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My Shop ~ Part 7 ~ Electrical, Repello (Stucco) & Pizza

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With the completion of the repello (stucco) on the interior shop walls, Armando and Sammy moved operations to the bathroom walls. Because the bathroom is so small, there was no room for me to to help.

I’ve found over the years that working in small rooms and closets doing tasks such as putting up drywall or painting can be more difficult than working in a larger space. There are still the same number of walls, angles, and corners but there is little room to turn around after you get tools and a ladder inside the space. So Armando was on his own in the “phone booth” bathroom and Sammy kept him supplied with mezcla (mortar mix).

While they were doing the repello, I took a day and cleaned up the repello-ed walls in my shop. There were some trowel marks, rough spots, and small pimples that I wanted to get rid of so the walls would take a nice finish. I have a wet angle grinder and a set of diamond polishing pads. I put the 50-grit pad on the machine and passed it over every square inch of the walls. Here’s the grinder, Hellcat brand; you hook a garden hose up to it, plug it into the wall, and try not to shock the hell out of yourself:

The grinder did a great job, leaving the walls quite smooth and ready to finish.

I’d been having a back and forth debate with myself on whether to paint the walls white or to coat them with a clear acrylic polymer. The white would be nice for light reflection, but it would get dirty very quickly with all the welding and grinding going on in the shop. Also, a good quality paint would cost a hundred bucks or more, and the paint would hide the nice look of the repello-ed walls. Ultimately, the polymer won out and I applied two coats (about $25) with a sponge that same day and the next morning. Here’s the polymer:

The guys were still doing well on their own so I decided to start the interior wiring. Before we laid the concrete block walls, I had decided that I would surface mount the electrical boxes on the walls rather than build the boxes into the walls. I’ve pulled covers off of built-into-the-wall boxes and they are all nasty with rust and corrosion from the concrete.

So after I applied the two coats of polymer sealer, I struck a level line around the shop walls for the receptacle and switch boxes. Even though they are a lot more expensive, I decided to use weatherproof exterior boxes because they won’t rust and there are no holes for spiders to enter and make cozy little nests. In this next photo I have drilled two 1/4-inch holes in the wall and am tapping in screw anchors, called tacos here.

I drilled two holes in each of the boxes and screwed them to the walls. The boxes have little lugs on the back that stand the box off the wall, so I ran a bead of gray urethane caulk around the boxes to seal yet more spider hideouts. I hate to reach for a plug and put my hand in a spider web. You can get some nasty spider bites here in the tropics.

Then I measured and cut PVC conduit and clamped it to the walls and ran it across the floor as needed. I chose PVC conduit because metal conduit would rust fairly quickly, especially under the concrete floor slab. 

I also mounted boxes for lights on the ceiling. Even though I like 4-foot strip fluorescent fixtures, I decided to use individual fluorescent bulbs because the electronics in strip fixtures get blown by the uneven electrical current here. Cynthia helped me pull wires through the conduit. You can also see how nice the concrete walls look; they have a slight shine that you can see on the wall at the left of the window blocks in the photo above.

By the time the electrical was to the point that the concrete floor could be poured, the guys were done with the bathroom walls and some other small details. But before the floor, it was time to repello the exterior walls. The exterior walls are larger than one man can repello in a day and I didn’t want any “cold” stop/start joints so I had to pitch in and sling mud with Armando. Now I can get another dollar a day in my pay envelope because Armando taught me how to apply the repello. Repello-ing is hard work!

Years ago when I was carpentering for a living, someone asked me if it was hard to install a window. I said, “No, not as long as you know what you are doing!” It’s not the same with repello. Even if you know what you are doing, it is still damn hard work.

As of today we have the back side, the east side, and the front side all repello-ed, leaving only the west side that we will tackle tomorrow if I can get out of bed. For the east side, we didn’t start our work day until 11:00 a.m. so that the sun would have time to pass overhead and we could work on the wall in shadow. We finished about 6:00, at which time I flopped into my hammock for the rest of the night. I think Cynthia hooked me up to an IV frijole dip drip so I could get some nutrition while I slept. Here is a photo of the front and east walls just after I hosed them down to help them cure:

There is a tradition here in Panama that when a roof goes on, you have a roof party. So last Friday was the day. I knocked the guys off at 12:30 for a pizza lunch and the rest of the day off. Cynthia and Cedelinda had been making the dough and preparing the toppings:

It’s my job to cook the pizzas. Our fancy Bompani oven isn’t up to the task of cooking pizzas, so some time ago I went down the hill and bought some locally-made firebricks. I cut them in half with my tile saw. Then I lined our BBQ grill with the half-bricks. Like this:

A half-hour preheat turns the BBQ into a Jim Dandy 500-600 degree pizza oven. By the way, I don’t know who Jim Dandy was, and I didn’t know whether to capitalize it or not, so I Googled it. It’s capitalized. And while looking, I found a Jim Dandy BBQ restaurant in Cincinnati, Ohio. Who’d a known. I wonder if they do pizza. Anyway, a big shout out to Jim Dandy’s even though I am a 30+year vegetarian. I love Google!

