Looking like a house almost

Wood cladding

We are finally on the wood cladding. Quite a milestone here. By the 25th the windows will be ready to be installed, so the cladding will be finished and the only remaining large items will be the wood flooring in the living-room/kitchen, and the kitchen cabinets. Ah, and the drywall inside the kitchen and livingroom, and painting outside and inside the livingroom/kitchen. Plus the shelving unit designed to conceal the structural beams in the living-room wall that faces the beach. So still a ways to go :-)

All other doors, wardrobes and bathroom cabinets are ready to be insalled this week, slate floors downstairs are finished, and workers are correcting some stucco finishes that Fabian did not approve or like.

The bathroom sinks look very shallow, so we will have to be careful with the water and use less of it, an unintended conservation feature... I actually bought those sinks because they were the only rectangular ones I found that were not for "sitting" on the countertop. I am tired of those things that protrude above the countertop, making the counter area too low...

We got sponsors!

The nice folks at Dupont have agreed to pay considerable consideration in order to have our house covered in their advertising (this time for their Home Wrap product).



The final stretch of slate flooring. This part is raised a few centimeters for the 3rd bedroom/office and the storage closet which we were not planning to finish right away, but which we have now decided to try to do as soon as possible. There will be a room of about 5mx3m (directly below the kitchen, and the same size), plus a little distribution hallway, and a storage closet of about 1.5x3.5m opening also to the little hallway.



Kitchen area as seen from the living room. Still missing plaster, cabinets, counter, appliances in short, everything that will make it a kitchen.



The bedrooms facade has been redone, Fabian didn't like it because it was "too patched up."




And this is what I get for pestering Fabian with requests for photos... I don't really want to ask, but my guess is that it's a "crucera" or "vibora cruz" as the locals call them, deadly poisonous. My only consolation is that it's taken all these months for us to come across one at the site, meaning it may not be "crawling" with them.

We have a roof, we have floors...

After six straight days of rains, some more progress... we have a roof (tin roof, not considered a "real" roof by traditionalists in Uruguay, rather seen as a "poor man's roof"). I love it, I actually had toyed with the idea of having the whole house clad in this tin, so... Also, we have pictures of the finished floors in the bedrooms.



Funny, now the actual photos look like autocad renderings. The above two are of the guest bedroom, with the white, yes WHITE, polished concrete floors, with glass dividers.

Another layer

Side view of the house



Slate floors are almost finished in the barbeque area downstairs.


Workers putting on the polished concrete (white) on bedroom floors. Quite a change from 20 days ago when it was the workers' kitchen/bedroom...

Our good-bye visit to the house

The guest bedroom is currently serving as kitchen/bedroom for one of the workers. Note the pumpkin in the foreground, and sweet potatoes and other veggies on the ground...


It´s going to be a few months until we´re back, probably in September, when hopefully, all major stuff will be done. There will be landscaping to take care of, plus furnishing the whole thing.

It´s a shame to have to leave right now, when we seem to have overcome the annoying "plateau" of the past few months, when nothing seemed to change. We now see big progress on a daily basis, every visit is so rewarding, and of course, we must leave...

The latest "big thing" was the windows on the bedrooms and bathrooms. Someone once told me that no matter how advanced I perceived the construction to be, we would not be close to completion until the windows were in. We now have them on half the house, so that should mean we´re half close to completion :-)

The living-room structure is also showing progress, all electrical wiring is in, the roof is missing one final layer and once the windows are ready, they can clad the whole structure in wood.

Downstairs, they are almost ready to start laying the slate floors. The slate is on site, beautiful, grayish green with some weird red stains that look like hand-painting, but which are naturally occurring in the stone. We have chosen a funky pattern: all 30cm wide, but in varying lengths, that will give it a "syncopated" look.

Also, in the "while we're at it" spirit that may yet land us in financial trouble, we have decided to enclose a third bedroom adjoining the barbeque area downstairs. Because the space already has flooring, and 80cm high wall on two side, a full wall on a third side, and a roof, we figured it was quite inexpensive, only requiring one more wooden wall and a couple of windows. The architects are still sketching the facade, so I will have images soon.

Last but not least, we have the proposed initial project from the landscapers. It involves several stages, but the most urgent one is the grading/leveling and draining project for the area surrounding the house, which we want to tackle first. Second stage is leveling and cleaning up the rest of the adjoining plots, third is laying the pipework for irrigation and lighting, fourth is installing the lawn and pebble area for the parking space/entrance, and last will be the fun part, planting trees/shrubs/tall grasses/cacti to make it look nice. It will all cost quite a bit of money in the end, hence the many stages...

The artist

This guy sure knows a thing or two about working the tourist crowd... We visit the Punta del Este harbor often, and he´s the main attraction for us, but today we were truly surprised by the extent of his showmanship...