Digging between thunderstorms.

      We've had several storm systems blow through de islands this past week. But it hasn't stopped the construction process one bit. As you will see from the photo below, the initial excavation is almost complete. They are starting to build forms for concrete footings. They dig down until they hit solid earth/rock and that's where the footings start. Once the concrete 'knee walls' are in place, they back fill around those and move upwards. Hopefully all will be well anchored and stable!

      The photo above shows the initial digging at the left. At the right, same location, shows the forms for the knee walls. Rebar will be added too. There are huge piles of earth uphill from the footprint. Most of it will be used to fill-in and grade around the house. Otherwise it has to be trucked away.

      Here you are looking to the west, towards Jost Van Dyke island in the British Virgin Islands. I'm standing at about the deck level of the master bedroom. Below me are the beginnings of two cisterns, Each will hold approximately 13,000 gallons (That's a lot of rainwater!).  The wheel barrow is sitting on the floor of the lower bedrooms. The tractor is in the middle of the swimming pool. The water level will be about even with the top of the tractor arm. So you can see that the pool will be "out there'. We're putting an underwater bench at the end of the pool so you can sit with your beverage of choice and watch the sailboats glide by!

       Directly below the pool will be the parking area. But the cars will be about 18 feet below the pool, so you'll look over them. At some point we may put a flat roof over the cars. Not sure about this yet. The cars may sit to the left, and downhill of the tractor. All this is still under consideration. (No three car garage, Don!) Anyway, now that the trees are removed we have our full view in front of us. Looking directly down you will see the turquoise water of Dreeket's Bay and our private beach.
     Get your swimming suit ready! 12 months and counting!

King of the Hill.

      We are so excited! We have been climbing around this piece of the rock for two years. Each time we pushed ourselves through the underbrush we wondered is this the right place? What will the view really be like? Will this 'top of the ridge' lot support a structure? Can we afford to put a house there? Could tough rock formations get in the way? But putting aside the practicality of location, will this place deliver the dream, the dream we both share?
      We are so excited. The ground has been broken. We can see that our dream will work!

      There have been questions about access to the lot. The driveway would be carved against a 

very steep hill with little room for error. Where it actually would sit was not completely defined. 

The tractor showed up today. Let the questions be answered. Up we go!

      Dig, dig, dig. The operator, Wayne, must be a dare-devil.  Because at many points half of the vehicle was suspended out in the air. He pushed earth up, he pushed earth down, side to side, you name it. Somehow he managed to push himself up the cliff.

        Half way up 'the driveway' Wayne says he has run into a large rock. He says he will just run up over it to get the machine up on top of the driveway. But he says that the metal treads on the tractor don't like rock. Meaning he could slide off. Off to where?

      He made it. Here's the cut driveway finished, for now. It's not as steep as we expected. And the tractor is now in position to start digging the foundation for the house.
      We are so excited. These pictures do 'not the story tell'. There were points when the tractor looked like it would cascade over the edge. Giant boulders went tumbling down the hill. Fortunately there were breaks to stop the rocks.
      But now there is no stopping our construction! Stay tuned, more to come! And quickly!

The sky is falling, the sky is falling. No, only trees.

      The U.S. Congress can't seem to get out of it's own way, but here on St. John we are still moving ahead. Now that all the needed permits have been acquired, the lot is starting to be prepared for ground breaking. The trees are getting out of our way! A crew of West-Indian fellows arrived and began the clearing process. I was there to watch. The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was. No chain saws, no weed whackers, only men and machetes.
      Just machetes? And there were some pretty big trees! Take a look below.

      So this view is from the swimming pool end of the house looking towards the master bedroom. But what about the view out to the other islands? Well, here it is below. Tortola directly across. Not a great day for picture taking. There is a steady warm haze moving through the Caribbean. This warm air is what's keeping hurricanes from forming. Let there be haze!

      Today, I signed the construction contract. No backing out now! What's next? Ground breaking of course. There will be the customary photo-op. Architect, builder, clients. But Jim isn't here. He's out in Palm Springs taking pictures of sweaters. Sweaters in the desert? Anyway, we will have to wait until next week. In the meantime there will be more site prep. A stilt fence has to go around the property to control erosion. The driveway has to cleared of weeds and trees.
      On the way into town I noticed a bunch of septic tanks, some with our builders' name on them.  Yes we have 'poop' tanks. Our project is flowing nicely!

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!

De new houzz be coming along, mon.

