In my account of tearing out my bathroom furniture, I didn’t mention the glass sink that was attached to it. I didn’t have with me large enough pliers to remove it, so as soon as I got back, even before removing the whole thing from the car, I set about and…clink! The glass sink removed itself.
After 15 years, the connector couldn’t handle the shear stress when I turned the cabinet on its side. Well, I thought, that is not exactly a replaceable piece of hardware. So what to do with a round glass sink? Birdbath? But how to plug the hole in the bottom? Things to think about later. For now, just park it on the table outside.
And then it rained.
Problem solved?
Actually, no: the sides are too steep for a bird bath.
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.
We’re getting to that time of year when we wonder what things must look like at night, given all the tracks we see in daylight with no evidence of what caused them. Generally, lizard rails cross the sandy trails as directly as possible, from one side to the other. Lately, though, a few seem to have changed their minds. This was an extraordinarily long “exposed” track.
We actually haven’t seen any good-sized lizards in quite a while.
In 2012, about a year before the Cyprus bankers stole their depositors’ money, we decided to move cash out of our European bank account. We purchased a 5+ hectare chacra about ten kilometers inland. For what? That was to be seen. We chose to fix the little disaster of a house, going against everyone’s recommendation. You can see my various posts about the chacra here.
It has been unoccupied almost entirely since. A couple from Namibia stayed there in the summer of 2016, and a local guy and his family the summer a couple years ago. We spent New Year’s Eve 2017 there, only to be awakened at 5:30 AM by 35 dogs barking—boarded for summer holidays by the veterinarian next door (happily, she no longer has that business). We have thought about selling it, realized it needed a lot of work, and I started making lists….
Last few days, bathroom: replaced bath/shower faucet to get it working, replaced float mechanism to get toilet working, needed to remove sink faucet. Close to impossible, so I decided to remove the L-shaped counter with its two drawers. The flexible drain pipe broke as soon as I tried to move it, which was just as well since the counter construction made it impossible to remove except by detaching it from the wall, where it was glued (?!?) to the wall plumbing. I don’t recall how that happened. Anyway, got the whole thing home and took it apart this morning.
My god what a mess! 50+ screws, all kinds of little bits and pieces of wood cobbled together. Who was the idiot who designed and built this thing?
Of course you know the answer.
Encouraged by an American woodworker, I had bought a pocket hole jig from the US (now sold here a dozen years later, I notice) and decided it would be fun and creative to build cabinets for our country place! Well it wasn’t.
(Actually, the pocket holes are cool.)
So what now? Well, I see all kinds of bathroom furniture for sale online. Not particularly expensive, not particularly challenging. And at a certain point that appeals.
Parking places 1 and 2 are my favorites at Tienda Inglesa, for what should be an obvious reason. Today I pulled into 1. As I did, the car in 2 pulled out. 3 was also empty.
A silver car then chose to park in one of the two empty places. Can you guess which it was? (Uruguayan driver answers only.)
