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Little house in Guatemala, week 5

by Pauline Paquin

 

 

 This is the fourth part about the (slow) conversion of the land I bought in Guatemala and my new life here, you can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 if you missed them.

 

 

 

As I write this, it is still the weekend, the house is quiet from construction workers and aaaaaaaah does it feel good. To rest my back, to lay my legs, to cream my hands and just do nothing. This week was too much and we ended burned out. It is 630pm and BF has been sound asleep for over an hour. That’s how tired we are.

 

Bye bye black plastic roof cover (crossing fingers for no rain)

 

The car was making a strange noise and we had to take it to the mechanic. Here with a piece of plastic and another little rubber, they fix cars, which is awesome. You have to learn how to make mend do when the car dealer is 300 miles away and everything takes weeks to ship. The guy said it would take 30 minutes, it took about 4 hours…

 

New plastic roof

 

In the meanwhile, I went to shop for some plastic tiles for the roof, and a couple of doors for the future guest rooms. I managed to forget my checkbook there but didn’t realize that for another couple of days. Or it may have been the workers inside the house… I’ll stay with the lost theory or will start doubting every worker that came inside. It cost an additional trip to the bank and a couple of hours lost to learn that thankfully no check had been used, but we couldn’t withdraw money without a checkbook in spite of having our ID and even fingerprints check into the bank system. And since it is a company account, no debit card is allowed either so we have to write personal checks to the workers in the meanwhile and complicate a bit more the company’s accounting.

 

                                 Shower with plastic roof

The work started early this week to build a wall that will separate the living space into two guest rooms. Since half of that space is still our bedroom, we had to limit our living quarters to just a little more than the size of the bed, until the wall was up. The bathroom door would be in the second room, so we had to take it off, close the hole, and make a new hole for the door to be in the newly created corridor.

 

     It means ”dirty”… just a day after a full deep cleaning… depressing.

 

That means noise, and dust, more dust than you can imagine. From the deck it looked like the house was chain smoking cigarettes.

 

                                         Kitchen with lots of light

We hadn’t planned to change the roof just yet, but a retired American expat came by saying he was interested in buying our plastic roof cover. He just moved into a leaking house and was in a hurry, so we were happy to sell our plastic, that covered one third of the new plastic tiles expenses.

 

                               The second bedroom is being built

As the thatched roof continued to rot in some parts, a lot of dust and crap would fall off, making it a nightmare to clean the house. Those rotten parts are where insects and bats nest too, so we got rid of it all, kept the healthy part, and put on the plastic roof. It is like camping under the stars, I like it. We put it ourselves, because five workers were already on the room building and new room excavation project.

 

             The house being painted white. Insects don’t like lime

 

We also painted the house white with lime wash, and dug a new septic tank because the old one was the dry toilet that has been taken off to excavate the new room. Busy week, I’m telling you.

 

                                                Digging the septic tank

 

I talked a couple of weeks back about how happy I was with my deep freezer and that I had a full lamb inside. Turns out the lamb had sharp bones cut with machete and made a hole at the bottom of the freezer. When its temperature started to increase, we knew something was wrong. The store told us a technician could come in 2 weeks, and there was no way I was wasting a lamb and about $200 of food so we called in a guy, who said the bone hole had nothing to do with the leak, the freezer was faulty. Now we are fighting with the store to get the reparation money, and they say they don’t cover the 1 year guarantee because of the bone hole.

 

There are a few good news.
1.We were able to save the palm trees that were uprooted to leave room for the new room, they are planted on the beach and will define a line for the petanque (French bowls) field. The field is a nice addition, it is also a way to get rid of all the excavated ground.

 

 

 

2.We found those rests of Mayan clay artifacts while excavating.

 

Future petanque field, the saved palm tree to the right, the mountain of sand to the left will be used for the field

 

3.The hens have welcomed two little sisters and we have found a second egg! I thought they were traumatized and not laying, turns out they don’t lay in the lovely nests we made inside the cage, but into the wild. Now it looks like Easter looking for the eggs everywhere before another animal eats them. A hen makes a lot of noise before she is about to lay so we know which one to look closely.

