Pool House Expansion Project, Day Twenty, 15/10/15

Moving right along with another day of the Pool House Expansion Project.

Day Twenty - 15 October, 2015

Day twenty, yesterday, started out like just about any other winter day in the Northwest... Oh, wait. We're not up there. We're three thousand miles away. Solid gray skies, no thunder or lightning, lots of drizzle. No wonder I got confused.

What it started out like, was a day with no work being done on the addition. Just solid streaming drizzle. All that changed, well, not all of it. The drizzle part changed. By ten O'clock, it stopped enough that the workers could continue laying block for the rest of the day.

More Blocks, All In A Line

Little by little, all the discrete pieces are beginning to come together to look like a solid structure.

It's Really Starting To Look Like Something

The east walls are just about at their full height. Weather cooperating, it won't be long till the rest are all up at that level. That's when the chain will be cast. Once that cures, then the trusses will be placed on top. Then it will really be looking complete.

Some Walls Are Reaching Full Height

We're having the guys put in a kitty door - Nelson's door, as they're calling it. We're going to move the actual door and frame down from the Mennonite house and cover that door with sheetrock on the inside and plywood on the outside.

Nelson's Door Is Roughed In

You can easily see the spacings for screening. We're planning to use shade cloth, just like on Gina and Keith's house up the road from us. If it doesn't work out, the plan is to put blocks on the bottoms of the openings, two or three high, then install frames and screens. A fairly easy fix if it's necessary.

Here You Can Easily See Screen Gaps

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. 

Ho Hum, Ho Hum, It's a Gray Day

You ever have one of those days, where it's gray all day? It goes without saying that if you're from the Pacific Northwest, you know all about what I'm talking about. Well, believe it or not, we've had one of those down here in Paradise - I mean Belize.

It started off nice and cool and overcast. We got ready to head to town for breakfast and grocery shopping in our newly repaired Isuzu. Backed out of the driveway and motored off toward downtown Corozal.

We got to Al's, and managed to find a parking spot right in front. Not that that's a big achievement, really. Parking is never a problem in Corozal - no parking meters, no traffic lights. A place where policemen walk their beats and ride around on bicycles... Kinda like Mayberry with palm trees. You have to substitute Miss June for "Aint" Bee, though.

So, anyway, as we sat down at Al's for breakfast, it started to rain. That's usually a good sign. The sky will clear up afterward. Not today. We had a good breakfast and then ambled across the street to see what the local Corozal Farmers Supply Store had to offer. Salt licks and other necessary stuff for real farming, plus lots of hardware - tools, nails, and other things. I did buy a small home-bottled jug of Mr. Menzie's Laquer Thinner so I could clean a brush I used yesterday when I Varathaned an oak threshold I had purchased to keep rain leakage out of the living room.

We got done at Al's, and went over to the little news shop beside the Evergreen Pharmacy to get the weekly rags, the Reporter, Amandala, the Belize Times, and the Guardian. They all come out once a week. At least two of them are owned by the competing political parties and report accordingly. Yellow journalism is alive and well down here. I was amazed to find a current copy of Popular Mechanics, in a plastic slip-cover for sale alongside the papers. This is first rate. I didn't buy the magazine but was impressed that it was for sale.

As raindrops continued to sprinkle, we went on to Caribbean Chicken where we got some chicken breasts and thighs, and some yummy yogurt (strawberry fruit). After that we cruised on to D's Supermarket and blew a ton of money on dog and cat food, litter, fabric softener, etc. Of course when we came out it was still gray.

After draining the Belize Bank, we went home. It was still gray. It did drizzle a few times and stayed relatively cool (Ok, it got down to 87 degrees). Humidity came and went all day, and stayed gray.

We read our current novels, the new newspapers, laughing about the Belize City Fire Department being accused of slow response as three houses in a crowded Belize City neighborhood burned to the ground. That wasn't what was the hoot, that was sad, 4 or 5 families losing everything - the hoot was the fire department was slowed down to a 35-minute response because of their participation in a fire safety presentation elsewhere in the city! Oops.

We watched a Jim Carrey movie - not one of my favorite actors, in Me, Myself, and Irene. It was still a gray day.

As nightfall approached, we polished off the rest of the rice and beans with stew chicken that I had made the other day. We'll probably read some more this evening. We're looking forward to sunshine tomorrow, enough of this gray stuff.

Sunshine! Sunshine! Sunshine! Sunshine! Sunshine! Sunshine! Yeeeeaaaaaahh Sunshine!