Saturday 5/18- This morning at about 6:15 Ivan and his crew arrived to get to work on our projects. They would start on the front lower section of the roof where the bathroom leak was, and then move on to the rest of the roof. Sometime in between or when they finished with the roof they would work on the culvert project. The plan was to get everything done today. They would have to move our solar water heater on the roof to replace the section under that, so Ramie had to drain our 40 gal. tank of hot water, fingers crossed we don’t need any hot water today! At least the ambient water temp here is pretty warm, so even without hot water, it’s not like we’d be washing our hands in ice cold water!
As they got started, I was very thankful that this was happening on a weekend and not on a workday. This was noisy work between guys on the roof, drills screwing down the metal, grinders cutting metal and just all of the work going on! There wouldn’t be a whole lot of concentration happening, so working on the blog was probably out of the question too. Since my sewing machine was still out from starting on the cushion cover project last week, I finished up the last of the cushion covers that hadn’t been slowly finished in the evenings throughout the week. When I was going through my sewing materials, we found a few pieces of fabric that we had cut a long time ago for puppy toys for Skye that I never finished. I quickly sewed some of these together to add to her ever-expanding toy collection. It’s not that she needed more toys, but since we had them cut out and I was sewing today, why not!?
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| What does this look like to you in this position? |
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| Hmmmm, what about this position? |
For the same reason we wanted cushion covers for the outdoor furniture, we wanted to make a slipcover for the seat of our living room couch. Currently we just have a bed sheet draped over the couch so we don’t end up with muddy paw stains that are hard to get out. It’s 1000 % easier to just pull the sheet off the couch, throw it in the washer, and get all of the dirt off that way. But, the catch is, it doesn’t look the nicest, and it doesn’t completely cover the chaise portion where Skye likes to lay when we’re sitting on the couch. Today, Ramie and I would engineer a slipcover for the couch out of an old bed sheet. It would still be easy to remove and wash, but hopefully it would cover better and not look quite so messy.
This sounded like an easy project in theory, but it turned out to be much less easy than expected!!
We didn’t have enough fabric to make 2 separate parts, one for the chaise and one for the rest of the seats, so we had to figure out a way to make this all 1 big piece. There was just barely enough width to the bed sheet to make it work, and we had to figure out how to make the cuts and sew it together so that it would work. So much easier said than done! We measured what seemed like 100 times, then cut the L-shaped fabric to what we thought we needed.
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| My trusty helper once again gets the job of cutting. |
We then tried to pre-fit to make sure it looked right, and we discovered the first mistake… The chaise length was too short. Ok, well, I suppose I could sew a section on to the end to make it long enough for what we needed. This thing wasn’t going to be pretty from the beginning, and it looked like it would get less pretty now. We then started pinning sections, pre-fitting it, sewing it, then test fitting it again, one seam at a time. Every time we sewed something and tested it, it seemed like we ran into something else that wasn’t quite right.
This truly was an engineering project and not just a sewing project! One seam and one step at a time, and I got it “done enough” to put on the couch. I didn’t finish the last couple of edge seams, but it wasn’t the type of fabric to unravel badly, and it was good enough for now because I was getting frustrated and tired of sewing. By this point it was getting close to dinner time and I hadn’t even thought about what might be for dinner. There were no leftovers, and nothing thawed out. 🙁
It was about this same time when Ivan called Ramie out to tell him that they were finished. The roof was all replaced, the culverts were all installed, and they were leaving for the evening. Ramie asked Ivan if he could deliver a load of dirt so Ramie could work on his next project this week, fixing of the hill outside of our fence. He has to cover up the culverts and add more dirt to the sloping hillside. Also, since the roof was finished, Ramie hooked up the water heater again so it could refill itself and maybe start heating a little bit of water with what sun was left for the evening. Once that was re-connected we headed out for dinner because there was no way I felt like cooking or even trying to figure out what to cook. We had some delicious BBQ for dinner, much better than anything I could have tried to throw together!
Monday 5/20- This morning Ramie got a call from Randall asking if he had time to go meet that guy who owns and operates the excavator. I guess he had some time this morning and was ready to go take a look at the job. Ramie wasn’t doing anything, so he hopped in Dusti & headed across town. Randall’s house was on the way, so Ramie stopped to pick him up. Unfortunately Randall had a bunch of trucks waiting for him to load, so he wouldn't be able to go with, but would be happy to talk over the phone if needed. Ramie was able to get the jist of it but the contractor still wanted to talk to Randall and, in the end, the contractor estimated it would take about 10 hours to do the job, and gave Ramie the price, which was in the ballpark of what Ramie expected. Now, it was time head back to our house to call Karen and discuss this contractor and his price. At this point, the only remaining outstanding quote for Karen to consider was from her builder, and then she could make the decision and they could start making plans for the excavation.
