Tag Archives: life in Panama

On Vacation

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I’m taking a few weeks off from construction of the container house while a friend visits us from the States. I’ll be back writing about the house after the first of March. Wow. March is so soon? I’ve got to get busy as the dry season is passing quickly!

I took our house guest for a drive in the country to Cedelinda’s (I’m tutoring her in English) house. Cedelinda lives in the small pueblo of Chichi Bali, a five-kilometer drive on a not-well-maintained dirt road. There is no bus or taxi service, and there is currently only one pickup truck that drives the road daily to and from the pueblo. There is a trip in the morning and a trip in the early evening. People can get a ride for a dollar. If you miss the ride or don’t have the dollar, your other option is to walk.

The purpose of our visit to the pueblo was because Cedelinda had invited Cynthia and me to see her in church as she became a catechist (started catechism education in the Catholic church). The church was packed with standing room only, but the priest had car trouble and couldn’t make it to the pueblo. So after the non-service, Cedelinda invited us to her house for refreshments.

I guess there are wonderful health benefits from having to walk. But the thought of a pregnant woman, or an older person with arthritis walking to and from Chichi Bali seems like too much to me. It gives new meaning to what old folks say to kids, “When I was going to school it was uphill both ways.” Well, for school kids from Chichi Bali, it still is uphill both ways!

After the trip, I remembered that the dash cam was recording all this, so here for your viewing pleasure is The Trip To Chichi Bali. Much of the road is carved into the side of the mountains and there are precipitous drops into deep valleys. There are a couple slight pauses while I stop to pick up a few people. Watching a video of driving a dirt road may not be everyone’s cup of tea but, in two parts because of the YouTube 15-minute limit, here is the trip from our house to Cedelinda’s house:

Toward the end of part 2 of the trip we stop at the church. After we leave the church we drive to Cedelinda’s house.

So, what’s the verdict? Would you like to walk this twice a day to and from work or school? Feel free to picture the walk in your mind. Throw in rain, darkness, mountain lions crossing your path…

Here are some photos we took at the church and at Cedelinda’s house (photos by me or D.H.):

Cedelinda with her niece looking on

Fresh local flowers picked for the occasion

Cede showing off two of her pet parrots

Everyone laughed at me but I don't mind

The parrots are so well treated that they don't fly away

Cede's dad, Ignacio, and her brother, Benjamin, pick some ripe star fruit off a tree at their back door

The next day, our house guest and I went to the orchid conservatory (because of poachers and other habitat problems, many of the orchids now exist only at the conservatory). This isn’t the flowering season, but a few orchids were in bloom:

Cynthia couldn't help but play with the previous photo in my photo manipulation program of choice -- Gimp. This is the result.

I’m enjoying a little time off from the hard work of building the house. But I’ll be back at it soon. That’s all for now.

 

 

 

Against Doctor’s Orders ~ Cynthia Goes Horseback Riding

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Without going into details, suffice it to say that a little more than a year ago Cynthia had a major surgery snafu that left her with more than minor neurological problems. Her neuroligist said, “No driving a car, no working with your torch and hot glass, and no horseback riding.”

The no driving a car Cynthia can understand. But the urge to work with hot glass has gotten the better of her and she has been working in her studio a bit recently. She hasn’t burned off any fingers yet so she figures she is ahead of the game.

And this last Saturday, our neighbor invited her to go horseback riding. “We won’t go far, and we’ll go slow,” he told her as they mounted the horses, he on Acero (Steel) and she on Max. Both are good-sized quarter horses and having them both just walk was going to be a challenge.

“Oh good,” I thought, “I can go take a siesta in the hammock,” which I did. About a half hour later my cell phone woke me up. It was Cynthia. Seems that they did go far and they did more than walk. At one point, Ricardo dismounted to take a photo of Cynthia. When the camera shutter made its clicking sound, Acero was startled and took off running. They tried and tried to no avail to capture El Fugitivo (The Fugitive) as Acero is now called. The closer they got, the more El Fugitivo ran. They were now on a narrow trail beyond the hill with all the cell, radio, and TV towers.

