California 2 Puerto Rico » Office

Work Day Break Spent Perfectly

Stefan — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 20:42:22 +0000

Yes, that’s right, Summer and I have jobs. It seems that many people think that because we moved to Rincon from California we got here with tons of coin and that we don’t need jobs because we are independently wealthy. Haha, this is not the case.

We both work full time from our offices located here at the house. We love working from home and love being able to spend so much time with Sydney. We’re super strict about schedules and parent duties timing. We alternate 6am-12 and 12-6pm Monday through Friday. This allows me to be in the office for 6 hours during the day, and then I work after Sydney goes to bed for a few hours every night. Summer and I often work weekends as well, as we both need at least 40 hours a week to work.

Yesterday, it was my morning shift in the office. I went upstairs to make a cup of coffee around 10:00am to take a break and say hello to Sydney and Summer. When I got up there, they weren’t home so I enjoyed my delicious coffee on the front porch alone with my thoughts. I put down my coffee and for some reason, thought what I was seeing was a great example of my lifestyle and two things that make me happy. Coffee and flip-flops. Not that it is art, but if you look at this picture subjectively I think you could read into it and get a lot more out of it than meets the eye. Hope your day today is as good as mine was yesterday!

Coffee Flip-Flops

Ceilings Downstairs Are Done!

Stefan — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:53:39 +0000

I don’t know which is the bigger accomplishment, getting the ceilings done downstairs or blogging about it! Summer and I have been so busy with work and Sydney that we haven’t had time to post the pictures of the soffit work and drywall on the ceilings downstairs. Aside from that, it has been hectic trying to get settled back into the house. There is drywall dust EVERYWHERE and we are only able to really work around Sydney’s nap schedule. Life has changed

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’:

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

Rincon Air Conditioner Sales, Service and Installation

Stefan — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:07:22 +0000

Rincon gets hot in the summer, and although the upstairs of our house is quite nice regardless of the temperature outside, our offices downstairs needed Air Conditioning. So, sweating it out in front of my computer I started researching what brand I should buy as well as where I could buy split unit Air Conditioner units, have them installed professionally and have them maintained down the line as they get older. This ruled out many of the ‘handy man’ guys around town that are capable of doing the work because I want to be able to call a business and say “help!” instead of track down a ‘handy man’ that may or may not feel like dealing with a former job. I also wanted to get a warranty on both the installation work and the units themselves.

After calling around and asking around, I had the job narrowed down to a few local businesses. I narrowed my choice down even more by price point, brand names and professionalism.

The Air Conditioner Units I wanted were the new Inverter type units. They save over 30% in electricity than their predecessors and considering Rincons Electric Bills just went up 30% last month, that is quite a bit of savings. I also wanted to get units that were strong enough to cool all of downstairs when all three splits were run simultaneously.

After research and due diligence, I decided I wanted to buy the Daikin brand split units.

Our two offices and the spare bedroom/gym are about 12ft wide by 18ft long with 10ft ceilings. Our great room downstairs (between the offices) is 40 feet long by 20 feet wide. I decided that the 24,000 BTU split inverter units were the right ones for the job. Keep them turned low for the offices and once we finish up the media room and new entrance downstairs, we’ll be able to keep it all cool by cranking the units in the three rooms with our interior doors open.

The company we used for the job was Aguada Refrigeration and Air Conditioning. They were here when they said they would be, installed everything professionally (centered, sturdy etc) and gave us a 5 year warranty on the installation and the split units and compressors.

If you are researching for an Air Conditioning company that services Rincon, use the business I used, they were rock solid on all levels. Tell them Stefan from www.ca2pr.com sent you to them and they will give you a discount AND give me a finders fee.

Aguada Regrigeration and A/C

Office Telephone Number: (787) 868-3936
Cell Phone Number: (787) 614-0412
Alternate Cell Number: (939) 640-3693

Office Furniture – Start with a desk?

Stefan — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:17:38 +0000

Summer and I went to the Rooms to Go liquidation center before she left for California looking for some furniture. I found an awesome couch set for my office but ultimately didn’t buy it…but I had a reason. I couldn’t rationalize spending a bunch of money on lounge furniture for my office when i am still working on a desk that I made out of left over Cedar plywood.

It prompted me to look around online a bit and I found this great desk….in Wisconsin. Does anyone know if there are any antique dealers here on the west coast or in San Juan?

Progress on Our Offices

Summer — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 03:36:48 +0000

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!

Faux Finish Paint – Summer’s Office

Summer — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 22:12:21 +0000

Before my last trip to San Diego, I wanted to get the paint done in my office. Unfortunately I was rushed, didn’t read the faux painting instructions and it wasn’t turning out the way I wanted it. So I abandoned the project, until today. Here is the base coat + partial paint that didn’t turn out:

I’m doing a faux finish that requires a lighter tinted paint (the seafoam looking paint) as a base coat, with a paint/glaze mix for the finishing coat (the darker teal color).

On my 1st try, I was rolling the darker teal paint on and then trying to manipulate the paint with cheesecloth, for a weathered look. Unfortunately I was getting roller lines and I ran out of cheese cloth about 1/10th of the way through…

So, I resumed the project today with a new game plan. I mixed the glaze and paint (4 parts glaze to 1 part paint) and cut up a terrycloth towel and used that as my paint brush.

I scrunched the towel into a ball, dipped it into the glaze/paint mix and “washed” the walls in a circular motion. It really was just like washing/scrubbing a car, and I like how it turned out (for the most part).

Here is the finished faux finish:

Now I need to paint the white walls (they’ve been primed already), and I’m thinking of adding a pearlescent additive to the white paint to give it an interesting shine. I’m also going to paint the window panes white.

After the white paint, I need to pick out baseboards, outlet covers and hang all of the dohickies that go on the wall (which I need to get right the 1st time, since I’ll be drilling into concrete to hang anything in my office).

Vicious Ent. Puerto Rico

Summer — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 21:42:07 +0000

Our downstairs offices are finally coming together enough that we have moved into them. Here is a sneak preview of the Vicious Enterprises – Puerto Rico office:

The polished concrete floors have been sealed three times and the walls have been plastered, but we have to wait 1 – 2 more weeks to apply the wall sealer (to avoid moisture problems in the future) and then we can paint. We returned the ceiling fan since we found out that the expensive fans we bought for the offices don’t actually circulate any air (unfortunately for Stefan his office was the 1st one to get the fan, where we discovered how bad they suck). I’m thinking of putting in an awesomely gaudy chandelier instead, plus air conditioning. If you can’t tell, my office is going to be decorated in a “modern vintage international Parisian flea market” theme. I’m using black, white and a bold accent color as the color palate, but I can decide what color I’m going to use yet. I was going to do pink, but every girl does pink nowadays, so now I’m leaning towards a deep purple or bright tealish blue.

It’s nice to have a somewhat private space again, so we can get back to work without distractions and interuptions. Contrary to popular opinion, Stefan and I do actually have jobs .