At this point I put the camera down and started cooking. Cynthia’s pizzas are works of art. I got busy cooking and then planted my face in my pizza and completely forgot to take photos of the finished pizzas. Trust me, they were beauties.

We bought about a dozen pizza pans, the kind that have hundreds of 3/8-inch holes on the bottom. The crusts get nice and brown and the pizzas don’t stick to the pans. We like to have build-your-own pizza parties every year on my birthday. That and homemade chocolate cake makes me happy to be a year older. Or at least I don’t notice.

Anyway, the roof party was a delicious success. The guys were stuffed to their shirt collars and got to take home leftovers. The first time we made pizza for a work crew here each man took a slice. They clearly liked it but were too shy to take more. We had to order them to eat more, at which point they loosened up. It was great fun to see them egging each other on to eat yet another slice. There were lots of jokes about not having to eat for a week and not being able to work because they were too full.

That’s all for now. Maybe next week we can think about pouring the floor in my shop. Stay tuned.

Windows ~ Part 2 ~ Frames Welded

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It has been a while since I started the windows. This has been a big job with hundreds and hundreds of welds and a massive amount of grinding the welds smooth. Working long periods of time with the angle grinder is a problem for me because in the ’70s, I fell off a roof and broke a bone in my right wrist; the bone never healed and is a constant source of pain when I flex my wrist. Because a one-piece bone is in two pieces, my wrist is more and more dislocated as the years go on. So I grind some, take a break then grind some more. I have also been helping Armando with the technical stuff of the shop, such as making sure the roof is the correct pitch, so the windows are taking the time they are taking.

Every window will have two frames; one inside to hold the glass, and a second frame outside to hold the security bars. So far, I have all the frames and security bars welded and ground smooth. A lot of the welds would look even better with some auto body filler (commonly called Bondo), so I am nearing the end of applying and sanding the filler. Here’s what my pile of metal looks like at this point:

A few frames are missing from the photo as they are still on the workbench. You can see that I have taken the design of the curved lines of the cat tails on our front gate and replicated them into the security bars.

My current window-related project is making hinges. I want to be able to open the security bar frames to make window washing and security bar maintenance painting easier. I could have bought some stock steel hinges, but I have seen how thieves easily knock out the hinge pin (even if it is tack welded in place) and gain access to the house. My hinges are a bit beefier. I started with a length of 1/2″ black iron pipe. I spot welded a piece of 1/8″x1″ metal strap iron to the pipe. After cleaning the welds with the angle grinder, I applied two coats of body filler. It looked like this with the first coat of filler being applied:

Then I sanded the assembly smooth with a sandpaper disk on the grinder and cut the 20-foot strip into a whole bunch of 4-inch lengths. I ground the cuts smooth with the grinder. At the bottom of the next photo I show three hinge leaves with a piece of 1/2″ rebar threaded through the leaves. I’ll weld the two ends of the rebar to the leaves, leaving the middle leaf to swing free. Here is the pile of hinge parts:

So that’s where I am with the windows. I hope to get the hinges welded to the frames this week. I still have to fashion a way to lock the security bar frames, but I can see that soon I’ll be cutting holes for the windows in the container walls.

That’s all for now.

My Shop ~ Part 4 ~ Walls And Beams

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Prognosticators who get paid to make scientific wild guesses say that we are in a wet La Nina weather pattern. This time they seem to be right because the rainy season shows little sign of giving way to the nearly constant sunshine of the dry season that usually starts like clockwork on December 15th. But still, we are making some construction progress, just not as fast or in as pleasant conditions as we would like.

For my shop, Armando has been working his way up the block walls.

Concrete block walls in Panama are topped off with concrete beams to strengthen and level the top of the wall. I set aside my work on the windows to help Armando get the rebar and forms for the beam in place on the back wall. You can see the wooden form work on the back wall in this next photo, and you can see that he has a few more rows to go on the front wall. Jabo is dog tired from all this activity:

Because of all the young man physical labor needed to pour the beam, I asked Armando to bring another guy for a while. He brought his cousin Sammy, who being low man on the totem pole, got to mix and haul the concrete. Here they are pouring the beam at the top of the back wall:

Jabo wants to help, too. He can easily make the four foot jump to the staging:

After the beam was poured, Armando went back to finishing the blocks on the front wall. Then we stripped the forms from the back beam and formed the beam at the top of the front wall.

