Curved step and walls of the entrance courtyard. Shady palms and walls make it a nice place to sit. There is still a fabric awning to come for the porch.

Mary Ann's Tropical Building Page

You may have wondered why we haven't had an update to our site since October 9th, 1998. It isn't because we have stopped building!

The web site hasn't been updated because we are in the Finish Carpentry stage of the technology center, which is the hardest part of any construction project. And there were a few other distractions: three nieces came for a visit, many of our workers were loaned out to refurbish a neighbor's house, Vince and Sam got married, Griffin gave a community course on Computer Hardware, Bob gave a community course on How to Create a Web Page, and all three of us worked on plans for Beachtech, our new technology center. As of Christmas, we are moved in, but the center isn't quite finished.

Don't worry, we still have another building to do, so there will be many more reports about building on a Caribbean island.

Here is what has been happening:

• Just at Christmas time we actually moved onto the site.
• Up to 3 carpenters and 4 painters on-site doing finish work.
• Much more landscaping, including irrigation.
• Installed exterior teak doors.
• Selected colors for the walls (not white!).
• Redesigned and installed (almost) upstairs kitchen.
• Designed tile work, showers and vanity for office bathrooms.
• Designed special tile and cupboards for upstairs bathroom.
• Installed Bahama shutters over office windows.
• Installed more floor tiles, including special mosaics.
• Finished foundation and cisterns of the main house.

Warning: This report is so long and has so many photographs that we decided to break it into several parts. Remember to Click NEXT PAGE when you get to the end of each segment.

Hints: Click on any small picture below to see it larger and visit the Site Map for previous and future progress reports, house plans, bookstore and references.

The Beverly Hillbillys Move Onto the Site...

Moving in.

As soon as the carpeting was down in technology center, we started moving our things in, then ourselves.

Xmas party on the site.

Tuesday before xmas we had a party on the porch of the technology center for the workmen.

Ahhhhh - all moved!

The main conference room is full of all our stuff!

Finish Carpentry

Sanding a louvered door.

There are a large number of louvered doors within the technlogy center. These were all sanded, primed, and painted before installation.

We painted most of the wood work and doors to give the building a tropical feel, as well the walls. The colors were shades of blue and yellow, with white trim and turquoise shutters. We oiled the exterior teak doors and varnished some sliding louvered doors for the main activity room.

More Landscaping

Shade cloth nursery.

We have an interesting sink hole on the property with a grove of trees growing out of it. There has been a lot of discussion about what we should do with it. So far the only use is to create a gardening shade room on one side.

The garden room is currently being used to start oleanders, boxwood and bougainvillea for planting around the property (all possible because we now have a big cistern at the high point on the property and a water pump for it and irrigation pipes installed).

How to Start New Plants.

Starting plants in the tropics is really easy. We got a truck load of trimmings from one of our neighbors who was pruning.

You strip the leaves off the branches, cut them into convenient lengths, then stick them in water until the roots appear. Then you plant them in the dirt. Simple!

More planters.

The technology center has more planters. These are filled with banana plants, papaya and bougainvillea. This picture was taken about a month ago in November.

One short month later!

Here is the same planter a month later. We had to stand quite a bit further back from the planter to get all the plants into the picture!

Drip irrigation.

We have also installed drip irrigation. This is the inline drip system developed in Israel. It is a very simple system without the spaghetti tubes and zillions of small fittings that plague other systems.

To find out more about it, we suggest the book Drip Irrigation For Every Landscape and All Climates by Robert Kourik.

Ginger lilies.

We call this our "Dominican Garden", except that we don't have a river. The bright red blossoms are Ginger Lilies.

Click here for NEXT PAGE

Site Map: Links, Plans and Other Info

Latest News from our Construction Site

Past and Future Progress Reports

Plans of the Main House

Plans of the Software Center

Plans of the Guest Villa

Tropical Construction Bookstore

Links to Related Sites

Building Material Sources

Beach Shack Contact: