House Construction # 6

The landlords sons new house is coming along.  They finished putting up the walls for the second floor and then got it ready to pour the roof.  I was gone when they poured the roof for the first floor or the floor for the second floor whichever you want to call it.  Roy told me that they did it with a traditional pour using lots of men and labour.  This time they decided to get the cement truck along with the truck with the long arm on it for sending the cement right up to the roof.  This is more costly; but results in a faster, better pour with no seams to leak, hopefully.

They still had quite a few guys to work; but it was much easier for them than carrying 5 gallon pails of cement up to the third level.  This way they just had to spread and smooth it out.



The guys ready to go.

The arm truck which is connected to the cement truck.

Getting to work.

Bad Blogger Guilt

Yes, OK I have been missing from this blog for quite some time.  Long enough that I have been getting emails wondering if we are all right.  Yes, we are fine, I have just been lazy about finding things that are blog worthy, in my opinion.

My days are spent doing the same old things.  Paying bills, getting groceries, running errands, taking art and Spanish class, laundry, cooking and all the usual day to day stuff.  Nothing real exciting or even interesting for a blog.  I guess things here seem so normal to me now that most of the time I don't take my camera with me, so don't have pictures of things other people might find odd; but are just normal to me.

I did make a couple of posts on the art blog, link to that blog is on the right hand side of this blog, I quit posting my paintings on here as I thought I was boring everyone and if you were interested you would go to the other blog.

I sent a couple of pastels paintings north to Canada hopefully they will get there before the Christmas mail rush.  In fact they should be there by now I think.  I haven't talked to anyone lately so am not sure.

It has been chilly and windy here for a couple of days and my aches and pains have been bad, in particular my neck and shoulders.  I have Fibromyalgia so I ache worse when it is cold and windy.  I skipped art class one day and the next day headed uptown and bought some wheat.  I came home and sewed myself a wheat bag.  If you are not sure what this is, it is very simple.  It is wheat, seeds of course, sewn into a cloth bag of whatever size you want, as long as it will fit into your microwave.  You then heat it up in your microwave, time depends on the size of the bag.  When it is comfortably warm you take it out and put it onto your achy areas. It really seems to help and yesterday I managed to make it to art class, as I could actually turn my neck again without a lot of pain.  Yay, wheat bag.  You can also add some aromatic herbs to your bag if you like, lavender is one that lots of people like.  I didn't as I have allergies to a lot of scents and don't tolerate scents close to my face very well.  I also sewed a door snake to block the drafts coming in under our door.

The landlords sons new home is coming along.  They put the roof/ceiling on for the first floor when I was in Canada in August and are now working on the walls for the second floor rooms.

Allan House Construction #4

The days are filled with pretty much the same old thing.  I finished my first project in this current class, no picture of it finished as yet, it is still at the Casa de la Cultura as the teacher wants to send them to wherever to get them mounted.  He seems to like to mount these on a white board with glass? covering the picture.  If I remember to take the camera tomorrow to class I will take a picture of it pre- framing.  It turned out not bad.

I am almost done working on my friends dog, Frank, just a few finishing touches and the clean up to do.  I might finish it tomorrow before class if normal life doesn't get in the way. 

Allans house construction has been quiet for a few days; but when I got home from uptown today there was a backhoe doing some digging, not sure what was going on.  The foundations are in for the rooms on the lower floor.  The rooms according to the albanil, (Louis), are 3 m. x 4 m. and 4 m. x 5 m..  There is going to be a bathroom, game room for the kids, a kitchen, dining room and livingroom on the main floor.  The second floor will have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms (1 off the master bedroom I am assuming and 1 for the kids).

The other day some guys drove up with a lift machine thing and proceeded to lift themselves up to the streetlight and check it out.  I am not sure what they were doing as the light was working properly at the time.  They saw Roy and I standing on the patio watching them and noticed my camera so they were joking and posing for photos for me.  They did their thing and left, maintenance perhaps??  Unusual for sure.