On the phone, Cynthia asked me to go get Ricardo’s yardman, Abdiel, and bring him to the towers to help capture Acero. It’s not far, but it is a tough drive most of the way. The Honda barely made it because of the myriad of protruding rocks in the road, and I wasn’t looking forward to turning around and retracing my tracks.

Here is a video of the drive from the main road to El Valle to the hill with the towers (no audio):

The view is quite stunning from the hill the towers are on. Here’s a very short panorama video of the surrounding area. The sun was so bright that I couldn’t see anything on the camera’s viewing screen and the wind was whipping me every which way, so the video isn’t very good. But it serves to show the view:

Once Abdiel and I arrived, Abdiel took off running and Ricardo mounted Max and took off at a gallop. Funny, but as soon as Acero saw Abdiel, he came right to him and followed him back to where we were waiting. I guess the horse was tired of being on the lamb. Here are some photos of Cynthia’s great adventure (most photos by Ricardo).

After all that excitement, Cynthia was tired. I offered her a ride in the car, but “I left on a horse, I’ll return on a horse,” was her reply.

She was quite sore after not riding for two years, but she is looking forward to riding again. Her neurologist means well and her advice about not riding horses may be sound advice. But Cynthia values and needs a high quality of life. Even given the risks, she’d rather ride the horse than ride the La-Z-Boy lounge chair watching reruns of CSI. “I’d rather fall off the horse and roll down the ravine than spend the rest of my life watching TV.” And you know what? I don’t blame her one tiny bit. You go, girl!

That’s all for now.

 

 

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.

How To Not Work

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This morning Cynthia and I were eating breakfast. Being the day after New Year’s Day, we had a high degree of doubt that Armando and Sammy would show for work due to, well, it was the day after a big holiday and there probably was a whole lot of celebrating going on. Plus it is Monday, the most difficult day of the week for them to get a bus out from town because so many people are traveling back to the city.

For a couple years now, Armando has been keeping a lot of his chickens here at Cynthia’s and my rental house. He lives up against a mountain, and mountain cats (tigres) frequent his neighborhood at night looking for tasty morsels, i.e. his chickens.

It is the custom here in the interior of Panama for chickens to roam totally free. Ours show up at our back door every morning and every evening and hoot and holler until we throw corn to them. We throw just enough for that meal. If we put out a large amount, it would only draw other birds, rats, snakes, and who knows what else. The chickens sleep in the trees at night and can easily fly to the roof of our house.

Cynthia has had her favorites including Joe, Helen, and now Chicken Cheeks. She encourages Armando not to prematurely take them home for chicken soup. When Armando wants to catch one of the chickens for dinner, he and I run around the yard like chickens ourselves until we get one of them cornered. It is good exercise at the end of a long day of welding.

We have had as many as thirty, splitting themselves into two flocks; one inside the fence and one outside. Currently we are down to five, although one has been missing the past few weeks.

Back to breakfast, Cynthia and I were just finishing when we heard a chicken clucking and chicks peeping. You never know where the hens will hide to lay their eggs, so we followed the peeps to our storage room that we made in a semi-enclosed outdoor kitchen. On my hands and knees, I found mom and four chicks tucked in a corner, well protected by storage boxes. She was still sitting on at least two more eggs.

I made a quick drive to town and bought some baby chick feed, a finely-ground corn with some supplements added. The chicks were starting to wander afield, so I sprinkled some of the feed near mom and moved the little fluffies back to mom.

Here’s a video of mom and her brood:

Now it is 9:30, well past the acceptable time for me to go to work on the house. Cynthia suggested that we take down the Christmas tree, so that sounds like a plan for the day. And I’ll keep checking on mom to see how the remaining eggs are progressing.

