I now have our little Sydney to think about. It would be really tough on her to sit in the car and go from store to store with no exercise, no time to try to practice standing, no high chair for meal time, no nap time etc. You guys get the idea.

When Summer, Sydney and I finally make it to San Juan to buy the remaining items to finish downstairs, we are going to rent a hotel room and do it over 2 days. No more need to rush around and hurry up, Sydney keeps us focused on what is important, enjoying the moment.

Tourist season is coming to a close and the prices at the nice hotels are going to start dropping soon. Once they do, our family is going on its first road trip. Destination, San Juan and hopefully the El San Juan Hotel and Casino!

Now, looking at these pictures, you need to understand that so much more went into this behind the scenes. First off, we have the electrical work. Brian flew in from Florida for a 7 day trip and ended up staying for 21 days! Apparently, the last guy we had down here completely butchered the electrical work and basically spit in the general direction of electrical code and standards. He didn’t ground outlets (we have gone through 3 battery back up units and the computer on Summers’ commercial sewing machine fried). Not to mention the fire hazard of ungrounded electrical run in a wood house. So, the former electrical rats nest known as our home, was rewired downstairs. We also added all the recessed lighting (good luck finding commercial grade recessed cans on the west side of the island), ran Internet up to the kitchen, set up the wiring in the wall for a TV downstairs and ran electric out of the front of the house on the left and right side for future landscape lighting and to have outdoor outlets. Brian did a ton of work that was above and beyond his responsibilities. He also fixed some plumbing issues around the dishwasher and cleaned out the sewer pipes before we close everything up. Man, I get tired just thinking about all the work he did.

Then came the next bit of work. Cleaning out all of the rooms and getting ready for the crew to come in and do the ceilings. We wanted everything out of the way so nothing was in the way and so nothing got broken. Cleaning downstairs was a much bigger project that we thought and we left more behind and open to damage than we wanted to when we left, but with Sydney and packing for two months in California we couldn’t get it all done.

The work took about 5 weeks to complete. Thank goodness we weren’t here for all that banging. At this point, we are sick of hearing the banging of construction and people coming over asking for money, running over our baby plants, driving on our lawn (around the rocks we have set up to stop people from doing that) or honking the horn in the driveway just as we get the baby to go to sleep.

So, without any further delay, here are the pictures of the ceilings, soffits, fans and recessed lighting downstairs.

Here are the big things left on my ‘to do list’:

1. Tile Downstairs
2. Install leftover hardwood floors in the gym/guest bedroom
3. Find a wood worker to build and install big ’shutter style’ windows like we have upstairs
4. Find and install french doors (get rid of iron bars downstairs)
5. Recycle the iron bars by welding them into our front gate
6. Back deck

We really are getting close though. We have been working much more outside on the landscaping and paint and empenatar work, but finally moved the next project to inside.

We are going to close up the ceiling in the basement with sophets and drywall and make it look real real nice. We are currently working on all the wiring downstairs, the future wiring for outdoor landscape lighting, power for our water purifier, our back porch lighting and a power source for an eventual pool area.

Once all the wiring is done, we are going to insulate the ceiling and close up the stairwell so we can have a fully climate controlled level of the house. This summer really taught us that it pays to have AC with a newborn. Sydney didn’t like taking naps very much all swaddled up when it’s 100 degrees.

Once I get some pictures I will upload them so you all can see the progress. I’ll also update you to where we bought the 3 wire and recessed cans which were very difficult to track down. Also, we had to reground all of the wiring downstairs that was in the block wall because the original electrician didn’t ground anything in the concrete. I don’t know if that is local standard or we had a lazy electrician with too man Medallas in him, but we blew out a bunch of battery back up units and Summers expensive sewing machine.

1. No drive by noises (loud mufflers and radios 25 feet from our bedroom window)
2. The only cars coming down our driveway are either lost or coming to our house

Before we had any landscaping at all, the lost drivers would just do u-turns in our front yard. Once we started planting, they would still do u-turns in our front yard (running over barely noticeable saplings and plants) and even now that we have green things planted EVERYWHERE in our front yard, we still deal with the occasional lost driver running over a baby tree to turn around or the FedEx or UPS driver taking out a few driveway lights or plants.

Regardless of all this, we always planned on putting up an entrance gate to keep the dogs in and unsolicited guests out. It was an expense that didn’t seem to large, so why not? Well, like every other project in the house, it was pricier than we thought. Building the wall took 2 pallets of 6” block, 60 bags of concrete, 3.5 meters of sand and three guys 20 hours to complete.

Now that it is done, I realize how much of an eyesore it was staring at those concrete posts for the past two and a half years. The wall looks great and will look even better once it is painted and we install the gate. We are probably going to install the gate on a slide mechanism with the option of hooking up a motor down the line. When we do that, we’ll add some sort of intercom and/or camera set up. Do any of you have any recommendations for us?

Before the wall was built (rainy day picture)
After the wall was built (sunny day picture)

On a side note. We fired up the Jacuzzi and it worked great for 15 minutes, then the jets just turned off. I assumed it was a breaker but didn’t stress out about it. Unfortunately, once I checked the breaker, I saw that we didn’t throw a switch. Hmmm, I am thinking that the Whirlpool jacuzzi tub might have an internal fuse or breaker that flipped but I haven’t gone under there with a flash light yet. Now I see why I left a door in the front and on both sides at the his and hers vanities. Funny stuff, nothing ever goes smoothly in our DIY Puerto Rico house. Regardless of the trials and tribulations of building our house in Rincon, it has and is still and amazing experience. I love this place, even when there aren’t any waves.

We are only two things shy of a completed kitchen.

1. Last piece of matching granite for our desk area
2. Under cabinet lighting

The under cabinet lighting is not a problem. All of the wiring is done, the switch is in, we just need to buy/install the lights. I may do that myself or I may wait for Brian to come down for another vacation. Brian is our buddy from Florida who keeps taking his vacations to come down here and help us with EVERYTHING electrical. He has pretty much done all of our electrical work and had great suggestions on what/where/how everything should be planned out. Unlike Summer and I, this is not his first rodeo.

The granite is a different story, and I have my fingers crossed. The granite we have in the kitchen seems to be running in short supply on the island and they are currently trying track down the pieces of slab that we need. The reason why we didn’t buy all the granite at once is because the kitchen lay out changed a couple of months after installing the counter tops. Not by much, but we decided to add some drawers for our pots and pans next to the stove, a knife/utensil drawer and a built-in mahogany cutting board, a built in beverage cooler (originally JUST a wine fridge, but it does a great job keeping Medalla cold and is great for that little bit of extra fridge space when cooking for a bunch of people) and a workstation area for our daughter to do homework and for me to stack all of the mail I never open.

Now that we have been down here for a while, I realize how hard it really would have been to build from the ground up, but I also see how someone could buy a house that is not worth its weight in mortgage payments. A lot of the homes built here were built by owners or local tradesman that built with traditional style building techniques. One of the things I see down here a lot is really bad block work. Aesthetically, the block that is laid for foundations will eventually get covered up by plaster (like our basement) so you won’t be able to see how horribly unlevel the block actually is. Now, I’m no expert on foundation integrity, but check out this picture and tell me you think this would support your house through an earthquake.

Just make sure you inspect the house yourself for good block work, plumbing and electricity. Don’t rely on the local building inspector because things are not always as they appear. The block work in the above picture is going to look great once it is covered in plaster.