We bet you think that all we do down here is party. Well, our social life is actually pretty busy. But we also have had time to concentrate on designing our new home. Our architect, Rob Crane has offered lots of great ideas. But this house designing stuff is hard. What to include, what to leave out. How many bedrooms, the size of cisterns. Do we really need a hot tub? Door knobs or pulls? Anyway, we bet you are a tiny bit curious to see where we are. So here goes:

This is what the house will look like when viewed from the sea. Basically it's a public area on the top floor. Great room (living, dining, kitchen) in the largest square. A small den/television room is one step up the hill, in the middle. Two more steps up leads to the master bedroom, at the left. You will see an outdoor shower at the extreme left. An outdoor pavilion and pool are located at the extreme right. Downstairs are two guest bedrooms with a shared bath between them. Also storage areas. Here's a floor plan that should make it easier to understand.

We have been looking at where to site the home on our lot and how to provide for parking and just general access.

Here's my sketch of what the great room will be like using my existing furniture and adding a few new pieces. We think the whole thing will have a clean, modern feel. But with some nods to traditional caribbean design, like an exposed wood ceiling with fans and travertine floors.

Rob is making some tweeks to the plan and we hope to have that wrapped up in the next week or two. Then he will start on 'working drawings' like the electric and such. Also at that point we will begin the process of finding a contractor. See, we aren't just party boys. We be workin' it. X marks the spot where the house will be. We be in heaven!

Sailing is work. Not.

Since Bob of JimBob can't image entertaining friends in de islands without taking them out to sea, we hired a boat! And what better boat than the fifty footer owned by our two new friends, Captain Greg and Captain Barbara.

Two captains? How can you sail a yacht with two captains? Well these two manage very well, thank you. Here they are, and their yacht too.

JimBob and the Rogers arrived at the Caneel Bay Resort dock at about 9AM. Yikes, that's early down here! Anyway, Greg and Barbara greeted us and escorted us aboard. It was an absolutely gorgeous day in the VI. But then, what day isn't? Sorry.
 
Off we go to windward towards Jost Van Dyke and the BVI. (That's British Virgin Islands for the land lubber) Captain Barbara was at the helm while Captain Greg trimmed the sails. JimBob and the Rogers did nothing. For all you boat owners: imaging just sitting back and letting someone else do all the pulling. Fantastic! There were rumors that whales were about, but on this day we didn't see any. Maybe another day.

Just as Bob was getting really relaxed, Barbara asked if he would take the wheel. Are you kidding? Bob was at the wheel in an instant. What a helm, light yet responsive. That old 37 footer at home is looking pretty small. Bob, get over it! Our hosts were nice enough to take us up 'The Narrows' so that we could sail in front of the new lot where the house will be built. What a treat.


Next we picked up a mooring at Leinster Bay and went for a bit of snorkeling. This was Joanne's first experience. She loved it. Lot's of cool fish and coral to see. Dave said he saw a barracuda. Good thing he wasn't wearing any 'bling'.


Finally it was time for lunch replete with rum punches all around. Jim. Not. The sail back to Caneel was all downwind and smooth.

We passed by Soper's Hole for you BVI lovers. We were back at the dock by 3PM and headed home for a quick shower. The day ended at our favorite watering hole, Zozo's bar. Located right off the waterfront, it is one of the best places for a magical sunset view towards St. Thomas and a good drink. The sun set into the water. Ahhhhh.

We be on de move, mon.

Since we knew that our friends the Rogers were activity kind of folks, we planned lots of outdoor stuff to do when they came to visit. One of these was a hike on a famous St. John trail: The Reef Bay Trail. It's part of The Virgin Island National Park. You can hike this trail from the top to the bottom and then hike back up to the top. Locals says it is about a 3 hour hike. Then we found out that we could go with one of the park rangers and that we would hike to the bottom and a boat would take us back around the island to Cruz Bay. Ya, mon. Dat's de way to do it.

We met our ranger at the National Parks Headquarters and were ferried by taxi to the trail head. Then down we went. It is a rocky decent but not as challenging as expected. The ranger gave us lots of information and local color about what we were seeing. Look, a termite nest. Wow, huge.

We hiked up to a place where natives carved symbols into the rocks over 1000 years ago. Very cool. We lunched by the side of a natural spring. Then it was time to hike down towards the seashore.

At the bottom are the ruins of a sugar plantation / rum factory. And restrooms. Anyone need TP? There we were met by our power boat to take us home.

Some decided to swim out to the boat. We took the easy way. The dink.Time to relax and cool our little feets!
Joanne and Dave were ready for more. The boat ride home was great because we saw parts of island we'd never have the chance to see by land.

All in all it was awesome. Next activity: a sailing adventure.