08 December 2011

149: We've got fire!!

John finished the brickwork on the pizza/bread oven and it was time to light a fire. The oven has to have time to cure so we will keep a fire going in it for few days to drive out any moisture in the ceramic. The next step will be the installation of a ceramic fiber blanket over the igloo, which will then be encased in refractory cement.


If all goes well, we'll be baking our first pizza in the oven this time next week.
We covered all the metal support poles in the Rancho this week with bamboo and hemp rope to give it a more rustic look. John is in the process of putting several layers of marine grade varnish on them in the hopes they will hold up for years to come.

When John was in Houston this past September, he picked up a faucet for the Rancho's kitchen sink. Wouldn't you know it, it arrived with a broken aerator.

We've been working with the vendor in the U.S. and the part was finally shipped to us from China in November. There was a notice at the Post Office yesterday that a package had arrived, but it had to be picked up at the Postal Customs office in the capitol, about an hour from where we live. I just love a road trip!

So, off to San Jose we go this morning, to find a likely government building with the official address given only as "200 meters south of the church of Zapote." (You may recall from a previous blog entry that Costa Rica does not use standardized addresses like the rest of the world.) Trusting in our GPS, we punched in the church in Zapote and we found it! It took about an hour to pick up a small package and pay about $2 USD in duty and storage for what amounted to a 50¢ part.

While we were off in San Jose, the construction crew made significant progress on the house. They went through about 100 sacks of cement pouring the concrete footings. It looks like a re-bar jungle in the yard.

¡Pura Vida!

2 comments:

  1. Whoa! Big things happening at your place. Perfect that at Christmas you have built a fire in the fireplace (kinda).

    Will you be hanging stockings there?

    Glad you paid the duty, I would hate to have to turn you in! Storage fee? SCAM. :-)

    Pura Vida!

    ReplyDelete