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
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 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
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
Starting a business in Costa Rica I remember talking up our business plan to anyone that would listen back in early 2010. “We are going to build our portfolio as we drive across the U.S.A. and then open a Bed and Breakfast that offers Photography Classes in Costa Rica.” The star-shine in my eyes must have
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
Will Work for Beer – Finding Work in Costa Rica What if in some magical dreamland the “Will work for beer sign” that you kept under the bed just because you thought it was funny actually WORKED? What if it was a real job and not the here’s a six pack now get in the
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
There are two types of sloths, one man and one animal *Looking back at this video is hard. It has horrible editing, bad grammar & all sorts of things wrong with it. Shows our early progress but not worth your time. Kim 2/14 Our video shows one of our cute sloths in his Guarumo tree,
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
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 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
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