Update ~ 10:00 a.m.: Chicken Mom has decided to venture outside to the back door. Three of her four followed her, and we still heard peeping in the storeroom. I went in and found that two of her now five chicks had become lost in the maze of boxes. Chicken moms aren’t the sharpest crayon in the box. I scooped them up and moved them to mom by the back door.

I made an InstaCoop to protect the newlings from the local eagles and other flying predators.

Soon, though, they will be on their own, taking their chances at survival just as you and I do every day. It’s a jungle out there and for us here in Panama, it is only a few feet away.

Speaking of Chicken Mom, it reminds me of the Chickenman radio series from the ’60s. Short episodes of silliness.

That’s all for now. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find another reason not to work.

 

My Shop ~ Part 5 ~ Rafters & Repello

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Try as I might, I just can’t get to spend much time working on the windows in the house. Armando has been working at a good pace now that the rainy season is on its way out, the transition to the dry/windy season seems nearly complete. A week ago we had five days of full-on rain, then it stopped and it has been sunny and breezy most days with brief showers now and then. With Armando’s speedy progress, the shop needs more of my attention.

The concrete block walls are now all up and the last beam has been poured.

The walls are up and the last beam is curing.

Main beam: In my last post, Three Reasons Why I Like Panama, I brought home on the roof of the Honda two, 40-foot 2″x4″ metal carriolas. I’m still glowing from the experience. These carriolas are for the center beam in the shop. I spent one entire day cutting them to 35-feet, then welding them together with inch-long welds every foot or so to make a 4″x4″ beam. I made caps for the ends to keep bees and other critters from occupying the inside of the beam. To make the caps, I took a scrap piece of 2″x4″ carriola and cut two, three-and-seven-eights-inch pieces off of the end. I tapped these pieces into the ends of the beam and welded around the perimeter. A light grind with the angle grinder finished the seams. Then I wire brushed all the welds and applied a few coats of polyurethane red oil primer. Here’s the beam:

The shop is 20-feet front to back, but I made the beam 35-feet so it would overhang the front of the shop 15-feet. This overhang will be part of the carport roof later.

The next day Armando, Sammy, and I lifted the beam into place and I welded it to the rebar protrusions that we had embedded into the concrete beams at the tops of the walls.

Repello: As I welded, Armando and Sammy started stuccoing (repello (rey-PAY-oh) in Spanish). The repello is simply a cement rich mix of cement and fine sifted sand. They applied the mix with trowels. After it set a while they struck the wall smooth with a length of 1″x3″ board, then using a wooden float they swirled the wall with big circular strokes to even everything out. Later they steel troweled the wall.

While they troweled the wall, some areas were a little dry so they sprinkled them with water, and other areas were a little too wet so they tossed a bit of dry cement at the areas. The finished repello has a mottled two-toned effect. I kind of like the effect and I am not yet sure if I will paint the walls a color or coat them with a clear polymer. I asked for a baby-bottom smooth finish and this is pretty much what they are doing. Here’s the repello underway:

Roof framing: While the guys applied the repello, I got busy welding the metal carriola roof joists to the building. When we made the forms for the two side walls, I cut four-inch lengths of wooden 2″x4″s and nailed them between the form boards every two feet. This made pockets for the joists to sit in. After we stripped the forms and knocked the wooden blocks out, the beams looked like this:

Before we nailed the wooden blocks in place, I had already welded together and placed in the form work a rebar assembly that would embed in the concrete beam and have a four-inch length of rebar sticking up right next to each of the wooden blocks. The rebar looked kind of like this: |_______|_______|_______|_______|_______|_______|_______|_______|_______|

This is so that I could weld each end of the joists to the rebar, thereby firmly connecting the roof to the walls and keeping it from blowing off. We get some pretty wild gusts here and it is not uncommon for an entire roof to blow off.

In fact, there is a Panamanian joke. Most Panamanian houses are relatively small. Tiny, in fact. The joke goes like this:

  • Armando: That was a really strong wind we had last night. It blew the roof right off my house!
  • Me: Oh no, how awful! What will you do?
  • Armando: Oh don’t worry, I found it and put it back on.

