Concrete Floors!

Ready to start another blog page!  This is where I sit for many hours creating the blog pages you see here.  The process starts with choosing and re-sizing the photos I want to use out of the many that both Don & I have taken. Once they have been downloaded to the new Post page I enlarge them, put them in the order I want and then proceed to narrate what is happening in each one. 

At this point the concrete floors have been completed along with the re-bar headers which the workers refer to as beams.

At this point the beams connect all the walls on the first floor, and the columns on the outside of the corridors.

The equipment the men use here for construction is basic and many times created on the job.  Here you can see ladders, and structures used for scaffolding.  A lower version of the scaffolding is used as a table.

Notice the ladder leaned against the banana tree?  The men who live in the bodega cook the green bananas and use them much like we use potatoes.  Personally, I prefer my yellow with a small amount of green!

The poured concrete floor is made of gravel, sand and cement. After it is secreted by hand with a board and paddle trowel, the cement is allowed to set up in a rough form.  Later that day or the next day, they further finish the floor with mortar which has no gravel and makes a smoother surface.  Whenever a new paddle trowel is needed to finish a surface they just make it.

All the tubing is now covered with concrete and we hope we've thought of everything that will be needed in the future.

Each re-bar beam is created on site from re-bar and strips of thick wire.  The men twist and bend until each beam is the correct size and shape before it is lifted into place, leveled and secured.

Here is an example of an electrical box which is set into the concrete wall.  This particular wire box is for phone and internet services. Of the many electrical boxes that we have dug out in our concrete walls, some are for electrical others are for switches, outlets, phone, cable and wall lights.  

More of the tubing ready to extend to the second floor.

Putting a beam in place and the supports also created by the workers.

Although the house at the moment is grey, the scenery that surrounds it is spectacular and constantly changing!

A meeting with Carlos Cruz our contractor and Jose one of the project managers.  Carlos is always our contractor but the men who work on the house vary from week to week.  We will stop by one day and the faces have changed.

Pura vida! :)