 

4.I just love the color of wet concrete and am looking into ways to keep the walls this way, with a coat of burned oil or something. Otherwise the concrete will dry and look gray and sad.

 

love this dark concrete color

 

5.Finally, the cuteness overdose of the week, the very first little plant from the herb garden has started to sprout! Not even a week, I am quite impressed. Guatemala is known for the amazing quality of its soils, and things that are growing at twice the pace than other place because of a perfect climate. I hope then hens won’t eat the plants!

 

our very first little plant! #cutenessoverdosealert

 

I hope your week is going well! Have you written to Santa yet? Remember you can win $100 on the giveaway that I am co-hosting!

 

This post was featured on the Mo Money Mo Houses, thank you!

 

 

Lovely comments

  2. What a great update post Pauline! I’m so glad your hens decided to start laying eggs for you although i’m not sure I would have the patience to go searching for them everyday.

    I hope you get your money back on your freezer, it makes it so much easier to reduce your amount of wastage by freezing things for the long term.

    • Not looking for the eggs defeats my zero food waste challenge! I would love to see a little chicken appear one day but it looks as they don’t know they have to sit on top of the egg for that, they just lay and leave.

  4. Great pictures Pauline! It really looks like you’re making some good progress. That’s too bad about the freezer, hopefully they will come to their senses and take care of the freezer for you.

    • I hope so, it is really weird, because they know I know the owners of the store chain (who I wouldn’t bother for a $80 repair) so they are freaked out and at the same time lying and finding ways to wash their hands off the problem. We’ll see.. at least it works now and my food is safe.

  5. Those clear roof tiles are awesome. I wish we had them here in the states. Businesses could save a lot of money on the electric if they just invested in something like that.
    I wish you luck with both the checkbook and freezer.

  7. It’s so fun to watch a house being built in a different country. It’s so different than what we have here and I absolutely love it. The roof is AWESOME by the way…it’d be really cool to see the stars from bed at night.

    • It is really cool, but the windows are kind of tainted for the sun so I need to check for the stars on a very clear night. I like that we are reusing something that was there instead of tearing it down which was the original plan.

  9. Plastic roofing is pretty neat idea. I like learning about different construction methods in different countries. Nice photos. How did that guy even climb up the tree lol. Finding old artifacts looks really fun and just enjoying the simple things in life makes me want to take a long vacation on a tropical island :0)

    • I have no idea how they climb trees, it just looks so easy to them. If the tree is really high they put a rope between their feet and climb like monkeys with both feet at the same time.

    • It is getting annoying to ”deep clean” the house every other day, thinking it is the last time, and having another construction start. But our Christmas guests will have their own room, which is awesome.

  13. Wonderful project, Pauline; wish you all the best with it and love the shower room with plastic roof. How quaint! As to the dust, yeah, we have some work done in the house and the dirt and dust this generates is horrid; but it settles (pun intended).

  16. This is awesome! Also, it’s kind of how I picture life being like after reaching FI.

    Pictures really are worth a thousand words. Thanks for sharing!

    • It is pretty neat. I still have to check how much one can see from the outside, although there is no path but the handyman could conveniently be there at the right time.. It is so high one shouldn’t see much more than my head though.

  18. That’s a ton of work Pauline. Good thing you guys found a bit of time to rest-up. The new panels in your ceiling remind of the skylights that some homes in North America have, but our are much smaller than yours of course.

  19. Looks awesome Pauline! I am super impressed by your drive and innovation at crafting your new home with very few resources. Love watching it unfold!

  20. Wow sweet, your place is really starting to come together. I like how there’s so much light. That’s rough about the dust though. I’d be sneezing up a storm, dust drives my nose crazy. Nice progress!

    • They say 20 years, I say let’s see! It is supposed to be a super hard kind of plastic, don’t remember its scientific name, but I hope it will last a few years at least!

  24. Ah, I love these posts! Your house looks so nice and bright with that roofing!! It must be lovely. It’s neat to see how much you have managed to do in such a short time, especially given the more relaxed approach to time and the difficulty getting some supplies.

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