California 2 Puerto Rico

That’s right, Summer is here. Both of them.

Summer arrives in Puerto Rico I

Summer flew in almost a week ago from her three week business trip to San Diego. The entire time she was there she was working 15 hour days, moving warehouses, setting up new utilities, working with accountants and bookkeepers and I can only imagine what else. She left San Diego at 9:45pm on Jet Blue and arrived in Aguadilla around 10:00am the next day. I got to the airport a little early and decided to hang out at Wilderness (surf spot in the flight path) until her plane cruised in overhead. Here is a picture I took of her plane with my phone. Sitting on the beach waiting for her flights is definitely better than circling the San Juan Airport in the truck.

Jet Blue Arriving in Aguadilla

Summer arrives in Puerto Rico II

Not only is MY Summer here, but the summer heat is here as well! The past couple of days have been hot (but they are always hot when you are in the sun), but the evenings have been hot as well. In the winter, the nights really cool down quite a bit. It is perfect weather for shorts and a t-shirt and maybe jeans if the trade winds are blowing or there is a storm system over us. Once summer starts to hit, the evenings don’t cool off quite as much and the idea of putting on long pants becomes quite unsettling.

This prompted us (along with a visit from Brian) to install our new ceiling fan in the master bedroom and begin our research on installing air conditioning in the two bedrooms upstairs and the offices/guest bedroom downstairs.

We will be getting split units for upstairs, but Brian brought up putting in Ducts and central air downstairs since we haven’t drywalled the ceilings yet. Let the Air Con research begin! Have any of you guys made a Air Conditioning investment at your house? If so, do you have any input for us (cost, brand, pitfalls etc)? Let us know!

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Summer and I both lived alone before we met each other. I lived in a little one bedroom cottage in La Jolla and she lived in a 3 bedroom house in Carlsbad. She worked from home (except when she and Kuta would go to the post office with the daily shipment) and I commuted to downtown San Diego to my office. So, when we moved in together, we both had to get used to having a roommate again. Of course, living with you significant other is different than a run of the mill roommate, but once the honeymoon stage is over you need to get used to each others domestic shortcomings and step up to pick up each others slack (For example: I hate doing laundry and summer hates doing the dishes).

Domestic routines and chores have never been my strong point. I am either OCD clean, or a complete slob. When Summer left for California, my plan was to organize, scrub and set up a routine for both of us to follow so we won’t constantly feel like we are living in a construction zone (with dirty dishes and dirty laundry).

But now that I am here alone, I am finding myself unmotivated to complete this monumental task (3,000 sqft of house, tools and supplies), but not because I don’t feel like doing it, but because I miss my girl. Back to paragraph one, it was nice to have some alone time at the house, but that only lasted about a day, and now I am aching to have my chick back in Rincon at my side. We are such a team. It is rare to see either of us outside of the house unless we are together (not counting my ridiculously early dawn patrol surf session that usually start around 5:15am).

Last night, on my way to the poker home game we love to play (Summer taught me how to play Texas Hold ‘Em Poker), I caught a glimpse of the sunset. It was the nicest sunset I have seen down here in a long time and I really wanted to share the moment with Summer. I pulled the car over, walked down to the beach and fired off a photo to send to my girl (Hallmark doesn’t have anything on the sunsets Rincon is privy to on the nightly basis) telling her that I was thinking about her (no need to dwell on the I miss you part, it makes it harder on both of us). Then it hit me, how selfish am I being? Summer knows I love and miss her, but you guys deserve to see the Caribbean Sunset as much as she does!

So, if it were normal to ‘toast’ to a sunset with our blog instead of a drink, this would be normal;

I toast this beautiful Caribbean sunset to everyone reading our California 2 Puerto Rico blog. I hope you have/will find a love in your life like I have found mine and that you work actively every day to make your wants/desires/dreams a reality!

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Things have slowed down in regards to work being done on the house, but we are ramping back up to going full steam ahead!

For the first 3 months of construction, we were spending around $1000 per day, so you can image how financially exhausting that can be. And, there is the unknown cost of the tax man that has been looming over us as well (That is one thing I hate about owning a business…you never really know how much you’re going to be indebt to the government at the end of the year). Stefan has his taxes all hammered out now, and I’m in CA working with my accountant to get the last few details of my taxes finalized, so it’s time to get back to work on the house (aka: resume spending $$$)!

