Made in the Shade

I'm sure you are wondering how our building project is progressing!  ;-)  After all, I haven't posted any construction updates since October.  A lot of progress; in fact so much that I am going to split it into 2 posts.  As usual, things move slowly but steadily.

This is how things stood at the beginning of January after we had taken a break for most of November and all of December.

Two separate buildings connected by an uncovered breezeway.

The biggest conceptual challenge was to figure out the roof line to cover the breezeway.  We tried several layouts using long slats of wood.  We decided to continue the roof on the old cabana and have it butt up against the wall of the new addition.  But the eave of the new cabana roof prevented us from just taking it straight across.  After dealing with various structural constraints, this is layout we settled on:

We extended the ridgeline of the older roof so that it angled to the front.  That way we could keep the ridgeline horizontal yet get it tucked up under the eave of the roof on the new addition.

 The finished breezeway roof from underneath looks kind of cool.

It was important that we get this roof to shed water to the front and to the back and not streaming against the side wall of the addition.

Once that was completed, the crew worked on a little room just off the breezway.  This will be the inverter room, conveniently located near the batteries which will be on the breezeway.

Putting the shed roof on the inverter room.  

 Next up was getting the veranda roof up.  The veranda wraps around the entire addition and will be covered except for the rear section.

The ledger boards for the veranda roof and for the little balcony are in place and the crew is just starting to set the support posts in place.

This portion of the veranda will be screened in.

Rafters going up.

The finished roof is very nice and keeps the inside of the addition much cooler.

Joists in place for the flooring to come.

 The addition is an irregular hexagon, so each corner is different.

We used lots of fasteners to secure the lap boards to the the rafters, the rafters to the sill, the sill to the posts.  We can't ignore the possibility of hurricanes, and are building to withstand a direct hit from a category 3.

 Max is responsible for the daily inspection and approval to proceed.  After all, this is her veranda!

Max, checking out the progress from the temporary decking.

 Before the roofing went up, the crew put up the frame for the little balcony.  The posts rest on the rafters of the veranda roof.

The little balcony is taking shape.

Installing 2x6 decking on the balcony.  Don't panic - railing will be next!

View of the balcony from the breezeway roof.

Adjusting the flashing on the roof.

By the end of the first quarter of 2015, the breezeway roof and veranda roof were complete, the inverter room was finished, and the balcony platform was in place.  We are really pleased with the quality of the work.  Max is too, and we know that is the most important thing.

Building a Home in Belize - Plus Bonus Birds and Beast

Last year we started building an addition to our small (668 sq. ft.) vacation cabana to make it more suitable for living in full time.  We designed a small space of a little more than 600 sq. ft. that would include a nice master suite, an office area, and some storage space.  The whole thing will have a wrap-around veranda, some of which will be covered and screened.  It will be a separate building joined to our cabana by a covered breezeway that will house the batteries for our solar power system.  The east-west orientation of the roof's ridge-line will provide the proper orientation for the solar panels that will be mounted on the roof. 

Before the rainy season last fall made the roads impassable, we had poured all the foundation and footings for the 10 ft. tall columns the addition will be built on.  Then nothing happened for ages.  Belizeans take their holidays seriously and each time we thought it would get started up again there was Pan American Day, Garifuna Settlement Day, Christmas and New Year, Baron Bliss Day, Easter week.  After a few fits and false starts in early 2014, we are finally making headway on the construction, as shown in the photos below.  If you are bored by construction just scroll through and toward the end you will be rewarded with some bird and beast photos.  :-)

The foundation and columns for the addition are at a 26 degree angle relative to the existing cabana to achieve the proper orientation for the roof-mounted solar panels.  Stacks of wood are kept dry under the blue tarp to the left.  You can see the first wood sills mounted to the top of the concrete columns.

The addition looks huge from this perspective, but most of it will be the wrap-around veranda.  The area underneath will be used for more water vats, storage, and workshop.

Pascal and Richard are fitting the cross-beams across the floor joists onto which the plywood subfloor will be screwed down.  We have some "interesting"  angles in order to accommodate the 26 degree difference in orientation between the 2 buildings.

Here are the floor joists from below.  The columns have all been water-sealed and all will ultimately be painted white.

The floor joists from above.  You can see that the addition will be approximately the same height off the ground as the original cabana.

These joists in the breezeway that will connect the 2 buildings are extra sturdy to bear the weight of the batteries for the solar power system.  Each battery weighs more than 100 lbs. The joists consist of 3/4 inch plywood sandwiched between 2x6s.  Lumber here in Belize is full dimension, so a 2x6 really is 2 inches by 6 inches.

The breezeway joists from above.  Under the blue tarp is the subfloor for the interior.

Here is the subfloor from below. Our original cabana does not have a subfloor, only tongue-in-groove flooring installed right on the joists.  Although it has worked better than we expected, it was pretty buggy inside until Richard applied wood putty in ALL seams.  The flooring had shrunk so much that there was between 1/8th and 1/4th inch gap between each piece of wood.  Wood in Belize is not kiln dried, so you can expect such shrinkage if you don't let the wood dry first.

We are also adding a veranda to the back of the original cabana on the left.  The notched space between the 2 verandas and the breezeway is where the stairs will come up from the ground.

The blue tarp covers the subfloor for what will be the interior living space of the addition.

Soon (maybe late fall of 2014?) this view will be quite different the addition atop new columns to the right. The root top of the addition will be about 8 feet higher than that of the original cabana. 

As promised below are some birds and beast.  Spider warning!

The lovely black-headed trogon, Trogon melanocephalus.

Black-headed trogon with its blue eye ring, glimpse of yellow belly, and violet iridescence on its back and rump.

Golden orb spider, Nephila claviceps, snacking on what looks like a hover fly.  You can see the golden color of the web in this shot.   The gold color is washed out in the 2 flash photos below.

She has a chain of mummified meals in the upper part of her web.  Her body alone is a little over 2 inches long and her web, which she had woven in our lime tree, stretched over an area of about 4 ft by 3 ft.  The males are only about a tenth the size of the females.

Fearsome looking, but she won't bite humans unless provoked by rough handling. Even then, her bite is supposedly not very painful and leads to a minimal red swelling similar to a bee sting.

The moon and a Brown Pelican, Pelecanus occidentalis, lit by the same low evening sun.