Here’s a photo of the roof joists all welded in place:

It took me two days to get all the joists welded into place. I still need part of a day to clean up the welds and apply a few coats of paint to prevent rust and corrosion.

Dealing with rain running off the roof: When it rains, a lot of water will get dumped at the back side of the shop where it would no doubt seep through the foundation and wall into my shop. So while Armando doesn’t need Sammy to mix and deliver repello or to work a trowel, we have him digging a drainage ditch across the back of the shop and then down hill to the front of the lot.

At first his ditch was like a line of wet spaghetti, but I asked Armando to straighten him out a bit. Now Sammy can be proud of his ditch that is totalmente recta (totally straight).

We are finding that a lot of our plants are not doing well because the soil is so very soggy so much of the year. So Armando directed Sammy to dump the excess dirt in the big garden at the front of the house. Eventually the plants will become elevated above the high water table.

Overview: Some time ago one of the Lynns who comments regularly wanted an overview photo of the job site. Here you go. This photo was taken from the road to the east, through our neighbor’s lot. I sure would like to get some unifying color painted on the exterior of the containers and my shop, but that will have to wait.

That’s all for now. Happy new year!

 

Three Reasons Why I Like Panama

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Cynthia and I are really enjoying our life in Panama. It is very different from what we are used to and it seems that something interesting is always happening. Here are three recent things that made me smile.

Thing number 1. Christmas night at about 9:00, Cynthia and I were sitting in the living room. We heard a rattle-trap of a car come to a stop on the main road in front of our house. Jabo went ballistic. I heard the hood creak open and then the trunk, and there was a lot of chatter between a man and a woman. Obviously, the car had broken down.

It was dark and I could see that they were trying to rebuild the engine or something with the only light coming from a cell phone. So I grabbed my LED three-battery MagLite and went out to see if I could help.

I’d seen the car on the road many times, often stopped for repairs. It was an old Toyota with nearly all the paint gone due to its advanced age. I worked the flashlight beam in the trunk as he sorted through a big bag of used parts looking for a set of points that might be serviceable for the distributor. Ahh, here’s one!

I illuminated under the hood as he pulled the plug wires and the distributor cap. He popped in the new old set and wallah — I said wallah — Nothing. The car just cranked when he turned the key. It didn’t start. So we did this trunk-to-hood-to-trunk-to-hood dance for an hour, replacing nearly everything except the air in the tires.

Finally, when he was ready to give up and move the car off the road (I was ready to offer them a ride home because there were no more buses at that hour), I said, “What about the condenser?” Ahh, back to the trunk to find a condenser that seemed serviceable, and low and behold, the car fired up on the next try! He asked me how much I wanted for helping him. I said, in Spanish, “Are you kidding me? It’s Christmas night!” With many thanks from them both, they rattled off on their way.

The next day, the car returned and pulled in our driveway. The man gave us an armload of yucca and a big hand of bananas. These people who have next to nothing could not be faulted for taking, taking, taking. But they didn’t. They wanted to make sure that they thanked me to the best of their ability. I’m very appreciative.

Now, had this been in the States, the guy would probably just have called AAA and I never would have offered my help. That’s recent reason number one that I like living here.

Going along with reason number one, I should probably say that I know nothing about how cars work. I can do carpenter stuff and metal stuff and a lot of computer stuff, but mechanical stuff has evaded me. How I knew to suggest the condenser is beyond me. Before my auto mechanics crash course on Christmas night, I was kind of like Goldie Hawn and friends in this old Rowan & Martin Laugh In skit:

But in that hour and a half by the side of the road Christmas night, I learned more about automobile mechanics than ever before in my life. What an education.