The mangos are almost done blooming as are the avocados.  The peach tree and the lime tree are still blooming, the peach tree is really pretty at the moment and reminds me a bit of cherry blossoms.

Peach blossoms.

Allan New House Construction Or Is That Combustion---#3

Today when I was sitting outside on the patio I heard a very strange loud hissing air sound, hard to describe. It continued, so I got up to see what was happening.

The machine that runs the jack hammer was smoking in a manner that was not good, to say the least.  I called Roy and went downstairs to have a better look.  As I got closer I could see the machine engulfed in flames at this point.

Allan happened to be home for lunch and he went running over to see what was going on and called the fire department; meanwhile the rest of us watched it burn.  There really wasn't anything to be done.  Everyone that was parked close by moved their vehicles out of the way for the fire truck to have room.

Luckily it didn't explode and the fire department responded within 5 minutes or so.

They quickly went into action and had it out in a couple of minutes.  The police pulled up and had a look around, talked with the firemen and perhaps Allan I am not sure.  One of the firemen went over to Allan with some paperwork.   

A few minutes later both the police and firemen left, job done.

Hopefully Allan will not have to pay for the machine; but who knows.  I have no idea if the owner would have insurance on it or how that works here.  The machine was not working properly from the first day it arrived here so it obviously is out of its misery now.

An out of the ordinary event on our normally tranquil street.

A few pictures and a short video, I had a better video; but someone standing close to me was using some language not meant for a G rated blog so I couldn't post that one.

Machine on Fire.

Machine on fire.

Fireman and Cop.

Add caption

Allans New House Construction # 2

On Saturday morning a truck pulled up with the machine that runs a jack hammer, with some pushing and pulling they managed to get it up the hill to the construction site.
They worked for a while that day, I was gone for most of the day so missed it all.  Yesterday they worked again and Roy and I went over to have a look at what is going on.
I guess they are going to build the house on 3 or maybe 4 levels and they are jack hammering down some of the rock of the hill to be able to put in the foundations.
Someone asked about what the view would be like so I took a couple of photos of the view from the top.
They are working at it again today; but we haven't gone up to look at the progress today.

The rock where they are jack hammering.

The machine that runs the jack hammer.

Part of the view.

View of the port and bay, looking East.

View of the bay to the south.

Changing The Neighbourhood

Our neighbourhood is an older established area with older homes and lots of trees.  When we moved here in 2005 there was an elderly lady living sort of kitty corner from us.  After a couple of years she was no longer able to live alone and family took her to live with them.  Since then her home has stood empty.  The home according to the landlord needed to be torn down as it was not in good shape.  It has sat like that for a few years now, every once in a while someone would come to clean the front yard and that was it.
It has now been sold and on Monday a couple of guys with a sledgehammer showed up and started to de-construct the home.  They worked at it for about 3 days and then when all the old windows, railings, re bar, etc. that could be salvaged had been and they had reduced the home to a pile of rubble, a backhoe showed up.  He dug out part of the front rock wall and garden area to make a path up into the lot and began to pull the rubble to the front of the lot to be piled up onto the street to be loaded onto a dump truck.
Yesterday a dump truck showed up and they filled him up 3 or 4 times and the pile has disappeared.  So I am assuming the backhoe will continue to pull out more until he is finished cleaning the lot.  I was told the dump truck charges 600 pesos a load not sure if that includes a dumping fee.
We have been having fun watching the workers, especially when the head of their sledge hammer kept flying off and they had to keep putting it back on.  Once it flew down a hole in the rubble and they had to spend some time fishing it out with a long stick.  It was recovered and re-attached and work continued.
We know the new owners well, so the neighbourhood won't change a lot people wise; but it will sure look different with a new home in that lot eventually.
I'm sure there will be lots more construction posts coming as the home goes up.
 Poco a poco.