For the big door, I’ll bolt a sliding door track to the inside of the concrete beam. I’ll build the door out of 2″x2″ square metal tubing and some of the scrap metal cut from the containers. For security, I have purposely not put many windows in the shop, so the big door will provide a lot of light and air while I work inside.

And by the way, out from the front of the shop will be a large carport roof, so if I am working on a large project, I can easily work undercover in the driveway.

And, that big blank wall to the right of the big shop door looks like an opportunity waiting for some sort of custom art piece. Wait… In the meantime, Cynthia says we can hang a piece of her artwork. For a Breast Cancer Awareness Week art exhibit with friends at a local gallery, Cynthia made a bra to represent what she says the contraptions actually feel like. Looks to me like Madonna would be green with envy:

Made from aluminum window screening, plumbers hanger strapping, pop rivets, washers, and other fittings, this is Cynthia's interpretation of what it is like to wear a bra.

Back to our program, here’s the front beam being poured:

A steady light rain yesterday kept us wet enough and cold enough and muddy enough that after the beam was poured at noon I sent the guys home with a full day’s pay. I went home and took a long hot shower. They don’t have the luxury of hot water in their houses so with perpetually wet clothing, unless they dry the clothes over a wood fire which makes them very smoky smelling, it is likely that they will have “refreados” (head colds) when they return on Monday morning.

That’s all for now. I’ll write another short post about progress on the windows. In the mean time, stay warm and dry.

My Shop ~ Part 3 ~ Walls Going Up

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We are now about three weeks into building my shop and the walls are going up.

We have had a lot of interruptions; both Armando and I have had head colds, I took some time to wash the mold off the wooden ceilings in our rental house, I’ve had to make trips to the city to take care of other business, and there has been rain, rain, rain. But still, we are making progress and when I look at today’s batch of photos I am satisfied with all we have accomplished.

Early in the day when it is not raining, Armando works out in the open. But by 10:30 or 11:00 he moves under the tarps. The tarps are a minute to minute affair as the wind whips them, strings break, and the tarps get torn by the rebars sticking up from the columns.

After the house is finished, Armando will go back to working for us one day a week doing yard work. He’ll need a bathroom outside of the house, and it will be more convenient if a bathroom is near my shop so I don’t have to tromp dirt through the house. We decided to take a corner of my shop for a small area for a toilet and shower. In the next picture, Armando lays block by the bathroom door. By the way, wherever a block meets a column, Armando drives a concrete nail part way into the column, then makes a hole in the end of the block, lays the block, then fills the void in the block with mortar, thereby locking the block to the column.

As I mentioned in a previous post, block work here in Panama is not perfect. It’s okay, I keep telling myself. In the next picture you can see that a lot of the blocks simply fall apart.

Here is the same shot but later in the day. I decided to put a small closet in the corner. The main reason for this is to strengthen the door jamb for the main shop door. The door will be eight feet wide. I’ll put a security door on the closet and I can keep small tools such as drills and grinders in the closet.

Here’s an overview of the shop to date:

In other news, I am making progress on fabricating the window frames that will get welded into the container walls. I’ll have a post on that soon, but for now know that I am welding and grinding away on the project. I am welding square 2″x2″x1/16″ metal tubing. If I had an unlimited budget I would have liked to use 1/8″ tubing because it would have been a breeze to weld. The 1/16th inch thick tubing is much more of a challenge as it is oh so very easy to burn right through the tubing while trying to weld. Some of my corners have been great successes, such as this next photo looking straight down on a corner.

Other times I haven’t been so lucky and the welds are, um, ahh, UGLY. In this next picture I am working with two pieces of metal that I cut slightly too short. The magnification of errors resulted in a 3/8″ gap that I had to bridge by using a piece of 3/8″ rebar. All of this mess will of course be ground smooth and will disappear after a few coats of paint are applied. But still, ugly is as ugly does and I present it here without shame:

That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by.

My Shop ~ Part 2 ~ Columns & Footings

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This past week Armando and I worked on my shop. We poured five concrete columns and dug and poured the foundations. Here’s how it went:

Here are the columns:

The column on the right is nearly 12-feet tall, and the concrete in the form exerted some serious pressure on the forms. After we poured it, we were just about to walk away when I spotted the beginning of a split the entire length of one of the pine boards. Luckily I had planned ahead and had some straps standing by. Armando and I rushed and got the column strapped up just in time. We strapped a piece of metal against the split to keep it from bulging out. Close call. Like my favorite line in disaster news stories, “It could have been worse.”

After the columns were done, Armando spent two days between raindrops digging the foundation. In the next photo I am laying out the location of the door so that we don’t put rebar sticking up there.

Then while Armando was mixing concrete, I cut rebar to sit in the foundation trench. I also cut more rebar, bent one end in an “L” shape, and wired it to the bottom rebar. Like this:

These upright rebars will fit in some of the holes in the blocks when the wall blocks are laid, and we will fill the holes with concrete.

