Friday, April 13, 2012

Forever House #9

...our journey to rent free living, all the entertainment minus the headaches.

I haven't updated about our forever house since November. I cannot wait to live in a house with large windows to get some breeze in! I am so excited about having clean water coming out of the faucets and water pressure and enough power to actually get in the shower without flipping the breaker. I'm thankful about not having to pour money into a poorly built rental and then being at the owners' mercy for when they want their fixed up house back!

I was really excited to get to show my mom our progress. Here we are standing on our future front porch. The great room is behind us and you can see our backyard from the front door.
Besides the surround that will be laid for this front porch, all the other block for our house is complete!!! All that is left is... well... a lot! First there is the roof.

Before Christmas a third of our roof went up. Our house has a squarish great room in the center and then 2 rectangles on either side. One roof line is over one rectangle and the other is over the great room and the other rectangle. The larger roof line is being poured next week... I hope.
This is our great room with all the supports holding up the forms (in process) for the columns that will support our roof.

Jimmy researched a lot about roofs trying to decide what would fit our needs the best here. We wanted something secure, long-lasting, insulated and something that would work with our attic fans. Jimmy decided on an insulated pitched concrete roof with a wooden false ceiling so that we would have an attic. I am thrilled about having a rustic wood plank ceiling... even more thrilled about how cool the first roofed section of our house is feeling.
First the workers have to take the styrofoam in steel mesh panels pictured above laying in our great room and prop them up on sticks. (photo taken from back porch)
Here are the sticks!
Jimmy told the workers to look around for someone who had just poured a roof, so we could get a good deal on used sticks and they found these.
This is what the inside of our house looked like for a long time. They pour concrete over the panels and you have to have supports underneath them for 28 days while the concrete dries.
The workers build many of their own tools. They built this awesome ramps to carry the buckets of concrete up onto the roof.
I thought they were very brave... those buckets are heavy! They just ran up and down this ramp like it was nothing. They do it all the time I guess.
Then they smooth out the concrete.
This is one of the holes for our attic fans. We were fortunate enough to find some in Guatemala City so that we didn't have to have them shipped from somewhere else. This is the second hole for one of the fans. The first hole, after being marked while Jimmy was standing there watching, still ended up being cut in the wrong place... so it goes.
They even put a smooth coat underneath. This layer seems silly since you will only see it if you are in the attic, but its purpose is not an aesthetic one, but one of function. It protects the panels.
You will see the overhangs from the outside.
The first 2 weeks we were back from Guatemala City it was over 100 degrees most days... the hottest time of year. We visited our forever house several times during those 2 weeks and the inside of the roofed side of our house was very comfortable, like you were sitting in the shade on a nice day. The insulated panels make a big difference.

Remember our grass plugs back in November?!
This is what they look like now:
Jimmy bought our first lawn mower while we were in Guatemala City. We have such a pretty, flat yard perfect for little boys to play in. I am so thankful!

We had a sample window put it. We liked it, so it is staying.
Except for in the bedrooms our windows will just have screens. The windows in the bedrooms will have glass panels on the inside that you can close on the crazy hot nights we want to use a window unit.
The photo above is of our back porch. I think we will probably eat most of our dinners on that porch!

They poured a lid for our septic tank. (old picture)
Jimmy set up a wood shop in the back corner of our yard. He finally got to move all his tools out of the storage shed! (old picture)
He was still in the process of setting everything up when I took this photo. He will be building all of our closets, shelves, and the plank wood ceiling, so this shop will come in handy.
CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: One of our masons wired Jimmy's shop for him to save him some time. While he is a very skilled mason, an electrician he is not! All this and the switch was broken!

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