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15 February, 2016

Pool House Expansion Project, Day 109 - 14/02/16

Valentine's Day, Isaiel and Welding, Burglar Bars and Doors

Days One Hundred Nine, 14 February, 2016

Happy Valentine's Day.

What a way to spend the day - installing burglar bars. Still, this is one more thing that lets you know that the project is nearing the end.

Isaiel Pech, our Godson, lives with his wife, Amarilly and their son, Joshua, in Guinea Grass, a few miles south of Orange Walk. He has his workshop there as well.

Isaiel works as a custom art welder. He works for an art-welding firm in Orange Walk and also has a small art-welding business of his own. He has done all of our outdoor hose hangers. You can see pictures of them elsewhere on the blog. He also did some nesting, glass-topped tables for us.

One of the projects he's working on is a custom, curved stair railing, down in Cayo. That piece is costing around $13,000, just for the stair railing.

Our project was nowhere near that extravagant. Just some straight forward burglar bars, and a burglar bar screen door of our design.

Here's our burglar bar screen door waiting for installation.
Burglar Bar Door Waiting to be Mounted
 But first, the burglar bars need to be installed. We had them mounted using screws and metal shields in holes bored into the concrete block walls.
Drilling A Bolt Hole
 Isaiel's brother, Romelio, came along with Isaiel and Joshua. Here Romelio is holding the Shop Vac to capture the drilling dust. Joshua spent most of the day entertaining Bela our youngest dog, and playing games on his tablet.
Drilling Another hole
 After drilling, the bars are mounted, and the screws tightened.
Mounting Burglar Bar to Wall
 Our first burglar bar, mounted. We call them burglar bars, and they do serve that purpose very well. But they also have another purpose, and that's hurricane preparedness. If you look closely, you can see there's a half-inch channel  on both the top and bottom. That's so we can slide a prepared piece of plywood into the channel, and then lock it down with a threaded bolt in the lower channel. They fit close and do a great job of protecting the louvers and stopping the intrusion of storm-driven water.
First Burglar Bar Mounted
 Here the east side is almost done.
Almost A Whole Side Done
Looking at the action from inside the house.
Bars From the Inside
South side is all done.
Bars On the South Side
As is the east side.
Bars On the East Side
Back to the west side. This time showing the burglar bars for the water heater, making it less susceptible to theft. This bar was originally protecting a window air-conditioner unit we had installed in the pool house. Both of those units have gone bye-bye. It seemed sensible to re-purpose the bars to their new task.
Even One For the Water Heater
Last part of the project is installing the burglar bar screen door. We sort of screwed up by mounting the regular entry door first, but Isaiel was able to work around that difficulty and get it installed nicely.
Burglar Bar Door Getting Mounted
Here's a detail of the door. The design is supposed to be an art-deco lily, but it more resembles an olympic-style torch. Whatever, it still looks cool. We've got the same design on all  of our burglar bar screen doors. We have four others - two upstairs for the Mennonite house and two downstairs for the 'basement'.
Burglar Bar Door Detail
Part of the process is spent modifying the frame to take the lockset. Here Isaiel has been drilling holes to make a hole for the deadbolt and knob latch.
Cutting Openings for the locks
Several trial openings and closings later, Isaiel declared it a good fit, and the job was done.
Making Sure the Locks Fit
A little final touch-up by Romelio, and we could kick back and relax for a bit.

Romelio Touching Up Paint
Admiring the work. It is one fine looking door.
Pretty Cool Looking Door
There's many more photos than appear in each posting. You can see all the photos of the construction project on Flickr at: https://www.flickr.com/gp/winjama/0wVc3s. There will be new photos added each day of the project.   

1 comment:

Bernard Crosby said...

Hello mate nice blogg