Friday, June 29, 2012

Forever House #10

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

Before Christmas 1/3 of our roof went up, now only 8 months later the rest of it has been poured! (That was meant sarcastically.) We had a very adorable unexpected expense somewhere in there:
{I love her serious face!}
So that is why.

This is a photo of our front door BEFORE:

DURING:
{with just the insulated roof panels}
ALMOST AFTER:
{with concrete on the panels}
We have to keep the logs holding the roof up for about a month while the concrete dries.

The way they build the tresses that hold up the concrete is really neat. It is all wrapped together with wire.
{Seesaw!}
Jonah and Silas are going to be disappointed when we finally move in and they realize that their new house isn't going to always be full of rocks, tools, and scrap pieces of wood.

Hopefully by next month Jimmy can order our PEX tubing and install our plumbing. Then they have to put the smooth coat on the walls and pour our floor. After that Lico will build the concrete surround that will eventually hold my kitchen drawers and we're in! We are shooting to be in before Christmas... for real this time. It will take us several years to finish everything, but unfinished it will still be the nicest place we have lived in this country. Clean water, electricity that is wired correctly, plumbing that doesn't backup into my shower, no mold, no ceiling full of bugs, windows that let in a breeze, a safe yard for my boys... I'm so thankful!

The steps that lead into our backyard are almost the width of our porch. 
They were going to be bare concrete, but Jimmy thought of using some of the travertine scraps we bought for $10 from the quarry here in town. We were both picturing something sort of rustic looking, but Lico must have been ready for some more intricate work, because he cut them down to perfect rectangles for the sides of each stair. It is really beautiful. We weren't ready to start the next phase of construction yet anyway, so it has mostly just been Lico working on projects like this one, this month.

Lico also fixed the door off of our soon to be carport. He cut out part of the column to widen it. That wasn't his mistake, for some reason in the final printout of our house plans several doors were narrowed without us being told. Lico follows those plan exactly!

We have a breeze that will go through our house from the back door to the front, but we also will have a cross breeze. Our house has a great room in the center with 2 rectangles on either side of it. Where the rectangles are connected to the great room there are archways. These are the only arches in our house.

Arches are Lico's specialty. First he built a mold: 

 Then he propped it up and poured the concrete:
Here it is awaiting the smooth coat:

You are looking into my laundry room in this shot. It is all windows! I line dry my laundry, so this will be super nice during the rainy season.

This entry is getting long, so tomorrow I will shares pics of our garden in a separate post.

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: Since this side of the roof was larger it was cheaper to rent a cement truck this time than to pay workers to mix it by hand (or by shovel I guess). It went great other than them showing up about 5 hours after the workers we had hired for the day got there and then when they left...

Oops! They knocked a hole in our wall!!!!

Lico told them to use the garage door, but they insisted on using the front door. This is the lovely patch job.

And it messed up my pretty ivy that had been growing for the last 2 years! Grrr. A discount would make me feel better, so we will see how that pans out.

2 comments:

  1. It's awesome! I'm kinda jealous. :) What are the panels on the roof? Is it that electromaya stuff? We're thinking of using that for the second level.

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  2. Yea, it's kind of like styrofoam wrapped in electromaya. The insolation in those panels makes a HUGE difference. We have a concrete roof in our rental house and we are cooking inside. When we visit here at the same time of day it feels likes we have air-conditioning or something. Completely different, like you are sitting in the shade on a breezy day instead of a stifling oven. Thanks! One day...

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