Cynthia insisted that I include this next photo. I’m not sure why.

Next we ran a string around all the columns and leveled it. The height of the string isn’t important. Now we need to pour the foundations nice and level so laying the blocks will be easy. We took a six-foot piece of 1″x3″ board and nailed a one-foot piece of 1″x3″ on the bottom like a foot. We put the footed stick in the foundation trench at the height that we wanted the top of the foundation to be and drove a nail in the stick where the string met the board. After Armando dumped a wheelbarrow full of concrete in the trench, I used the footed stick to tamp the concrete down until the nail in the board met the string and, tada — level footing.

Here you can see the string more clearly. This part of the foundation is completed. The blocks are holding the vertical rebars in place.

Armando worked really hard today mixing all the concrete. We used a dozen 94-pound sacks of cement and who knows how many wheelbarrows full of sand and gravel from the river. Here he is putting the cement on top of the pile of sand and gravel.

Then he opens the bags and thoroughly mixes the pile by turning everything several times with a shovel. We kept one eye on the sky but despite the ominous clouds, we were free of rain all day. Cynthia forecast no rain for the day. She’s right again! Armando likes to wear his hard hat because it keeps his head cooler.

Then he makes a hole in the pile and fills it with water and mixes it all together again. I try to help, but this is young man’s work for sure.

At the end of a seven hour day, Armando was dog tired.

And that ain’t no joke.

Bonus photo: Sunrise over my hammock

In other news, after several days of heavy rain a tall, very rotted tree in the lot next to our rental house fell across the main road. A tractor trailer rig came to a screeching halt as the tree fell, missing each other by only inches.  Several people stopped to help including John who lives in town. I’m standing with Cedelinda (pronounced Sadie Linda). I tutor her in English.

Cedelinda helps clear the road.

After we had the job almost done and I had dragged the big trunk mostly out of the road with the truck, four firemen showed up with chainsaws and finished the job. It was difficult to know who these men were, as they showed up in a pickup truck with the logo of the Tourist Police, all wearing orange Panama Civil Defense tee shirts.

Yes, Panama has a Tourist Police division. They are stationed in tourist destinations to keep tourists safe. They are also stationed at the airport, checking the paperwork and recording the destination of taxis departing with tourists.

Extra Special Note: Thanks to Cynthia who took all the photos in this post. She made me promise to take pictures of her tomorrow at her sewing machine. She is making me five new shirts. I can’t wait to try them on.

A Final Note Today: I find it curious that I like to write. To the best of my knowledge, no one else in my family wrote much. I don’t know how good a writer I am, but what qualities I do have I owe to my English 101 teacher, simply known as Prokus, at Mott Community College in Flint, Michigan. I liked Prokus. I remember one time a student raised her hand and asked, “Prokus, how come I didn’t get a “A” on my paper?” He answered, “Precisely.” I thought of this today because I noticed the passing of Andy Rooney. He wanted to work until he died, and he missed that goal by only a few weeks. I always enjoyed his essays. Other writers I have enjoyed over the years include Charles Kuralt, Garrison Keillor, John Ciardi, and Studs Terkel.

That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by.

My Shop ~ Part 1

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I’ve been making progress on the windows, but it is pretty much a solo affair that I can take care of myself. And now that the yard is in good shape, Armando has run out of work. There is some grinding to do on my welds, but not enough to keep him busy. As he is basically day labor, and I can tell him “that’s all for now,” but I run the risk of him finding other work and not being available when I next need him. Also, it is good to have him around for when I need to lift, tote, and carry.

So I decided to get him started building my shop, and I can go back to window work. After a lot of back and forth on what materials to use, I made my decision. I could use the M2 panels (foam sheets with a wire covering that gets stuccoed) or go with the Panamanian-style concrete block construction. I really like the M2 because it is very fast, very strong, and isn’t prone to cracks like the block work, but Armando isn’t familiar with it and it is more expensive. Also, I would like to turn him loose on the project without much supervision from me.

I decided on block construction. Once the corner columns are accurately placed, I can let Armando take over and run with it. He likes the idea, and it gives him a chance to work without the boss telling him what to do every ten seconds. He even said that he will start at 6:30 a.m. to beat the rain instead of our regular 8:00 a.m. I could immediately see his sense of ownership of the project.

The shop is going to be 20′x24′, and is located where the 20-foot container that we didn’t get was going to go. Here’s an archival photo of the four columns that we placed for the 20-footer:

And here are those columns now, sadly knocked to the ground with a twelve-pound sledge to make room for my new shop. It was a tough decision to make as we had worked so hard on the columns. But progress is progress I guess. Here the corner batter boards are in place, and Armando is digging holes for the footings for the concrete columns.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating; block work here is different than in the States.

