This post shows the drawers and doors we made to help beautify, organize and help put this long project to rest. Making an honest woman out of me, through my drawers. See the red bag in the photo below? That bag has been my underwear bag since 2010. It’s not a sexy homage to Ken
Working hours are longer but my dream home on this incredible property in Limon Costa Rica is almost complete. There has been a zombie apocalypse forming on our farm lately. Our gnarled hands can’t keep a grip to carry things, a cramp in the leg makes us shuffle slowly groaning in agony and concrete dust mixed
We are saving money by using a few Tico tricks, a bit of American ingenuity and improvising.We are currently working on ‘finishing’ type projects and I’m even considering (dare I say it) what my drapes might look like. This post shows the bathrooms, building the kitchen cabinets, re-finishing the ceiling fans we brought down in
This post includes information on the product we chose to varnish with in our humid environment, how we built a trap door for fun and function and the decision to use galvanized steel to build a walkway and lean to for the car. Varnishing in the Tropics With two existing wood structures on the farm
Making the bridge from downstairs to upstairs, installing the gutter system and the back side of our house. Step by Step Building stairs can be overwhelming. You can’t exactly go out and find, much less pay for, the huge pieces of wood that are needed for the stringers (the large side supports). You must measure
Our house building project officially began in March of 2012 when we bought enough electrical cable to make it up the hill. The water tubes came next so we could test the water pressure to what would become a two story bath. We inventoried the wood we had available, tallied the trees we would need
Our cottage in the woods – Building a two-story house on our farm in Limon Costa Rica. We have pictures that show how we hid electrical wires in a single panel wall, how we added decorative, natural supports and our hand-built rock bar. This is a picture taken a few days ago of our soon
Why we chose painted metal roofing, how we used bamboo to help with building, and combating water stains from the incessant rain on our interior wood ceiling. Roofing Options in Costa Rica In Costa Rica your roof is, in my opinion, the single most important investment that you can make for your new home. If you
Our Building Project – Images of the progress since the last post (permission to project start), how very important a machete and rope have become and which brands of tools are taking a beating. We are officially deep in the throes of building. Not the sometimes you talk about “Oh yeah, 6 am to 6
Building Costa Rica – Obtaining Permission to Project Start Part 3 The waiting is over. We are finally starting our house building project. This article covers the steps we took to get permission, how we prepared the posts to go directly into the ground using re-bar and images of the site after the first day
Why are we Building with Wood? Part 2 Building Costa Rica. We chose to build our home with both wood and concrete. Wood will be our supports, buried directly in the ground, and serve as the material for the entire second level. Wood provides a cooler environment inside the house and reduces the likelihood of mold growth.
House Building Costa Rica Part 1. After buying the farm we needed to build our house. See Part 2 or Part 3 The process of house building Costa Rica can be fun and time consuming! We have been waiting to build our own house for two years. When we first bought the farm we decided to build
Things to think about before you buy a farm in Costa Rica Not everyone comes to Costa Rica with a pension, finds an awesome condo right over the sunset studded Pacific Ocean and lives happily ever after. Some people seek out a different lifestyle all together. Some people choose Costa Rica for the cheap farm
DIY Beehive for Stingless Bees We have been wanting to practice bee keeping for a long time. In the U.S. we read books, watched videos and even had the opportunity to visit a beekeeper in Kentucky who gave us a full ticket tour of his farm and hives. We learned a lot and were excited
How to build your own DIY Outdoor Wood Stove,Oven, Cooker, Grill and Smoker. Materials list and step by step photos. We find ourselves needing to heat up some odd stuff around here from time to time so we wanted to make an outdoor cooker that could do all of them. We heat up banana type
Buy it or Make it? Do we have to buy everything or can we just make it ourselves? Barry and his Dad made an oven, Barry is making just about everything under the sun and I made curtains! On a recent trip to San Jose I found some lovely Guatemalan fabric in a store downtown.
Construction Project number two is going well This is phase 2 of our building guest cabins project down here. It is coming along nicely, albeit slowly. This structure will contain two guest rooms, one bathroom, a kitchen with a wood burning pizza oven and an area just for hammocks and lounging around. Barry and Alfredo
Building our first wood cabin in the country. Oh yeah, the cabin is finally completed. We have moved in and live on our farm now. It’s lovely and beautiful and wonderful. Barry received notice of his residency approval this week also so we celebrated a bit. I went to Panama and bought a bunch of
A cow and a truck, a love story – Updates on our move to Costa Rica I have so much news this time around and no time to sit and write. We have one day off a week, which is Sunday. Every other day we wake up at 5am. I make the coffee and Barry
Building in Costa Rica. Our all wood cabin and our new gravel road. This is our new road and our progress on the cabin. The road has all the material it needs but the caterpillar needs to come back on Monday to flatten it down and make it nice. We have been driving on it
Swimming with birds & monkeys & Building the cabin in Costa Rica Enjoying Nature in Costa Rica while building the cabin, our video You may notice that Barry is editing this video. He claims that in the past I would make fun of him by being biased in what clips I decided to use. I vehemently deny the
Our New Apartment in Costa Rica and getting permission to cut a few trees. We moved to an apartment this week. It is only a 10 minute drive from our farm. It’s just one big room but its big enough for us and has a solid internet connection speed. The pictures are of the apartment
Our first days living on a Costa Rica farm. We were staying on a friends farm and learning everything including Spanish. You can’t expect to come to Costa Rica and just take the country by storm. Even if you have a building plan, money and big dreams, nobody cares. There are permissions, stamps and rules that need
Falling through the Floor Our last blog post included some video discussing how well our residency application/meeting went but not about how that meeting going so well lead to some extra time so that we could go and visit our farm. I am not being dramatic when I say that a little piece of my
End of July Building the Starplate Loveshack It is the end of July 2009 and this is our loveshack that we’ll be living in while we build our house. It has all the walls now and has screen around the entire building. It is made using the starplate system. Barry & his Dad Peter built