Sweet Master Suite

Great, Great Room

Green, Green Grass

FWrom the front yard at the driveway, this taken on a rare cloudy day

The Great Room, with the dining room table and some of the furniture we have purchased. Now we get to furnish the whole house, such fun!
The kitchen cabinets, from The Home Depot, in Massachusetts, fit perfectly in the space they occupy. This kitchen set-up is almost identical to our the kitchen in our Harwich home.

The Final Electrical Hookup

This utility worker, a lineman from the virgin islands Water And Power Authority; AKA: WAPA, he is busy connecting our home to the electrical grid, permanently. Our temporary service pole is disconnected.
This means two things; the first is that before they hook up the power to your house, you must acquire a Certificate of Occupancy (CO) from the Building Department. We passed the inspections and we are cleared to move in - we needed their permission - and we got it!
The second thing is that our exhorbitant electric electric rate is going down. Seems the only way they can entice people to get their CO - and legally inhabit their house - is to charge them a higher rate for the power until they get it done!

I couldn't resist the sailboat. I took the photo from the gallery, the rock pile is topped by what looks like half a cracked egg shell, now a natural stone birdbath. We pulled the stone from the rubble of the excavation; assembled the pile with the bowl facing skyward.
Our home, as it looks from the front yard, the Papaya trees in the foregraoud are grown from seeds the workers dispersed while eating their papayas for lunch.

Concrete Dust is History

Progress is being made, as we race the clock to get back into our great room, and what a Great Room it is turning out to be! The kitchen is now complete, sans grouting, which we will do later. It is unbelievable how much work this floor has turned out to be. Debbie and I have been working, non-stop, since last Thursday (March 15th) when Terrazzo Bobby finished grinding the concrete down for us. We jumped in on Thursday afternoon, right after the floor dried, and cut the score lines. We did the kitchen square first, which you can see, incidently, came out precisely centered in the kitchen alcove. Amazing, simply amazing. We stained the barely dry exterior squares that would be under the kitchen appliances, like the dishwasher, the gas range, and, of course, the refrigerator. We finished them first so that we could re-occupy the space, maybe make some toast and feed ourselves again, the motto: the sooner the better.

Once the stain set in-place for twenty-four hours, we had to wash the areas down with clean water, to remove the residue of the process. This was a dark stain (Aged Leather, by name) and when the stain is a darker color, it's mildly acidic nature interacts more vigorously with the chemical compostition of the concrete, thus, a lot of brown powder, which, when clean water is added, turns it to a muddy brown liquid.

Eastward Ho!

Masking Tape Marauders

We have scored the floor in this room first (pre stain) for a good reason, we are coloring the square tiles like a chessboard, light squares and darker squares. Fema Blue masking tape and 4 mil polyethylene hide the light-colored squares as we prepare to apply the stain to the darker colored; unprotected squares.

With the first coat of stain applied, we begin the waiting period before we can recoat.
Notice the kitchen appliances are gone? We had to remove them and store them for this period of time. The refrigerator is plugged into the kitchen outlet (20 amp circuit) but the frige itself is in the blue bedroom.

Great Room Floor

And, as we begin the last major project on our new Caribbean Home, we are forced to vacate the only unfinished (did I say AND dusty?) room in the house. This is Michael, an employee of Bobby the Terrazzo Man, as he grinds the concrete with a diamond-studded blade. Notice the water everywhere? A function of the machine he is using, which weighs over 900 lbs, is the shooting of water onto the rotating blades of the machine. This is multi-purpose. The water cools and lubricates the blade(s) as it rotates, and, it also carries away the "spoils" of the operation. I call it slurry, to others it is waste material, which, once rid of it's water, resorts back to it's actual existence state. Dust - the fine-powdered kind - that kind that gets into everything!

Add H2O = Zero Dust = Good Deal

Bobby's truck reminds me of a saying an old timer told me: "Some craftsmen marvel at their own work; take such great pride in their effort; usually forget the condition of their truck and it's contents. They prefer to spend their time honng their skills - afterall - anybody can wash a truck, but there are precious few that can do this level of craftsmanship!" I heard that, 'specially on St. Croix!

This is what the slurry looks like when it's wet, when it's dry it is usually airborne, like spores!

Once they are done grinding, this is what is left behind: A Reasonably flat surface on which to design a floor pattern., next.......

Our cat's view of these proceedings is a little different than our own; I am sure he thinks we are batty!
We did the areas behind and under the appliances first, that way we can re-arm the kitchen sooner. Working in the kitchenn when it looks like this is very discouraging, especially with the refrigerator in the South bedroom! Here you can see that we masked off the areas we didn't want to stain, once the first squares are sealed and finished, we will strip off the plastic and tape from them for transfer to the squares we just completed. Don't worry, we are confused, too.

Once the kitchen was done, we turned our attention to the rest of the room. The combo set up, with the vacuum cleaner, the scoring tool and the scoring guide are set up here, ready for action!

Grade the Driveway

Now you see it, no you don't. Our shipping container is FINALLY moved away from our front door. We had Israel back to finish the grading, and, lay down some gravel in our driveway. The gravel will help us deal with mud issues when it rains. Afterall, we are doing the finish floors!

In these shots you can see the drive at the front door being graded, and the container slid back onto the lots edge with our neighbor.