I was feeling like nothing was getting done for the past couple of months, so I have set up a daily “To Do” list that has really helped Stefan and I to motivate. With such a big project as building a house, I would often find myself wandering around in circles trying to figure out what to do and then just giving up because I couldn’t figure out where I should start. So, I give Stefan and myself small tasks to do each day, and it has helped resume progress on the house. For example, some of the little things we have done: Hung artwork in the master bedroom, built and installed surfboard racks, installed light fixtures, hung mirror in downstair bathroom, etc.

I’m totally a list person :).

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Stefan, Kuta, Monkey, Cheech and I were planting palms behind the house yesterday, trying to pimp out the backyard. We got two Areca Catechu’s in the ground and we were trying to figure out where to plant the red palm that we got from Montoso Gardens. Stefan figured out where it would look good and starting digging with the pickaxe…dig dig dig, dirt, rock, dirt, rock, rock, Medalla can, rock, dirt, THUNK. Uh oh.

Unfortunately we didn’t hit buried treasure. And the only gold we saw was a buried Medalla can. A sure sign that the plumber had been here a one time.

Stefan turned to me and asked if I remember where the ditch was that we layed the sewage line. I took a look at the house and then at the septic tank and it was pretty much a straight line where Stefan was standing with the pickaxe.

Whoops!

So we put our landscaping plan on hold and Stefan ran to the ferrateria (hardware store) to try and get some pipe to repair our septic line. Unfortunately it was Saturday at 3pm and all of the ferraterias were closed. Luckly, there is a plumber that lives in our neighborhood and Stefan found some scrap pipe in his yard.

We cut out the damaged part of the pipe and definately did some ghetto style plumbing. But after 2.5 hours, it works and it doesn’t leak, so mission accomplished.

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It’s time to get the sinks for the master bathroom, since we are getting close to finishing up the master bedroom and bathroom. We decided that we want vessel sinks, like we put in the guest bathroom, BUT we want the master bath sinks to be porcelain as opposed to glass. The glass vessel sink looks pretty in our guest bathroom, but it’s virtually impossible to keep clean. For whatever reason, the hard water spots and sticks to the glass like crazy.

Faucet.com is having a sale, so I figure it’s a good time to purchase the sinks. Here are the styles that I have it narrowed down to:

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I have been really busy over the past week or so. Without evening mentioning work (the kind that helps pay for all this), I have been digging holes, chipping away rock, hacking down jungle, planting and watering like a mad man. I mentioned this in another post, but landscaping is something I can just zone out to and not worry about it being ‘up to code’ as far as construction goes. Dig it, plant it, water it, watch it grow.

Since there hasn’t been any surf this month, I have pretty much been working 7 days a week (why not?) on the property and this week I decided I needed a break. So I took a vacation and relaxed in the hammock for a few minutes. Laying there, i watched a little storm come in offering my new plants a much needed break from the sun and a bit of moisture.




Rincon Puerto Rico Vacation - For 3 Minutes




Instead of dozing off (like I would have done if we were simply renting a house in Puerto Rico), I fast forwarded myself 3 months to the start of the rainy season. I could only think of one thing; “I need to install our rain gutters.” My little Puerto Rico vacation was all over.

For those of you that don’t know, Puerto Rico doesn’t have a seasonal climate change similar to the North East (where I grew up). Puerto Rico pretty much has three seasons as far as i am concerned.

1. Dry Season (November - May)
2. Wet Season (June - November)
3. Hurricane Season (June 1st - November 30th)

When it rains, it really comes down. My little Puerto Rico vacation was over because i was starting to day dream about the damage all of the moisture could do to our offices if I didn’t do something about the water run off from our roof. So, I went to Hojalateria Hipolito Rosa, INC (a metal shop/factory) in Aguada and made a custom rain gutter order.

I ordered about 272 feet of 6” deep X 6″ wide corrugated steel rain gutters. They slide under neath the existing corrugated steel roof and will have to be fastened to the house from the top down…which is going to give me more work to do (sealing up all of the screws to ensure those holes won’t leak water into the soffits). Looks like it’s back to construction work! How do i do this again?

This is definitely a DIY (Do it yourselfer) special!

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Trying to make decisions when building a house, is very progressive. Take for example, the closet doors that we just installed in the master bedroom. At first, Stefan figured that we were just going to install those cheap mirrored sliding doors. That was not at all what I envisioned, so we decided to go with french doors, so we could completely open up the closet and walk in. With that on our minds, Stefan was asking a friend that has door/building experience where we could find french doors for our closet and he advised that we should definately get louvered doors for the closet, in order to encourage airflow and avoid moisture/mildew issues in the closet (something that is very important when living in a humid tropical climate).

