Category: construction

So goes the sitzbad

Over ten years ago, we bought a chacra (mini-farm, 14 acres) with a crappy little house that we chose to fix up instead of bulldoze, the recommendation of some (all?) who saw it. I won’t go into it, but we had a reason.

Given the possibility of being creative, I had the idea to emulate the sitzbad my wife had years ago in her tiny apartment in Frankfurt, West Germany.

So I went wild, because hey, Martín can build it! And it ended up not being compact at all.

But pretty! At one end, a nook for a washing machine.

And don’t ask me what I was thinking when I framed this photo, but it’s the closest I have to an image of the finished project.

Which project was a stupid idea. No question about it. First of all, it would require a huge amount of hot water, and we never pursued the idea of installing a (large!) solar hot water heater. Plus, something that occurred to me only when I showed the house to a middle-aged couple: who, including little kids and older people, is going to be able to comfortably get in and out of the thing?

So an executive decision was made…

…and it didn’t take me long to realize that I was out of my league with a 1-kg sledge hammer and a chisel. I asked our contractor if he had a larger sledge hammer I could borrow, and he went one further and loaned me his small jack hammer. Which turned out to be exactly what I needed.

A few hours here, a few hours there, and three days later the job is done, leaving the question of whether we can match the floor tiles, of which we have six, or the wall tiles (none)…

…and of course, “done” is relative. The last two days’ rubble still needs to go away.

So what to do now (other than slather more horse liniment on my overworked shoulders, of course)?

A dwelling in winter

Almost sunset. Temperature has dropped from 12°C to 8°C (54-46°F) as night approaches. No visible source of heat, unlike the neighbors’ smoky chimneys. Masonry construction; insulation unlikely. No sign this evening of young kids I often see playing.

The lighting is nice, but any suggestion of warmth is purely illusionary.

You decide:

In the winter, their surroundings are equally pretentious, but very uncomfortable, for the houses of Montevideo are as frigid as the white marble in which they are finished. The people believe artificial heat unhealthy, and in this city, which is as large as Washington, and quite as cold, there is not a furnace or a steam-heating plant. During cold snaps, a hostess often receives dressed in furs, with her hands in a muff and her feet on a hot-water bottle, and gentlemen and ladies come to state dinners in over-coats and fur capes.

~The President of Uruguay (author unknown, 1897)

Overdue (plumbing)

For years, I have wondered about rectifying the horrible plumbing we inherited in our back yard. It always seemed a little silly, since it would involve breaking up part of the patio we had installed. The exact tiles we used are no longer available, so the new ones wouldn’t match perfectly.

But recently I asked our contractor about it, and he said no problem! And when he says that, he means it.

Not only did the drain include a zigzag design, it also had a buried (inaccessible) elbow and substandard pipe, some of which turned out to have been broken.

I don’t find most construction projects particularly gratifying, but this improvement is actually exciting. Because, you see, three or four times a year I had to pry up all the junction box covers, put on long rubber gloves, and force a stiff plastic tube through the pipes connecting them—and yes, the one with the elbow was a bitch—when they got clogged up with grease that shouldn’t have, but somehow got beyond the grease trap.

Nasty job. No more!

BTW the gray square on the garage floor is a closed-off junction box. From four to two—so delightfully uncomplicated!

0800 Sunday: noise next door.

It gets worse.

Once again, I ponder the placement of those huge sliding (plate glass!) doors. Why here instead of further back, where our lemon tree, bushes, and casita (“little house”) would provide much more privacy?

The answer, I suspect, is that a few years ago somebody in the family graduated with a new architecture diploma, around the same time someone else in the family died, leaving behind a small pile of money.

Build Back Because?

Lots of noise the past week at the weekend place next door which was extensively remodeled three years ago:

Today the workers opened the rolling shutters for the huge glass doors positioned so that it’s impossible NOT to see into the house from our upstairs patio, and lo and behold! Apparently they’re tearing up the tile floor–that they installed in new construction three years ago.

This seems to be A Thing. We’ve watched the crappy house in Villa Argentina built, roof replaced (twice, I believe), rebuilt, repainted. Another much fancier house near it was built, facade changed, entire yard dug up for drainage, now sporting new construction which will apparently be a barbacoa. Does anybody plan anything?

In the process of building the new addition next door, I watched the attempts to join the new Isopanel roof to the existing one, then the attempts to seal, and re-seal, the various joints, ending in a mess that only we get to see from our patio (though from below they might notice the paint blistering on the wall).

As they were working on this, I asked the foreman, ¿Se planficó? (Was this planned?). No, he replied, we make it up as we go along.

At the time, I thought he was joking.

Construction continues…

The front of this lot is stockaded. Then they put up a wire fence. Then they started stockading some more where the wire fence is. They’ve torn out the wall between the house and cochera, making clear this is the neighbors’ project. Can’t wait…

…to see what’s next from the design geniuses who placed their ultra-wide glass doors so I can’t not see their entire living room from our patio when they’re there.