Thing number 2. Every year between Christmas and New Years, muñecas (moon-yek-ahs) appear at the roadside throughout Panama. Muñecas are life-size dolls that people make and put in front of their houses. There is often a theme, such as political, entertainment, things you want next year, or things you want to never see again. The muñecas are stuffed with firecrackers, and they are lit ablaze on New Year’s Eve. Here are some photos I took today on my way to Coronado:

Thing number 3. If you think you can get away with something here in Panama, you are generally free to try.

Yesterday, I needed to go to town and buy two 40-foot 2″x4″ carriolas. This would be a long load for the Honda, but it would be two days before the store could deliver them. So, I did the Panamanian thing and said, “Load ‘em up!” Everyone at the hardware store was cheering me on for my bravery/stupidity. We tied a red flag at the back and off I went, long load hanging fore and aft, smiling at/to myself all the way. I have proof — here is a video of the three-kilometer drive from the edge of El Valle to our house. El Valle, by the way, is located in a volcano, so the drive home is uphill all the way, about 300 feet in elevation gain. I thought you might enjoy seeing the scenery in our neck of the woods. There is no audio in this video.

Even though there is a tremendous amount of government red tape here in Panama, life feels more free to live without undue interference. My example is that if you were manufacturing ladders in the States, you would cover them with every conceivable label warning of impending dismemberment or death. If you were manufacturing that same ladder here in Panama, just stick a label on it that says, “ladder” and be done with it. But be very aware, that with all the freedom comes a real need to be vigilant at all times. I recently read of a woman walking in the dark in Panama City who dropped fifteen-feet into an open manhole. One of the reasons I got my new dash cam is to potentially have a video record in the event of an accident where someone veers over the double yellow line on a blind curve. Happens every day.

That’s all for now.

 

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.

Happy Birthday Jabo

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I’ll have a post about the house very soon, but first it’s Jabo’s fourth birthday.

Although we probably won’t get party hats and have a pizza party for the mutt, I thought I would at least go through some old photos and post them here. He’s a good dog despite of his overly energetic feeling of responsibility as a watch dog.

He and his litter mates were rescued by local expats. His mom is not a street dog, but she doesn’t get a great deal of care from her people. After giving birth, she was found walking the street with her uterus prolapsed outside her body.

Along with Jabo, we also adopted one of his sisters, Gracie. Gracie turned out to be nothing but mean, mean, mean. She even looked mean. We found a new home for her on a farm in the mountains. Here they are at about three weeks old just after we brought them home:

Jabo’s mother pretty much lives in front of the Hong Kong grocery store in town, frequently sleeping in a ball by the door. When I see her I always stop and pet her for a few minutes. Jabo’s dad has a wider circuit but I see him around now and then. Here they are:

Cynthia has had an intense disliked of dogs, indeed with reason, as she has been bitten three times in her life. But we needed a watchdog. He proved his worth to her at just three months old when he sounded out a “woof,” waking me from a deep sleep. Moments later, an intruder opened the window at the head of our bed and tried to enter the house. I’m thankful to have had the warning.

Cyn took to him with gusto, and while I worked on a project away from home, she spent hours and hours a day with him, teaching him commands such as sit, lie down, flat dog, and dance. He has so much energy that he just can’t get the hang of stay. One of his favorite games as a youngster was Drag a Dog.

The mutt melted Cynthia’s fear of dogs.

I knocked together a dog house for him:

I taught him the easy command. He loves popcorn:

Siesta:

One day Jabo found out the hard way that he couldn’t quite clear a five-foot barbed wire fence. Two surgeries and thirty stitches on the inside of his right rear thigh gave him pause the next time he thought about the fence:

I'm sorry Dad, I'll never do that again...

Sometimes I have a fruit smoothie for lunch. Jabo loves to lick the glass clean. I tell Cynthia that it doesn’t need to be washed, but she is doubtful at best.

I liked this last photo so much that I painted it in watercolor:

This photo is on one of my little red wagon posts, but I like it enough to repeat it here:

I took this one today of Jabo sleeping on the sand pile. It’s a dog’s life for sure.

That’s all for now. Happy birthday Jabo!

 

 

 

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.