Stage 1 complete, comments from us

About viewing the blog, for those who are seeing it for the first time, I suggest you scroll down all the way to the beginning and move up from there. The blog is done in a chronological order of entries. Some entries should be read bottom to top and some top to bottom, it's a bit confusing but the intent was to make clear what was done befor and what came after.
From now on the blog will be in an easy to read order, or so we'll try.
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At this point we are already working on the cleaning and repointing of the walls, and Eduardo has set up a provisional studio inside the cabaña. The first floor will be set and boarded shortly, electrician and plumber have been requested an estimate for those instalations and a also a land moving company of bulldozers for flattening the land around the house and set in place cistern and septic tank, so important steps are just ahead of us.
Thank you all for your interest, stick around.
Peace and love!
Ed and jen.

The end of the roof !!

To put a branch of a tree into the chimeny is a sign the roof is finished and also is done for good luck, it keeps evil from getting in! At least that´s what´s said around here... God, it felt good.



































JuanPedro and Luis are working on the summit line of tiles. The mortar was coloured red to blend in better.















Finishing the last side tiles.















Early morning, last day of work for the roof...















I just love this picture of my brother: check out that amazing cloud too!















Of course, Raya wanted to be part of it too. She always has to be included.







































Bringing the tiles up there was a lot of work, especially with the heat we had to endure these days. A hat was mandatory since roofing can be dangerous under these conditions.















The chimmeny was completely done during the laying of the tiles, for better fitting within their pattern. Lead is what we used for sealing, then rubber cement sealer paint.















I had to cut a whole bunch of tiles for adjusting them to the skylights and summit, once I leaned the circular saw on my leg before it completely stopped rotating and hurt myself pretty badly, I have pictures of it too, but I considered them too graphic for this blog. (I'll email them by demand only)















The roofing master, Luis. He deserves most of the credit here, the whole work was, for me, a learning experience and a lot of fun despite the hardness of it. We had thousands of things to talk about and even disagreeing was fun. He showed me what he knew and I will always appreciate that as a gift. THANK YOU!

Skylights

Setting the skylights was just a matter of reading the directions. Care was taken to make the holes for them the exact measure, and the rest just fell into place.

















































Hey, my brother JuanPedro was helping with all this, here you can tell by his smile we were done for the day.

Sandwich termal insulation-waterproof panel

The blue panels are thermal insulation, lip and groove setting. On top of that a 1" water repellent panel held fast with 6" screws ( holding both panels, from there the name sandwich). First a stud was set right over the edges to make as finishing fascia board and also to provide safety for tools or persons rolling over and out of the roof at this point, it is hard to describe how slippery the panels are with sawdust on them, for this reason we had to hold all cutting to be done the last thing and sweep the roof thoroughly.



































The left side has been finished and all joints of the panels have been painted with "Reveton" which is a coutchou ( rubber cement) product for sealing and waterproofing, amazing stuff.















Luis' brother, Jesus is a very nice guy. He stopped by to hang out and give us a hand; that was a chance to take a picture to be remenbered, double trouble!















All the sandwich has been laid and all joints have been sealed. We are ready to set the skylights and start laying tiles!

Ceiling board

We are laying the ceiling board that is nailed to the rafters with stainless steel nails, it´s not going anywhere! Starting on the sides and then finishing on the summit. That´s Luis you see, the guy is just plain fearless. The holes you see in the last pic are for the skylight windows. They open and close for fresh air and easy cleaning. Three on the south side and one on the north for the bathroom that will eventually exist.