In the States, every block is laid perfectly plumb and level. When a block wall is done, it very strong standing on its own. Just stand back and look at all the perfectly straight courses of blocks.

Here, the blocks generally have less cement in them and workers generally have less training. A concrete block wall in Panama isn’t meant to stand on its own. The process is to dig and pour footings for concrete columns, embedding in each footing four vertical pieces of rebar where the columns will go. When the footings have hardened, wooden forms are built around the upwardly protruding rebar and the columns are poured.

After the column form boards are removed, a trench connecting the columns is dug and a concrete footing is poured. As opposed to Stateside block work, this footing can be “kinda level.” The blocks are then laid “kinda” in rows, “kinda” straight and “kinda” level. When you get just shy of the top of the wall, form boards are nailed across the wall from column to column and a strengthening top beam is poured that includes more rebar. The blocks are basically infill and it is the columns and beams that provide integrity for the building. Then, a coat of repello (stucco) is troweled over the entire wall — columns, blocks, and beams. The wall is now pretty much straight and can function seismically.

While Armando was digging the footings, I made two forms for the columns.

These three-sided forms will be put in place around the rebar and then the fourth side will be nailed in place.

In the next two photos, these forms are standing tall and proud, and Armando is making the journey up the ladder five gallons of concrete at a time.

In my next few blog posts I’ll probably seesaw back and forth between the windows and the shop. That is unless another project catches my interest, such as building the metal bending brake that I want to make. The house has lots of opportunities for bent metal trim, and I want to make new, thicker lids (to hold more insulation) for our refrigerator and freezer (see A Really Cool Experiment).

That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by.

Windows ~ Part 1

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At long last, we are working on windows. We still have a few interior partitions to build and Plycem to hang, but I wanted to use the wide open work space in container 4 a bit longer before building those partitions.

I should insert a note here about a recent change in our plan. Way back when this was to be a two story house, we had plans for two bedrooms — one downstairs where our master bedroom is going to be now, and one upstairs that was going to be the master. When the price of containers went sky high and we changed to a one story house, we were going to make a guest bedroom in a detached 20-foot container. But the 20-footer was the same high price as the 40-footers, so our plan stagnated a bit, and we have been floundering with a new plan to have one bedroom in the house and someday add a second.

Both Cynthia and I were unsettled by this un-plan, but we thought that time would iron out the bugs, and it has. Our newest, new and improved plan is this: we will put two bedrooms, two baths, and the laundry in the space between 3 and 4 and in container 4. My shop has been moved to a detached building (yet to be built) at the end of the driveway.

So now, the two bedrooms and bathrooms need windows. The areas to get windows are:

  1. the big open wall between containers 3 and 4 in the master bedroom. This entire wall will be windows. More on this area later in another post.
  2. the clerestory windows in the high wall over container 4, and
  3. the walls in the two bedrooms

We’re starting with areas 2 and 3 first. Cynthia and I talked about where and what size we wanted the windows, and I made a materials list. I bought some two-inch square, one-sixteenth-inch thick square steel tubing to make window frames from. It comes in 20-foot lengths. Here it is on the material rack in container 1:

I also ordered some jalousie windows to be made to fit the steel frames. Although we are not big fans of the look of jalousies, they make a lot of sense here where the rain and saturated fog can blow sideways. You can have the windows open for air but still have protection from the rain. Most of the older Panamanian houses have jalousies, although the newer houses seem to be going to vinyl sliders.

I used the metal chop saw (the red tool on the floor in the above photo) to cut all the pieces for the steel frames. Here’s a photo of the pieces all cut and the jalousies standing by for installation:

Next, I took a sheet of 3/4″ plywood and cut it to the size of the 4′x6′ pane of glass that will sit above the jalousies. Actually, I cut the plywood 6′-3/16″ so that the glass will have a little wiggle room. I also drove a big-headed nail into the 4-foot width, leaving the nail head sticking out 3/16″, making the height of the opening 4′-3/16″, like this:

With this plywood jig, the frames will be the perfect size for a piece of glass 4′x6′ and absolutely square, ready to receive the glass without problems. Here is the plywood jig with the first window frame being welded together:

By the end of day one, here is what I have welded together:

The two frames on the left are for a window in the north wall in each bedroom. The top rectangle is for the large pane of glass, and the lower part of the frame is for two, 3-foot jalousies. I still have to weld the bottom pieces on these frames, but I need to cut another piece of plywood to use as a jig so the jalousies will fit.

The frame on the right side of the photo above will be for the security bars. We plan to use the same design as the front gate, minus the cat tail seed pods. We think that the seed pods would be too busy looking in the design. This frame will be overlaid and attached to the frame that holds the windows. More on that detail in another post.

After these large frames are done, I will make a narrower frame for the east wall of the guest bedroom, and then frames for the short windows in the clerestory.

