I am not saying the little cave has anything to do with that. Its a dark little natural passage that goes up into that hillside. A video camera on a R/C truck??? Who YOU calling a chickenshirt?? Maybe I'll tie a string to the dog and see how far he gets. except if there's a rat in there I will never get him out of there until he kills it. No matter how long it takes.
Any how, I took the camera with me today, but didn't get any photos of anything interesting. It was raining the whole time. I did go up to the house to go through the rubbish pile for a piece of wood, talked with Romeo the Painter for a while about Samurai's ( He's got a 94) and whether we should go halves on a junked one we can both pick over for parts...got a bunch of house photos, but that's old hat to you guys.
I'll keep my eye out for something interesting.
I don't have any good Mel Fisher stories, but would have liked to have known him better. He is, of course, one of my heros. I wish I had known him when he first started looking, I could have helped him a lot with equipment recommendations and experience finding things in the ocean. Would have been nice to be looking for stuff that didn't blow up for a change. I was making a living running sidescan sonars in those days.
I know this is about as exciting as watching paint dry, but since I didn't take any photo except those of the house, might as well, to try to keep the thread alive until I can get some more fun stuff to post.
The garage and workshop is that blocky thing to the right. The top is flat, and has a wall around it connecting to the deck and patio. Its set up so that we can add a guest suite, or something, on top later. La Gringa is still voting for the tiki bar.
When I told the architect we were thinking of a palm roofed tiki bar on the top, cause the house looks like a German pillbox....I thought he was gonna hit me. Not sure whether it was the tiki bar idea, or calling his design a blockhouse. It'll look a lot better with some nice colors and landscaping. Should be a lot of boulders on this side, retaining walls for the driveways on each side. I hope they blend into the hillside, and make the garage look smaller.
The ten foot garage door is on the left. The other half, with the tall skinny window next to the door, and the two smaller windows on the side, is my workshop;
Inside, well, its just an empty garage for now. I am going to be doing all the workbenches, shelves, etc. for the shop myself. I have some ideas using driftwood for part of it, but I need some more power tools first. Like a bandsaw to resaw planks, etc. This is the view looking out the ten foot door. Its so that we can drive straight through the garage. Its ten foot on this side, just in case I ever want to pull a boat inside. Would have to take the t-top off, of course, but I figure it would be good to be able to do it. Patching hulls, etc. something that needed to be in out of the weather. Of course we still have the driveway to do on this side. Not a bad view, though:
View out the other side, through the two 8 ft. garage doors. The one on the right basically defines the workshop entrance. There's a utility sink going in just to the right of the door for GoJo and stuff like that. There is five feet between the outside edge of that door and the wall.
Its also not the worst view.
This is looking out one of the workshop windows on the side of the garage,over the salina and across the island;
the view from the other window is remarkably similar. Not ocean, but I can watch flamingos. We had them put a concrete beam across the ceiling strong enough to "chain hoist a V-8 engine out of a truck", or at least that was my design criteria.
Between the garage and the house is the area underneath the concrete deck that connects the roof of the garage to the deck around the house. We haven't figured out what to do with this space, there's enough room here for another small bedroom, or maybe we will just string some hammocks and leave it alone...dunno...
Not much else going on out there, in the rain. The guys are finishing up the plaster work on the top of the ledge running around the garage to the house, etc:
The roof completely overhangs this walkway, so they can stay dry, anyhow.
I checked into the finishes,and I was wrong. Its not paint. Its this coating developed here in the islands, pretty interesting stuff. The company is Island Flextec, if you want to Google it. Coating developed for this kind of construction, in this kind of climate.
And these are the 4x4s of Romeo the Dominican, and Gringo the Texan.. good choices for here;
We had a grand old time today, discussing water pumps, leaf springs, and where to find parts. People are always trying to buy our Samurai's from us. We plan to keep them.
Oh, almost forgot, they also stuck the wooden beam doo-dads over the front entrance thingamajig;
I cant get a better photo of it, which would be head on, because of the big container full of building supplies in the way. But the view in through here is through the house and the middle slider, back to that same old ocean view.
Same one I have posted sixteen zillion times here already. I need some new material. It's STILL raining...
One last thing...houses here commonly have names. I think its a Brit thing. But this one definitely qualifies to be named,and we are looking for ideas. We have heard "TailWinds", "Limestone", the architect suggested the "Other Side".
We are still open for ideas, though.
I liked "The Far Side" too....but its a trademarked name . I don't worry about the trade mark, but wonder about confusion. I don't want people showing up wanting an autograph, thinking the cartoonist Gary Larson lives there.
"Los Gringos? Lost Gringos? But so many Mexican restaurants around with Gringos in the name. We were also looking for a synonym for 'hideout', or sanctuary, but didn't come up with anything good.
When we were first designing the place, I told the architect it would be cool to have some kind of little architectural signature, I said something like " a couple arches or something to set it apart". He took it pretty far, I think. I am SO glad I didn't mention gargoyles.
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