California 2 Puerto Rico

It is really easy to walk through a house when it is done and take it all for granted. When Summer and I walked through this house (mid-construction) over a year ago, we sounded something like this;
“We’ll put the guest bathroom there, kitchen in this room, we’ll open up the wall a bit, stairs over there, lights up there….”

We were absolutely stoked on the house…and the house was at a perfect stage in construction…we get to do all of the finish work and really customize it to be exactly what we want. It was a great thing for both of us..I wanted to build from the ground up (I don’t like all the small room concrete construction you find all over the place down here) but Summer didn’t want to build from the ground up…she said it was going to be way more work than I though and it was our first house…we should wait to build. Summer couldn’t have been more right (there, I said it) about not building from the ground up. It would have been very very difficult…especially without the proper budget. I couldn’t imagine starting from scratch on the first go…we are decisioned out at this point (and we took over over half way through the phase of construction)…sort of punch drunk…and this is the stage of the game where you make the wrong move if you’re not careful.

One of the many decisions we have to make this month is the layout of the stairs that will lead us from the great room upstairs to the great room downstairs (same size rooms up/down). I remember us saying…”Ok, stairs go there” but never even contemplated what stairs; spiral, straight down, turn at a platform, iron stairs, wood stairs (what type of wood: ipe, swiss pear, burmese teak, asian ebony, curly tasmanian euclalyptus, asian hardwood, Koa, treated lumber) concrete stairs…..ahhhhhhhhhhh! Funny…so many decisions.

Here are a few examples of stairs that I liked. Some of them I don’t like as a whole, but there may be one detail that I really like (toe kicks, tread, round railings, square railings, rod iron, glass, mesh)…do you have any suggestions or input for us?

Stairs Idea A

Stairs Idea B

Stairs Idea C

Stairs Idea D

Stairs Idea E

Stairs Idea F

Stairs Idea G

Keep in mind with all of these stair pictures and ideas, we still need to find the materials in Puerto Rico and find a contractor with the skills needed to construct them.

Today, Jerry and I decided to take a major road trip and try to find some hard to find things. Puerto Rico travel isn’t the easiest thing to do when you are looking for stores, farms…pretty much anyplace you haven’t been before. Luckily, Jerry is a pretty good guide. We didn’t get everywhere on the first try, but having someone that speaks perfect spanglish is a plus. Our travel mission, taking about 8 hours, for yesterday was the following:

• Big Palm Trees (Cheap)
• 36” Pipe for around the front downstairs windows (topsoil will be up to the bottom of the window)
• Epoxy Thinset (to install the marble we bought for the bathrooms)
• Marmolina (Bought 80 bags at home depot for $2.99 a bag with delivery..the local Rincon Freterria was $3.59)
• Inspect the Granite Yard where we are going to buy our granite

We accomplished everything…well, not really.

We found the Palm Tree farm in Lajas. It wasn’t easy to get to, but after asking for directions and finding about 3 other nurseries, we found the Palm Tree Farm in Lajas Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, they are only open from 7:00am until 12:00pm so we were S.O.L. once we got there, but now we know where it is. It was pretty cool to see hundreds of 30ft palms lining the fields. I also got all of their contact information.

Palm Tree Farm in Lajas Puerto Rico
Website: Palmas Ornamentales Puerto Rico
(787) 568-6394

We drove around Mayaguez for about 30 minutes looking for the store that sells big pipe (36”), and we completely struck out. No one knew where we were talking about and we couldn’t find it on our own. We need to use the pipe to cover the windows to the basement before we fill in the topsoil. I found this example on Google Images of what we are trying to accomplish. This image shows a pipe cut in half, pushed up against the window and then backfilled to the very top on the outside protecting the ground level windows. We won’t be backfilling that high, but it is pretty close to what we are going to do.

Basement Window Shield

We went to 3 or 4 tile stores with no luck finding our Epoxy thinset for setting the marble. Two of them carry the item, but didn’t have it in stock. And in a very typical Puerto Rico fashion, no one had any idea when their next shipment may come in. We may have to drive all the way to San Juan to get the epoxy thinset…which would suck. But, the show must go on and not finding this stuff has all but stopped the progress of finish work inside the house. Marble is so heavy that you can’t just use normal thinset to attach it to the walls (concrete board) like you do with tiles and travertine. You need to apply special epoxy glue in order to adhere it securely to the walls.

I figured out that Home Depot Puerto Rico has the cheapest marmolina. They are going to be delivering a full pallet of marmolina to our house on Wednesday morning. A pallot contains 80 bags. We are going to use a mix of marmolina and concrete (7 to 1 ratio of marmolina to concrete) to plaster all of the concrete block walls downstairs. It will be a nice smooth finish (with a little texture…not like polished concrete). If the guys show up to do the work, we should have it done in 4 working days. When using concrete on walls, it is best to complete an entire room with the same batch so all the walls in that room have the same exact texture. Mixing concrete by hand is not a complete science, so there will be some minor differences in the batches so to avoid different textured walls in the same room, you complete a room a day. These guys (twins) offered the job at $80 a day per person. So, essentially, $160 a day for 4 days should complete the walls downstairs.

