Bless me for I have sinned.

It has been 7 months since my last confession. I have blasphemed profusely, had many murderous thoughts and expressed pride in my achievements way too often.

So as a means of rectifying my wrongs I will, instead of the usual Hail Mary’s, spend some time extrapolating on my sinful ways. 

Where did I leave it? 

Ah yes, we were building a house in Costa Rica, and still are but we have actually moved in! Only a few things left to do but just finishing touches and furniture to add now. It is finally the place we can call home.

Every window is an exquisite framed picture of greenness. And most of that greenness that we admire is actually ours. No danger of any change to that beautiful thought.

But those murderous thoughts hit after our return from Europe in November. We arrived to find the guy we left in charge had basically completely messed up the walls. Nothing was square or plumb, the windows were all different sizes and not level or square, my tools were in an awful state and some had even gone missing. We even discovered that he had been using our materials on another job. Needless to say he left rather quickly and it was then left to me to try to rectify the immense amount of bad workmanship.

As I have explained before, Covintec is a system that is very easy to build with but it is extremely flimsy until the render goes on both sides of the panels. It is crucial to make sure they are vertical and straight before applying anything. This was the biggest mistake our foreman made. The walls after being rendered looked like a surfers paradise. Waves and bumps everywhere. All that was to be done was to apply more and more cement until we could get them half resembling a straight wall. One hundred and twenty sacks of cement later and the repair was reasonably achieved. But you can still see undulations if you look closely. But, as a friend of mine here said, it’s a funky house. So I can live with it. But I will never entrust responsibility to another again that’s for sure. 

Once the windows went in, which look great, it was then left to tile inside and start all the detail work, kitchen, furniture, fittings and a million other bits and pieces. And as I said we still have lots to finish but it is functional and flows beautifully.

There can be few things in life which give one such a huge sense of achievement. To consider, design, prepare and construct a beautiful home must be one of the most demanding but also rewarding things I have ever done. We have been here a month now and still wake with a sense of awe. This is ours, bought and paid for, built with love and attention to detail, a little white house in a sea of green, an oasis from the heat and a place to entertain and enjoy and laugh in and dance in. We are very very happy as you can probably tell.

And that happiness is about to be increased exponentially with the completion of the pool. There are just a few things left to do now to finish the construction, which I must say is akin to building another house really. It is a lap pool for Daniela. She adores the water and loves to swim laps so we decided on a long thin pool with easy access. And as you can see from the pictures, the access couldn’t be any easier. Literally fall out of bed into the pool! Can’t wait. But it will have to for another couple of weeks at least. I decided to make all the coping stones around the edge, daft bugger!, they look great, funky like the house, but I made them and they look great. Only another 28 to make as I write. I just made some forms out of plywood and used half a plastic tube to form the rounded edge. 

Along with a pool, though, comes all the mechanism and a building to house it all in. So we incorporated the pump house at one end under a concrete deck which is the roof to the pump house. It means it is easy to access and the noise won’t be too bad. All that pool equipment doesn’t come cheap either, you need a pump, a sand filter, a chlorine adder, and a salt maker as well as all the tubes and fittings. A lot of dosh but worth it. And we even got funky LED lights that you can change the colours of, so we can have a disco one night and a romantic midnight swim the other. Excellent. Now I just have to learn how to put it all together! And being as stubborn as I am of course I will do all that myself via a hundred YouTube videos. 🙂

So we are in, and with ‘in’ comes joy. Every day I wake at five like clockwork and at 5.45 I sit with my coffee and watch the birds, or the monkeys as the sun rises. It is my favourite time of day. Work is yet to begin and I have a moment to sit and peacefully appreciate why we are actually doing this. It is truly paradise and we have added our own little humble haven of tranquility to an already perfect spot without too much impact. 

Pura Vida (literally)

P.S.

I have been measuring, ordering and cutting wood all my life but the measurement system here has made me feel like a total beginner. Why? The Vara, and the pulgada, that’s why.

Now, if you are at all practical or have ever used a ruler you will understand that there are inches and there are centimeters. One is imperial and one is metric. One is archaic and the other is a far superior being. Two schools of thought on a subject that has probably caused bloodshed on many occasion throughout the eons. But here there are other factors to take into account. First, the inch, “pulgada” rules. Only a select few higher functioning tico’s here use the far superior metric system. The rest rely on measurement based on lengths of random body parts and fruit. Feet, inches and Varas? I had never heard of a vara. But I did the usual search on the internet and came up with this explanation which helped, a bit. They also measure plots of land in apples? The manzana, Which is a hundred varas by a hundred varas. Clear? No me neither. Which is why, when I ordered the wood for the deck, I did my usual calculation, in metric god forbid, and converted the results to pul(fucking)gadas, then down to vara’s(very annoying remedial arithmetic) which gave me a fine and wholesome total varas to order. But when it arrived, none of the lengths were the standard 4 vara’s, they varied from 3 to 4 1/2 which means I had a lot of waste offcuts and an unfinished deck. Hey ho, you live and you learn. Learning the measuring system here is like as easy as learning Spanish. I am better at my Spanish and that is saying something!

I will leave you with a big hug and a thank you for the support you give. It goes a long way when you are so far from family and friends. 

Take care and pura vida 

If you want to see the final product follow the link