In another post I will use my new oxy-acetylene torch to cut holes in the container walls and install the frames. Stay tuned.

Bonus photo: As I welded the corners of the window frames, flaming balls of steel flew off the welding rod and rolled onto the plywood, burning this pattern in the plywood:

Welding calligraphy? But is it art?

Reminds me of the wood-burning iron that I had as a kid. I think I remember making a set of drink coasters for my mom for Mothers’ Day one year. Butterflies, I think.

That’s all for now.

My New Oxy-Acetylene Tank Cart

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Thanks to everyone who guessed about my latest contraption in my last post. You all guessed correctly. You are a smart bunch. Even you, Charles.

No, actually, as Juan and Rick guessed, it is to hold the oxygen and acetylene tanks that I just got. Charles–Fugetaboutit.

My next task on the house is to make frames for windows, cut holes for windows, and fix the frames in the holes. So far, I’ve been cutting the container walls with a steroidal 9-inch angle grinder with a metal cutting disk. But let’s face it, this is really arduous and dangerous. Arduous because it takes a lot of muscle power, and dangerous because of the propensity for the machine to kick back and sever body parts. I’ve written before about my plasma torch that died an electronic death, not to be revived here in the harsh Panamanian climate of rust, humidity, electrical brown outs and power spikes, and geckos that have the propensity of dying on circuit boards, “melting,” and shorting out the whole mess.

So that leaves two choices:

Choice 1: Hammer and chisel. I remember when I was first investigating Panama as a place for us to live, I stayed at a hotel in Boquete. Early one morning, 6:15 to be exact, I heard a hammer pounding a chisel on metal. It didn’t stop. Finally I got up and got dressed and went to check it out. Two men were cutting strips off of 20-foot lengths of sheet metal roofing. No angle grinder, no plasma torch, no shears, and, bringing me to choice number two, no oxy-acetylene cutting torch.

Choice 2: Oxy-acetylene cutting torch. A torch is really low-tech. No electrical parts, no computer, just a hot flame that slices through metal. The cost had been stopping me, but it was finally time to bite the bullet and buy a rig.

I got a medium duty Victor brand set, complete with welding/cutting torch, hose, and gauges for the oxygen and acetylene. $245 at Pemco in Panama City. Victor is an excellent brand and I like the way the torch balances in my hand. Tools like this are exciting.

Next, I needed to rent the oxygen and acetylene tanks. $300 deposit for the two tanks, plus $75 for the gas in the tanks. I could have bought the tanks, but I would have had to return to the city each time they needed refilling. With the rentals, I can just swap them locally at the hardware store.

But they don’t just deliver out here in the hinterlands. The tanks need to be transported upright and I had no way to accomplish this with the Honda Ridgeline. So I welded up a goalpost rack for the truck. I used the existing tie-down fixtures in the bed of the pickup to affix my rack.

Here are the tanks strapped to the goalpost rack. Jabo is a gas, too.

And here it is in all its painted glory, along with the long-load rack that I made some time ago but just now got around to painting. The traffic police will be happy with the official reflective sticker, $1.

I used the goalpost rack again today to transport two, heavy eight-foot lengths of 4″x6″x1/4″ angle iron that I picked up for my next shop project, a sheet metal bending brake. But I digress.

The point of this post is the cart that I just made to hold the oxygen and acetylene tanks in my shop, and to make it easier to move them around the job. Here are some photos of the cart ready for paint:

I pretty much started the project by holding a length of 1.5″ square tubing in my hands and holding it up to the tanks. The rest just followed element by element. I love the lines, kind of retro, like something that would have been in my grandfather’s shop. I think it has a little Steampunk look about it. I considered clear coating it, but safety yellow won out.


And here it is with the tanks loaded and strapped in with the safety chains across the tanks and an additional anti-theft chain.

So that’s that, I am now ready to cut the window openings in the container walls. I’ve just picked up the windows I had fabricated, so my next post will about windows.

Thanks for all your comments on the Name That Contraption post. That’s all for now.

Paint! ~ We Paint Some Interior Walls And Ceilings

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We are making progress. With the interior walls framed and ready for Plycem (tilebacker), it is time to paint. I want to paint before hanging the Plycem because the Plycem will have a clear finish and will not be painted. Doing the job in the paint first, Plycem second order will save us from having to do a lot of masking and taping.

I debated on whether or not to paint over a note that someone had written on one of the walls. The paint won, but I did take a picture of the note. I find it endlessly fascinating that our house has been around the world:

F.C. The best from St. Croix U.S. Virgin Islands. 5/14/2008

I wonder what F.C. and his crew were loading or unloading?

Here is a photo of the paints I chose for the interior walls:

The tube of urethane caulk is actually a windshield adhesive. The tube is aluminum and double sealed to prevent the caulk from drying out. Even so, I wore a hole in the palm of my hand trying to pump it out of the tube with a caulking gun. I ran new beads of this caulk where container walls meet the ceilings and at weld joints that I have made.