One of the nurseries we were guided to on our Puerto Rico adventure just so happened to be right next to the granite yard where we are considering buying our granite from. They didn’t nearly have as many slabs of granite as I expected to see. I saw a big slab of the granite summer and I liked the most…seeing that much of it in one spot (instead of our little sample) has me thinking twice about the kitchen counter tops again. One of the tough things about building your kitchen, is that things like counter tops and cabinets need to be spec’d out weeks and weeks before you see the finished product. Not only is it hard to conceptualize the finished product (without the help of an architect or interior designer) but every day we wait is another day to wait in 4-6 weeks from now.

The only really bad news out of yesterday (aside from summer going back to california) was that the Bronco broke down when we were half way home. We pulled into the parking lot of Puerto Rico Wire Company, hopped out of the truck and notice fluid spewing from the bottom of the truck. That is never good. When I went to walk around the truck I noticed a trail of the same fluid going from the street into exactly where we parked. We were loosing the fluid at a high rate. After dipping my finger in it, feeling the texture and then smelling it, I came to the conclusion that it was transmission fluid. That is no bueno. Unfortunately, when I checked, we were completely out of fluid. I refilled it with three more quarts and got it home with almost no leakage but this morning when I woke up, it was empty again. The long and the short of it is that the transmission in the bronco is shot. Looks like it’s time to dump some more money into the hoopty.

When all was said and done, even if we didn’t get everything that we set out to do accomplished, we traveled the entire west coast of the island and I found new stores that may help in the construction of the house and thanks to my guide, I know how to get back there without getting lost. Sucks about the truck.

Here is a video walk through of the downstairs of our house. The cement floors have been polished and coated with two coats of high gloss concrete sealer.

The walls are going to be plastered this week and then we are going to work on the stairs. Stefan is currently researching designs and of course the hardest part is trying to decide what we want…

This sounded really weird to me. Rent wood. hmmm…something just didn’t seem right about it.

Jerry is forming up the cement posts for the entrance and gate to our property today, and wrote (i am speaking figuratively here) up a spec list of things he needs to get it done.

Supplies needed to build the concrete wall and entrance gate;
• 14 2×4x8 - Untreated
• 4 sheets of 3/4 inch plywood - Untreated
• nails
• construction tools (hammer, saw, level, shovel, string, tape measure etc)

Once we did the math on the timber that we need for the fence (we are only going to use it once) all of the wood added up to about $180 (that is just to build the forms to pour the concrete into…concrete costs are an entire different deal). Jerry suggested that because we were only going to use the wood once, we rent the wood from a concrete supply store in the Puntas barrio of Rincon instead of using expensive virgin wood and just throwing it away when we were done. It seemed strange to me, but we headed on over there a few minutes ago and got a big load of RENTAL WOOD(so weird to me).

Rent Wood for Concrete Forms - Save Money


We rented all of the wood we needed for the wall for a grand total of $38 dollars. It is already cut to the size we need (standard cement posts for fencing) and we just give it back when we are done. They required a $50 deposit and we have to have the wood back to them in 25 days. What a deal.

Picture of Concrete Supply Store in Rincon - Easy Reference Guide
Jerry carrying Rental Wood

We were planning on using IPE hardwood floors throughout the house upstairs. We were going to use it everywhere except the two bathrooms…that includes the kitchen. Upon further thought (more so because of the advice Robin gave us) we decided that hardwood floors in the kitchen would not be such a great idea. Tile is cleaner, easier to maintain and much more durable than hardwood floors.

Today, we have a lot of things going on at the house.
• Jerry is framing the forms for our gate/fence at the entrance of the property
• Gino and Kevin are putting up concrete board in the master bath
• Gino, Kevin, Jerry and I are going to move the heavy ass mahogany cabinets out of the kitchen into the great room
• We are going to put down the concrete board in the kitchen (opposite direction of the 3/4 plywood that is in there now for strength
• Summer and I are going to look for tile again today (we looked on Saturday…with a little luck)
• Summer and I are going to put down Behr High Gloss Concrete Sealer through out the entire downstairs (using Gino’s 18” rollers)
• I am going to order a 20” utility sink for the laundry room (smaller than normal…Home Depot doesn’t carry it hear in Puerto Rico…only on the mainland WTF
• We are meeting with the landscapers at 4:00pm to see their computer renditions of our property with their landscaping ideas along with an estimate

Busy day.