Once that was task complete, the next items on Ramie’s agenda for today involved dirt and garbage. Ramie wasn't home for long before Ivan called to tell him that the dump truck of dirt that we ordered was on its way.
Ramie would use this dirt to cover the newly installed culverts and smooth out the hill that goes from the fence at the edge of our front yard down to the road. Ramie, working smarter now so he wouldn’t have to work harder later, helped the driver back the truck into to the best position to dump the dirt for the least amount of shoveling needed later.
And what’s all that about garbage?
How is this even a thing on the to-do list? Well, maybe the better question is what do we do with our garbage? Believe it or not, Costa Rica has one of the worst garbage disposal problems that I have ever heard of. There is technically a system of garbage pickup where certain easy to access neighborhoods where people live close together each get their private pickup at their house, similar to what they have in the US. For the majority of our area, up the mountains, in the less densely populated areas, and places that don’t have enough people or easy enough access, the community has made a designated pick-up spot where the trucks come around to pick up the garbage, but this system is so messed up and broken that it’s very difficult to count on.
The garbage system doesn’t pick up construction waste, but shady contractors will go around and dump their construction waste in these designated pick-up spots, filling them up and not leaving space for the residents in the area to drop their garbage. Then, once this happens, the garbage stops getting picked up at those locations. The other problem is that many of these designated pick-up spots are located on a corner of someone’s private property that is close to the highways or other main roads. Animals get into the garbage if it smells like food, they rip bags open, and then there’s a mess. Who’s in charge of cleaning it up? The property owner shouldn’t be obligated because it may or may not have been his garbage that was scattered, so they get fed up and don’t let people put their garbage in that pick-up place anymore. Now where do people get rid of their garbage? Well, that’s the problem we deal with here in a country that is supposed to be so environmentally friendly and “green”. Don’t even get me started on recycling!! They have made recycling so restrictive and difficult that most people don’t even bother trying. When people new to the area ask about recycling on the local FB group, the answers are that there’s a place to drop it off here in town once a month on a particular morning for a particular couple of hours, or there’s a center that you can go drop it off that’s about an hour drive away. Neither option is convenient, so my guess is that most people don’t even bother.
Our neighborhood is brand new. About 2 and a half years ago we were the first completed house on our dead-end street of about 12 lots. Since our neighborhood is new, we did not have a designated pick-up place for our garbage. Initially when there were only a couple of us living in the neighborhood, a business at the end of our road allowed us to put our trash in their bin, but after there were too many houses, too much garbage, and too much mess, they told us that we couldn’t dump there anymore.
There are now 10 houses on our street, 4 of which are permanent residences and the rest are rentals (and OMG do rentals create SOOO much more garbage than the people who live here do, I don’t know why, but it’s a fact!). Thankfully, since our road connects directly to the main highway, for the last year or so since that business stopped allowing us to use their bin, our neighborhood was lucky enough to be able to pile our garbage at the end of our road right at the highway and the garbage trucks would pick it up when they pass by. Unfortunately, since this is right there at the highway and visible to the public, everyone else who doesn’t have a place to get rid of their stuff, and some of those shady contractors I mentioned earlier, have also been dumping their garbage at this spot. And wouldn’t you know it, now we have a big mess and a problem. It looks like crap, who is going to clean it up?!
Since our growing neighborhood is a mix of expats and Ticos, one of the Tico home owners who has a better understanding of how things work (and obviously speaks the language) has reached out to the municipality to discuss the garbage situation… again! Yeah, this isn’t the first time we’ve gone to the muni to try to get on the “official pick-up route”, but official & government things move slower than molasses in MN in January.
Finally, just last week, we were informed that our neighborhood would finally be added on the garbage pick-up route that would allow each house to have their own personal bin. This is very exciting and excellent news!!! (yeah, how sad is this, we’re excited about garbage pickup)
The one request from the muni is that we all need to have some sort of collection bin outside our house. They will still pick it up without a bin, but strongly suggest one because the animals will get into your garbage if you leave it sit on the ground, cause a mess, and the garbage guys aren’t going to pick up a mess. Since our house is one of 3 at the very end of the cul-de-sac, Nick, our neighbor, reached out and asked if we wanted to share a bin so we didn't have so many right in this very end corner. We thought this would be a good option, and Nick already had a bin frame started that we could use. Ramie had a welder and, since this has been in the works for a couple of weeks, Ramie convinced Ivan to leave some small sheets of our old roofing material when he replaced our roof, and he would use those pieces to complete the bin that Nick started.