Great. So not only do we need to figure out where to get french doors for the closet, now they have to be louvered….

So Stefan and I wandered aimlessly trying to find closet doors for quite a few weeks. Finally, we decided that we had enough and that we would just go to Home Depot and get whatever the hell they had in stock, so we could move on. After pulling out, inspecting and discussing every door we could find in Home Depot, I happened upon an endcap display that had these super cheesy fake wood (plastic) bi-fold louvered doors. I called Stefan over and told him that these would be PERFECT if they were made out of wood. Instead of having big french door opening into the master bedroom (which, in hindsight, would have been space consuming and annoying), the bi-fold doors, simply fold neatly to the side, saving space. Long story short…We found louvered bi-fold doors for the closet that were made out of mahogany!

Mahogany louvered closet doors:

We stained the doors and had Jerry help us install them, since we didn’t really know what we were doing.

How many Puerto Ricans does it take to install closet doors?

Just one! Thanks Jerry!

Something as simple as closet doors, makes a huge difference in the master bedroom.

Going…

Going…

Gone!

Yay for progress!

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We have so many projects going on in this house, that it seems like nothing ever gets done. It’s way too easy to get side tracked, which is proving to be very counter-productive. Stefan and I talked about this and we have decided to focus on one room at a time, in order to stay on track. So, with this in mind, these are the things that we will be working on in order to finish the master bedroom and bath:

Master Bedroom:

- Pick out and install ceiling fan.
- Pick out and install lighting.
- Find/buy/install french doors for the closet. (Done!)
- Install closet light fixture. Done!
- Lay hardwood flooring above closet (storage area).
- Purchase mahogany and finish window trim.
- Purchase bedroom furniture (Done!)

Master Bathroom (Shower/Wetroom):

- Find/install final trim.
- Purchase small storage cabinet. Done!
- Purchase/install light fixture.
- Purchase/install towel bar or hooks.
- Paint.
- Cut/install corner shelves for shower.
- Screw on the drain cover.

Master Bathroom (Jacuzzi Tub):

- Finish building vanities.
- Purchase/install sinks.
- Purchase/install mirrors.
- Purchase/install light fixtures.
- Install marble around tub and top of vanities.
- Install/hook up jacuzzi tub.
- Trim out the windows.

So. There you have it. This is our “To Do” list, so let’s see how long it takes to get the master bedroom/bathroom finished!

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Stefan and I have been shopping for our master bedroom furniture for a few weeks. We have stopped at every furniture store that we could find from Rincon to Mayaguez (Sears, Pitusa, Berrios, Rooms to Go, Seduca, etc) and have been highly unsuccessful in our mission for a nice bedroom set. The handful of times that we have found something decent, we come to find that they don’t carry what we want in king size. As a matter of fact, most furnitures stores carry so few king size bed options, that we started asking off the bat, “Just show us what you have in king size beds”. The sales guys then leads us over to the two ugliest beds in the store and tries his darnedest to sell it to us.

Today, we set off on our final mission. We went to 5 furniture stores before deciding that we would just go to Sears and get the bedroom set that we thought was “okay”, last time we were there. In a last ditch effort to avoid settling on something we didn’t really want, we went to the Pier One that is located in the Sear store, first. Low and behold, we found the PERFECT king sized headboard, dresser, night stand and bench, for our master bedroom! It’s from the Shanghai collection (which just happened to be on sale this week) and is pretty much exactly what we wanted. We also purchased a king sized Simmons Beautyrest mattress, and everything should be delivered next week.

YAY!

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The last two days, Stefan and I have been concentrating our efforts on getting our offices in order. It’s really, really hard to work when your office is a construction zone wreck, filled with random piles of crap! So, here is the progress on our offices. I’ll let you guess which office is Stefans and which is mine ;)…

I spent a good hour or two just moving the furniture around, trying to get the perfect lay out. As I mentioned before, the walls are concrete block and plaster, so we have to drill into concrete in order to hang things on the wall. This leaves little room for error when making the final decision on where everything is going to go. Getting everything on the walls perfectly straight was probably the most time consuming part, but I got everything right on the first try, thanks to my handy tape measure, calculator and level!

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