It’s funny. I was talking to Summer last night about the complete paradigm shift that I had when I moved down here and started working on the house. I have seen 100’s of houses being built, I have spoken with many people that have built their own house…but now I see building a house in a completely different light. The hard work took a while to get used to, especially in the heat, but now that I am used to working with my muscles everyday (as well as on the keyboard) I find the hardest part about building our house in Rincon are all the decisions I need to make (based on what is available to us here and the vision it takes to make them) on the daily basis. Anyone want to come down and make some decisions for us? That is the hardest part.

Summer and I really want to have a very raw look downstairs. Currently, it is all completely raw block walls and slab concrete. Our plan is to polish the concrete on the floor and maybe keep the walls block and just sand them, clean them and let them look unfinished. Then we could put our money into detail work around all of the doors and put in some killer industrial private investigator doors in the offices and a normal door for the guest bedroom/gym.

The other option for the walls is plaster or some sort of concrete that could have a smooth finish. The problem with this finish is that it takes a long time and is expensive both with concrete and about 2.5 weeks of labor. If it was something we had our hearts set on, we would spend the money, but I feel like we are just doing something to take the next step to finishing the house, not doing it because we like the idea of it.

Regardless, we definitely want the floors polished…so the guy I hired last week showed up a day late and polished up the floors. Before he could do that, we had empty the entire contents of downstairs (including 30 some sheets of 4×10 3/4 inch greenboard, power tools, plywood etc) and put it in the new shed we built to hold our tools and stuff.

We built the shed under the existing master closet out of pressure treated wood. There were two things we did that will hopefully make our life easier later. First, I set the floor with screws over where our septic tank pipe is in case we ever needed to get to it and second, I mixed a couple bags of concrete and covered the ground with a few inches of concrete. The reason for this was simply to keep the weeds out…weeds in Puerto Rico can be very invasive.

Here are some pictures of our guy polishing the cement, of the shed and a video of the guy I hired polishing our concrete and of our shed.

The plan (as of Tuesday) for today was to fill up the planter boxes a couple inches with pebbles (to avoid too much water on the roots of our plants) and then proceed to fill them up with topsoil so we can start planting. Then, we were going to haul a bunch of topsoil from the neighbors house to the front yard and at the same time order more topsoil for the front yard (we only have about 5 yards at the neighbors house…a dump truck holds about 20 yards) and get a few estimates for sod (it rains so much the seed would just get washed away) and arrange for all of them to show up the same day so we could spread the topsoil and lay the sod without all of our soil getting washed down the hill. If you don’t think it rains hard here, check out the Puerto Rican weather we had today…hard rain but not much wind and it only lasted about 45 minutes.

Back to the plan….eh hem…it never happened. But here is how it went down.

Last night, at 5:00pm, a concrete guy that we have been trying to track down for over a month stopped by and said he could bring his diamond bit orbital floor sander over to the house and polish the floors downstairs. But, he could only work for the next two days. So…of course, you have to get things done when the contractors are available, so I told him to come on by at 10:00am and we would have two rooms ready for him to sand. The plan was to move everything into the finished rooms and then do those floors…but we have a lot of stuff…and most of it is heavy…so I pulled an audible.

Jerry and I cleared out the two rooms, Mark stopped by and helped me move all of the hurricane shutters upstairs to under the deck, and we started building the shed that is going to go under the new Master Bedroom Closet. The video below was from this morning at 10:00am (oh, the cement guy never showed up and said he’d be here on Saturday morning instead) showing the work we did and still had to do. By the end of the day, we dug out the footings, poured the concrete and framed up the shed. I’ll show you more pictures tomorrow. For now, check out the video of our downstairs walk through.

We are going to be covering the entire upstairs (except the two bathrooms) with Ipe Hardwood Floors. Ipe wood, also known as Iron Wood and Brazilian Walnut, is valued for its durability, strength, and its natural resistance to decay, wet conditions, and insect infestation.

Ipe and the Janka Test

The rating chart is from the Janka test, a rating test commonly used to measure wood hardness. Basically, the test calculates the number of pounds per square inch required to drive a small steel ball half its diameter into the surface of the wood. This test shows that Ipe wood is more than 368% harder then Teak wood! Ipe has a Class A Fire Rating which puts it in the same category as concrete and steel. Ipe Heartwood, is typically reddish brown with a greenish tinge, often with lighter or darker striping. When sanded and finished Ipe looks similar to a teak wood but for half the price.

Jamie and Brian, two old and great friends from my days in New Jersey, are going to be here in Rincon in November to do the installation. They have both been installing hardwood floors for years and always seem to be working there downtime at friends houses applying their well tuned trade and skills. We have about 1500 square feet upstairs not including the front and back porches. Right now we are guestimating that we are going to spend about $7,000 in wood alone. If we were to use Mahagony we would be spending $14 per square foot as opposed to $5 per square foot for Ipe.

Check out some examples of finished IPE (Brazilian Walnut and Ironwood) inside and outside.

I like the smooth finish on this floor

The is a little more our speed, but I don’t know if I like the spacing

An IPE Deck, I really like the wood