When we first looked at this house, the listing describe peek ocean views…which Summer and I never saw. We were told if we cut down some of the mango trees in the back yard we would be able to see through the valley to the ocean…but we didn’t buy the place for the views and didn’t really care either way.
After working on the place for a few months, I realized that we probably didn’t buy an ocean view property in Rincon Puerto Rico…but we still bought a bad ass, 40% complete construction project on a bunch of land (almost 3 acres).
Tonight, I was chilling on the back porch and realized we really can see the ocean from the house. You have to be standing on the far right side of the back porch, but you can see a couple inches of the ocean…so i guess we can make it official.
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…
When we purchased ceiling fans for our house, Brian gave us some recommendations on good fans and good fan brands. He is very diligent when it comes to installing fans and wants no wobble whatsoever. His ceiling fan schpeal all came back to me when i was sitting in my office in California, listening to this annoying wobbly ass fan…
I was just waiting for it to come flying out of the ceiling at any second.
I order the DecoLav sink for our guest bathroom! I purchased it from FaucetDirect.com and it should be delivered to our house is Puerto Rico. Which should be interesting, since we’ve never used our physical address for shipments yet, so we’ll see if the UPS guy can find:
Stefan and I are trying to curb our spending a bit, so we went with a cheaper sink for the guest bath. The DecoLav sink was only $178.75…well, that’s without the “accessories” that you need for the sink. After it was all said and done I just spent $451.76 on the sink for the guest bathroom (sink, mounting ring, drain assembly and lavatory faucet). Sigh. So much for trying to be cheap…haha.
Edit: 9/25 - It turns out that FaucetDirect.com is retarded and won’t ship to Puerto Rico, even though they give you the option when you check out. SO I ordered the exact same shit (sink, faucet, accessories) from Faucet.com and it was delivered via UPS 2-day air for $70.
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.
Yesterday, I helped Jerry and Edgar with the rock wall for a couple hours in the morning and then went off on my own to start my own little project; building a polished cement top for my desk. It is half experiment (to see if we will like the look for the kitchen) and half necessity. I am using the new desk Summer got for her office, but there is only room for one.
It took me much longer than I expected to build the ‘form’ (3 hours) and it was exhausting work. All of our ‘good’ tools were out front with Jerry so I was using all of our half broken secondary equipment which became very aggravating at times…but I was determined to set up the concrete by myself. Summer and I are at a stage in construction where we can’t afford to spend money on non-necessity things. She suggested we do more ourselves to save money, which is a hard task since the majority of what we need to finish up is all detail work (tile, kitchen cabinets, doors etc), but this was something I was perfectly capable of doing so I tackled the counter top experiment solo.
After building the form with a bunch of busted ass tools, I finally poured the concrete under the back porch at around 1:30pm and the thunder, lightning and rain was just starting…it lasted until 5:00pm. The rain really slows things down…
Back to the ‘no sheep, just sleep’ thing. Basically, I worked on labor intensive house stuff all day and when I wasn’t working on the house….I was online with my slow ‘wireless modem’ trying to get some work done. I had to skip our Monday, Wednesday and Saturday Night Poker Game last night because I was waiting for the concrete to set and we didn’t finish ‘burning’ its surface smooth until around 7:45. I told Jerry not to bring anyone to help him today that I would be his cement mixer / rock breaker and said good night to him. I let the dogs out for a few minutes…locked the front door and went to my room to read and let my back chill out. The next thing I knew it was 5:57am…my radio and reading light were both still on. No sheep to count, just deep deep sleep.
There has been progress on the blue rock steps up to our front door. Looks like they are almost complete!
Progress has been a bit slow on the planters and steps because it has been raining for a good part of the day almost everyday. Rain + working with wet cement is no bueno, so every time it starts pouring, Jerry and Tito have to pull a tarp over whatever they are working on and wait it out (or go home for the day, if it rains for a while).
I think this bookshelf/desk would look pretty cool in the guest bedroom. I wonder if it would be strong enough to use as a ladder up to the loft? Would that be weird or cool? Here is some info on this bookcase and desk combo from Crate and Barrel:
“The next generation in our popular leaning desk-shelf system - now in a sleek mahogany finish. Ladder-style design crafted of solid mahogany and engineered wood secures against the wall for maximum stability (hardware included). Sturdy open desk has two shelves and workspace for a laptop. Five-shelf bookcase works well alone or in multiples (two shown here with desk). Also available in white.”
Each bookcase is $129 and the desk set up is also $129. $387 as shown (2 shelves and 1 desk).
I think this shelf/desk combo and a couch with a pull out bed (plus the bed in the loft) would make for a pretty sweet guest room…
Here is a walk through of the progress on the guest bedroom and loft:
Trey, the guy that did our drywall, suggested the loft idea and I LOVE the loft! It opens up a lot of room since the guest bedroom isn’t very big. Stefan hooked up the room for me and put the bed in the loft and even put down some temporary carpet (we are doing hardwood in the entire upstairs, but that’s a couple of months off). The loft is also equipped with dual fans and lights. We are eventually going to build a cool ladder (perhaps with any left over mahogany) for the loft/guest bedroom. The house is coming along!
I order the DecoLav sink for our guest bathroom! I purchased it from FaucetDirect.com and it should be delivered to our house is Puerto Rico. Which should be interesting, since we’ve never used our physical address for shipments yet, so we’ll see if the UPS guy can find:
Back to the ‘no sheep, just sleep’ thing. Basically, I worked on labor intensive house stuff all day and when I wasn’t working on the house….I was online with my slow ‘wireless modem’ trying to get some work done. I had to skip our Monday, Wednesday and Saturday Night Poker Game last night because I was waiting for the concrete to set and we didn’t finish ‘burning’ its surface smooth until around 7:45. I told Jerry not to bring anyone to help him today that I would be his cement mixer / rock breaker and said good night to him. I let the dogs out for a few minutes…locked the front door and went to my room to read and let my back chill out. The next thing I knew it was 5:57am…my radio and reading light were both still on. No sheep to count, just deep deep sleep.
I think this bookshelf/desk would look pretty cool in the guest bedroom. I wonder if it would be strong enough to use as a ladder up to the loft? Would that be weird or cool? Here is some info on this bookcase and desk combo from 