Israel has more equipment than you can shake a stick at, and, it is all in tip-top shape, he applies grease to all the grease fittings after ten hours of operation. Here his dump truck, which holds 22 yards of product, is dumping the blue stone gravel.

Guest Bath Revisited

Did I mention the finished floor in the guest bathroom? I used slate green stain on the field and the light turquoise for the border.

The Back Hall & Laundry

I apologize for the error, these photos didn't make the website, as they should have.
In this sequence of photos you can see the process of having the floor grinded (ground?), stained, scored, washed, sealed, and, finally, grouted.
The first two images are of the back hall & laundry area, prior to the work of the grinding tool. Notice the waves in the floor surface? That is how the last guys left the floor, unfinished, mostly because it was the end of the day.



These photos can be enlarged sometimes to full screen (yours) by clicking on the image, try it!













The next shots here are taken after the staining and scoring has been done, what needs doin' now is the wash off of the slightly acidic stain residue. I use a baking soda and water solution for this process. After this is done, the floor can be sealed for posterity.. If washing these floors is the least fun, sealing them is the most rewarding by far of all the processes, or maybe it's the grouting. I can't decide.....

The icing on the cake perhaps?

Ta - Da, the finished product, well, we have still to wax them......

Master Bedroom

The master bedroom is next, I have applied the first coat of stain, wait twenty four hours, score the floor and then apply a second coat of stain. In this room I have mixed two different stain colors, not that I mixed them into a single solution, but I applied the second color over the first, mostly along the scored "joints". This gives each tile a little individuality; and adds to the "antique" look of water-stained tiles.



The scoring tool and the jig I used to ensure straight lines, simply two pieces of 1/4" masonite, attached together so as they lay parallel to each other and spread apart at 1-1/2" to allow for the saws width.

The blue tape and string are used to mark out the "tiles" for scoring. I used the blue tape, instead of marking the floor with a pencil, simply because it's easier to see and it doesn't leave a mark that must be erased off.

In the last photo, you can see the semi-finished product, with the scored joints and the addtional concrete stain applied. Now we wait for an addtional time period to allow the stain to burn into the concrete surface, tomorrow we wash and seal!

Guest Bath Floor

Guest bath floor border is stained a light turquoise, wait 'til I uncover the final product tomorrow..............

Hallway Floor, Before & After

This shot is of the back hall / laundry, you can see the vent for the dryer, as well as the propane gas tubing, sticking out of the wall. Notice the waves in the concrete, as it was troweled to a finsih, shy of a finished job, prior to grinding and staining. The second shot looks down the hall in the opposite direction, looking into the Great Room.












This next shot here is of the same hallway, looking into the house through the back door, see the stained and scored floors within, this will be cleaned up and a coat of sealer applied, wait and see............

Bobby the Terrazzo Guy

This is Bobby the (self-described) Terrazzo Guy, his name is actually Wentworth Thomas, rather distinguished sounding, eh? Anyway, Bobby is, how should I describe this, finish-grinding the white cement and white sand concrete mix, which is the top coat of our finished floor. About 1/2 - 3/4" thick or so, more recenetly troweled on top of the rough slab we poured months ago.
Bobby is shown here, using his small rotary machine with diamond blades, I think he was using 80 grit at first, finishing with a 120 grit metal blade.
The machine itself is called a planetary polisher, that is, the round diamond-embedded grinding disks (five or seven) are also spinning, in an opposite direction than the main blade, to ensure a smooth surface, free of grinder marks. Get it, the small planets (grinding disks), rotate around the main planetary body? The master bedroom floor, shown here, is getting ground down and the slurry, or spoils of the grind, are mopped and vacuumed up with a wet vacuum system. Creating zero dust, zippo, none, he left the floor smooth and wet and clean!!
The next step, after his water has evaporated, and the floor is dry again, I begin by applying a first coat of stain with an insect sprayer, the kind you pump up by hand. I leave the stain sit on top of the cement and let it doing it's work, burning it's color into the concrete's DNA. There is no going back and there is no certainty to the color of the final product, it will be what ever it will be, end of story. Isn't it grand - no control at all - absolutely none.

Enter the Solar Age

Pictured for you here is the solar system, well, not actually the Solar System (which is substantially larger and much more complex), it is our solar hot-water-heater system, and it is installed and working, as I write. The system consists of the (from left to right) the Solar Photo-Voltaic (PV) collector as part of the system, in that the electricity that operates the circulating pump, is provided by this little unit. I put it in that cute little aluminum frame and angle mounted it to provide maximum solar gain (sunlight on-target). In this way, we use none of our own electricity ($0.48 / KWH) to power the system. If the sun doesn't shine brightly enough, the pump doesn't operate, but who needs a circulating pump if the solar Hot Water Collector isn't heating water? By the way, that big brown thing, about 4 feet wide and six feet lengthwise? That is the solar hot water collector, or, heater. The insulated feed hot water water pipe is shown entering the bottom of the collector at the right. After traveling through the collector, pushed by a very small electric motor, and so-called gravity feed, (where hot water flows uphill more easily) the heated water leaves the collector at the top left hand corner, and travels into an electric hot water heater / storage tank, in the utility room of the house. The electric, or utility power that feeds the electric hot water heater, is used for long periods of cloudy days (as if).