The Lanco Oil Red Oxide Polyurethane primer is thinned with mineral spirits and sprayed on nice and smooth.

The Lanco Super Dry Enamel (Esmalte) is thinned with lacquer thinner and dried in just a few minutes.

I’ve seen the question asked on the Internet, “Can I use latex paint to paint a shipping container?” The beauty part of latex is the easy cleanup. It is a lot more work to clean the spray gun when using oil based paints, but it doesn’t make sense to me to spray water on metal and expect it not to rust. When I started painting years ago, I don’t think there was such a thing as latex paint. All I remember is cleaning my first boss’s brushes with turpentine. Oil based paint really is not that bad once you get used to the regiment of cleaning up after yourself. I allow a half hour to forty-five minutes at the end of the day to get everything squeaky clean.

Here’s container 3 all primed and ready for the white top coat:

I bought a roll of yellow "caution" tape to use as masking on conduits and on the hardware on the container exterior doors. Jabo awaits further instructions.

There is hardly any over spray with the HVLP spray gun.

After we sprayed the primer, the next day it was ready for the first of two top coats of white:

This is the north wall of container 3. I really savored the moment when I cut out the two doorways. The nearest doorway goes into what will be our dry (dehumidifier) room. The further door goes into the hallway that will connect to the living room. With the doorways cut I don't have to crawl through walls and go out of my way to get where I am going. It feels more like a house now.

Partly painted. I'm standing in what will be my shop, looking toward the master bedroom. The unpainted square area is in the master bath. It will be cut out and the wall pushed out four feet for the shower. We plan to use glass blocks for at least one wall of the shower.

First coat all done. Note that 34 sheets of half-inch Plycem have been delivered. I can't wait to start hanging it on the interior walls.

We still have to cut holes for windows including above in the clerestory wall, but for now I’m happy with the progress.

Here’s a photo from outside (west side) looking in. The big hole in the wall will be wall to wall, floor to roof windows. The view of the night sky from the bed should be spectacular as there is no artificial light for miles around.

The left container (#4) is part of the master bedroom as is the large open area. This end of the right container (#3) is the hallway between the bedroom and the living room (yet to be built).

Rain has been starting by noon most days, but in the mornings Armando has been working on delineating the east side of the driveway. When we built the driveway we put large rocks in the mud then covered the rocks with tosca. At that time we had no design idea of how the driveway edges would meet the rest of the yard. Now, we have stretched a string line and Armando is digging a ditch. We’ll pour a concrete footing in the ditch then lay a course of concrete block as a curb. Here’s Armando working on the ditch:

With the new garden on the left side of the driveway and this curb on the right, the lot is getting more and more defined.

That’s all for now. Thanks for visiting, and feel free to leave a comment below.

Interior Walls, Wiring, & Plumbing ~ Projects In Progress

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This post is mostly about building walls inside shipping containers.

Having been in construction since I was six, I know that there is a natural rhythm to most construction projects. There are periods of time when important work is being done but progress is not very visible. The job seems to be crawling. Then there are the periods of time when the job seems to be flying and progress is very visible. One’s moods can swing on these phases if one is not careful.

I think that the job has just moved from a crawl phase to a flying phase.

Having worked six weeks in the yard, Armando has finally finished filling holes, leveling humps, and removing lots of trunks and roots. He has planted some grass and the yard is starting to be a yard. Additionally, yesterday we moved five coconut palm trees and two other palms (Cousin Christine — yours is being planted this weekend) that we had been holding in a nursery area at our rental house. We planted three of the coconuts by the electric service entrance wall at the southeast corner of the lot. Instant transformation, they are softening that concrete corner. This progress is exciting and a big boost to our moral. We can actually begin to see The Warmth of Home emerging from Job Site Mud and Muck.

Three new coconut palms soften the corner of the lot.

The floor between container 3 and container 4 is ready for rebar and concrete, but we are holding off on that until we do some more infrastructure in the area. It is nice to be able to walk on the floor and be able to more accurately gauge how the spaces will feel. Here is the floor ready for concrete:

We’ve been working on the interior walls in number 3. I used 2″x3″ galvanized steel carriolas to make the wall framework. I framed the walls with the 2x3s as horizontal purlins (a style seen in old barns; the purlins go sideways so that the exterior board siding can be installed vertically). We will screw 4′x8′ Plycem (tilebacker / cement board) sheets to the steel stud work.

Building the walls goes like this: First, determine where a wall will go. I have chosen to place the wall so that the framing is in alignment with an outward bend of the corrugated siding of the container. Perhaps a photo will help:

You can see that the framing for the new wall is placed where the container siding is outward.

