We be back on de island, finally!

         OK, so you probably think we fell off the earth and disappeared. No such luck! JimBob returned to St. John on September 1st, 2013 ready to resume our adventure of building a dream-home. So what happened while we were up in New York City?

         Nada, nothing, not a ting, mon. Our rental home, Tropical Manor, was a mess. It took us days of cleaning to get settled back in.

         Well, it's not entirely true that nothing happened while we were away. See the photo below. If you remember from last winter, I spent days and days cutting down bushes to open up a look at our new driveway. On the left is the result of my handy-work. On the right is what it looks like now. Hey, what happened to all that trimming? Holy- moly, I don't want to go through cutting bushes in 90 degree weather again. Where's Jim? Oh, he must be knitting again. Whatever.

         I've decided to wait on the gardening. Anyway, it looks like we may be on the verge of pulling the trigger on the building project.  At the right you will see our building permit! Yes, we actually have one now. Which means that we are only waiting to hear from the developer. We need his signature on our plans. He already has given us 'conditional approval'.  We expect to hear from him next week. Final approval?
         Wait, wait, wait! Look closely at the building permit. It has the wrong address. And it has no signature! OK, what's with this? Our architect tells us that he stopped by the permitting office and they will issue a new form. When? Hey, the price is wrong too. I don't care about that. It's way too low. Works for me!

         While we were living 'large' in a New York City apartment, there was some construction done on our rental Tropical Manor. Part of the decks were made of Trex. That's a composite material which, apparently, didn't hold up too well. It started to sag and mildew. So the owners had travertine tile installed instead. Beautiful. See the next photo.

         We have a contractor. We have agreed on a building estimate. We have a contract in front of our lawyer. We have the agreement of the developer. We have a building permit (kind of). We are just about ready to go. When do we break ground?

         Stay tuned. He, he, he! You get to wait for the next blog posting!