Today Ramie picked up the frame from Nick, got all of his metal-working tools out, and got to measuring. The first thing he would do was cut it down to a more reasonable size. The one Nick had started was massive! Way too big for what we needed for just a couple of houses! Once Ramie had it cut down to a more reasonable size, he started welding it back together. Once the new, smaller frame was complete, he welded on some legs, extra bracing and used the roof material to create the base and the sides. It only took a few hours, and although it's not pretty, that’s ok it's just a garbage bin! He asked Nick to take a look and give his opinion; it was good with him, and now we just had to figure out where to put it.
Tuesday 5/21- This morning before it got too hot out, Ramie got started shoveling that dirt that was delivered yesterday. It doesn't take long for the street to be in full sun, this will happen by about 9am, so the goal is to get as much done before then and before it gets too hot, as he can. He was able to shovel about 2 meters of dirt, which got the main section of culvert covered up and the hill somewhat evenly sloped before calling it quits on that for the day. There would always be tomorrow! He was proactive, though, and covered the whole hill in some saran mesh that we had laying around, so that in the event it rained hard tonight, all of his hard work wouldn’t wash back out into the street.
The rainy season has started, so have been having more electricity issues. Today, the power has been flicking on and off all day with big chunks of time that the power was out. Luckily, we have a battery backup on the Starlink for internet and for my computer monitors. All day it was literally on-off-on-off. Super irritating for sure, but probably not very good for the appliances and electrical systems in people’s houses either. (Along with the garbage situation, power is another HUGE headache here! Yes, you may think we live in a tropical paradise, but it truly isn’t without it’s own set of problems!) At about 3:00 the power went out and stayed out until almost 5. It came back on just long enough for me to make some dinner, and then went out again at 6 and was out until we went to bed. This afternoon and evening it was also raining so hard that the Starlink couldn’t connect either, so not only were we out of power but we also didn’t have any internet to play on our phones.
So Skye got lots of playtime by candlelight & flashlight while we were waiting for it to get late enough to go to bed. We still ended up going to bed about an hour earlier than we usually do, but at least this time we (I) didn’t feel guilty about going to bed early and getting that extra hour of sleep. 😉
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| Sitting on the floor playing with Skye by flashlight |
Wednesday 5/22- A while back when Karen was visiting and was still thinking that she would be building the new house on-top of the footprint of the casita, she and Ramie went up to remove all of the personal items from the casita and take out the fixtures that she thought she could re-use in the new house or re-sell. One of these items that they removed was the bathroom sink. When Ramie removed the sink, he found that the wood top on the vanity was rotten. That wasn’t a problem at the time because they thought the house was going to be gutted. After Karen decided that she was going to change the plan and keep the casita, Ramie was in charge of putting everything back together. That meant, though, that they had to do something about the rotten counter top. Karen decided that she would replace the wood top with granite. The ball was in Ramie’s court again so he reached out to the company that we used for all of the granite in our house and got pictures and prices of different colors and styles for Karen to pick from. She made her decisions, got the granite ordered, and today, the company would be installing it. Ramie headed up to the casita to let the installer in and brought them the new sink and faucet so everything could be set and final decisions on placement could be made. It didn’t take long for the installer to install the countertop and cut the holes for the faucet.
Another day Ramie will go back to the casita to install the sink and faucet and get everything put back together. This is one step closer for Karen and Dennis to move down here and start their dream of living in this tropical place.
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| While dad is gone, this is where Skye hangs out, waiting for him to return |
Ramie waited while they loaded the dump truck and then had the driver follow him to the house. He came into the house to warn me that it was about to get really loud, and he was not kidding! Dumping that big load of rock was extremely loud. So much so that Skye ran to the back yard and stayed there until it stopped (yes, she’s still an absolute chicken of things that are even just a little bit scary or out of the ordinary). Ramie, being the funny guy that he is, took a picture of the pile of rock and sent it to Geoff and said “It's not going to stack itself.” Geoff offered to come over right away to start working, but Ramie tried to insist that it was too hot to do the work, and to come in the morning instead. Maybe he was just bored today, but Geoff insisted that he wanted to start this afternoon and was at the house around 1:00 to start sorting and stacking rocks. The two of them spread out that green saran (landscape fabric) that Ramie used to stop the rain from washing the dirt away as a weed barrier, then started, one by one, picking rocks from the big pile and trying to lock them together over the culverts and up the hill. They made sure to take plenty of breaks and stay hydrated. I went out to check on them at about 4 pm which was about the time that they decided that they had had enough for the day. It really was looking good and I think this is going to look really nice once it's finished.
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| This is a good start, but still a long ways to go. |
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| Discussing the placement |
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| Stopping point for the day. |
Friday 5/24- Geoff was available to help work on the rock project again today and arrived at the house around 7:30 and the two of them worked hard to finish up this rock project. Ramie, being proud of what they accomplished, called me to come take a look. Yep, looks good!
Special thanks to Geoff for helping Ramie with all this hard work.
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| The garbage bin already in use as well! |
Pura Vida!
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