Next, I cut a carriola bottom plate to fit between the walls of the container. I drilled some holes in the carriola, measured from two points at the end of the container to get the wall parallel with the container, and screwed it to the floor with 3.5″ drywall screws. After the Plycem is up, the concrete floor will lock this wall in place, so the screws are only a temporary placeholder.

Then, as you can see in the photo above, I cut a vertical stud to sit on the bottom plate. At the top of this stud, you may have to cut a notch out of the stud to fit around the beam at the top of the container like this:

The top beam sticks out more than the bottom beam so you have to cut a notch.

I did this at both sides of my new wall and welded the studs in place.

Then, I cut purlins and welded them in place every two feet on center up the wall like this:

Plycem can now be screwed to the purlins.

By placing the wall where the container corrugations go outward, I can now put the Plycem in place and it will make a nice inside corner. I’ll probably run a small bead of urethane caulk around the Plycem to seal any insect highway gaps.

Here's a scrap of Plycem showing how it will make a nice corner against the container.

Here’s an overview of the three new walls in container 3.

Three new walls framed.

At the far end of the container is a hallway; I will cut holes in the container for a doorway from the living room, into the hallway, then into the master bedroom. By the way, this is the only hallway in the entire house. I avoid hallways if possible; they are major space wasters.

The next space toward where I am taking the photo from is a half bath, accessed from the hallway.

The next, larger space will be a walk-in closet off the master bedroom and studio space for Cynthia’s torchwork (making glass beads), her seed bead stringing, and fabric storage for sewing projects. These spaces will be dehumidified.

The final space, the one that I am standing in in the photo above, will be an eight-foot square deposito (storage closet), accessed by the existing container end doors. This deposito will be for outdoor tools and equipment.

But before the Plycem goes up, I have to do some rough electrical and plumbing. Here’s some electrical roughed in in the half bath:

I cut holes for the conduit with an angle grinder with a cut off blade. I welded the rough-in box to the wall framework.

As an aside, I finally got my plasma torch repaired in the city. Two, four hour round trips, $50 to diagnose, $25 to repair, and $0.39 for the new part. When I got it home, I fired it up, cut a nice round hole in a carriola for the electrical conduit. Fantastic! Then when I went to cut a second hole, it made a wild clicking sound (relay going bad?) and shut itself down. Okay fussy, finicky machine, fine, die that death if you want to. I’m done. So instead of nice round holes, I have nice square holes cut with the angle grinder. No law against round peg in square hole.

The above wall happened to be placed above a container floor beam so I couldn’t drill straight down for the hole for the conduit. Instead, I used two elbows to relocate the hole. Later, the concrete floor will cover this conduit:

Oh, one thing I discovered is that where there it a forklift pocket on the side of the container…

there is a steel plate under the wooden floor, so it is easier just to swing the conduit and relocate the hole through the floor away from the steel plate. This is all working for me because we will have the three-inch thick concrete floor to cover these conduits throughout the entire house.

By the way, speaking of the wooden floor, the floors in our containers are mahogany, just a tad under one and a quarter inches thick. We will be pouring a concrete slab floor because it is the surface that we want. Also, it will cover the wood which is no doubt heavily drenched in pesticide. Before I work in the containers, I use a large fan to flush the fumes. Otherwise it can make your eyes water.

So far I only have roughed in the water supply for the toilet in the half bath. I brought some PEX tubing with me when we moved to Panama and decided to use it to make the pipe stub-ups. I like PEX a lot, but so far have not seen it here in Panama. Here is some PEX, the brass fittings, crimps, and the crimping tool:

Blue for cold, red for hot. Same stuff, just color coded for easier identification .

Here’s the toilet stub-up:

You can warm PEX with a torch, bend it, and it will keep its new shape. I welded two pipe clamps to the side of the container. Later, this bathroom wall will get Plycem. That and the concrete slab will hide the plumbing.

The PEX, the PVC electrical conduit, and the PVC water pipes can all be cut with this dandy pair of shears made for the job:

In the meantime, Armando has been working for two days grinding away remnants of the container siding webbing in container 4. I’m glad that he has the Power of Youth still on his side.

You can see that he is wearing safety glasses (and not-seen earplugs), and the guard amazingly is still on the machine. I insist on it even though most workers here think these safety devices are mere nuisances. I’ve seen two nasty cuts from guardless machines and I’d just as soon not make a trip to the hospital.

Next I’m on my way down the mountain to see if I can get the DeWalt angle grinder that Armando has been using repaired. I think the switch has given up the ghost; it has had some rough duty during its life on this job. I’ll probably buy a second one, too; a guy can’t have too many angle grinders.

If you are considering a container house project, I hope that I have given you some good tips from my experience. Take what you want but you are on your own. Have fun. Keep the guards on your tools and be safe. It’s a jungle out there. At least it is here in Panama!

That’s all for now.