Mary Ann's Tropical Building Page

Construction Tips

Tuesday, April 20, 2004   Permalink

The Final Anguilla Kitchen

We finally finished work on the kitchen (well almost finished!) of our beachfront home at Shoal Bay, Anguilla.

We have posted a tour of the kitchen on the Bellamare web site: click here.

Sunday, April 18, 2004   Permalink

Glass Doors for Large Openings

Diane Chesko (wgc_39 at yahoo dot com) writes:

"Dear Mary Ann,
I have been reading your website since the beginning, but tried the louver doors in the 12 foot opening anyway, the builder said it would work. It didn't. Too heavy. Also blocked the view too much on windy or rainy days. Thinking of sliding glass doors. We also have 3 -12 ft openings across the front of the house, windward side. We are in Grenada, maybe out of hurricane zone. Are you happy with the doors you decided on? Did you ever go with the barn door hangers? Any suggestions on sliding doors? Aluminum? We can buy the aluminum in Grenada. or vinyl? or the pvc you have on the website? Thanks for all of your help over the years.
Diane Chesko

Mary Ann replies:

Diane,
I have 12ft openings in the living room that are stacking glass sliding. They could be covered by a wall like a pocket door but I didn't do that for fear that critters would get there and I couldn't clean it properly. So, you can see the doors inside the living room when open, but no one seems to notice. Here are some pictures taken during construction:

I bought these doors from the consolidator. They are not common in the states, but are in the tropics. They are working very well so far. If you don't like that, there is another product called Wall of Glass - try looking on search engines. they are similar to the glass doors found in malls to close off stores. Hotels use them a lot. They bifold up very tight and can be purchased to withstand 140 mph winds.
good luck,
Mary Ann

And here are some more pictures of the final product, with accordian hurricane shutters installed outside as well:

If you look at the second picture above you will see that there is a bit of a trench for the hurricane shutters track. This track is now covered by a board, so that the track does not get encrusted with dead leaves and so that you do not trip:

Since the glass door has four panels, it requires a track that is four slots wide. Another obstacle to make walking barefoot uncomfortable. But only one panel actually has to go all the way across, and another only goes 3/4 of the way, and a third goes half-way, and the final panel goes only 1/4 of the way. So we filled in the unused portions of the track with concrete:

Source for Brazilian Wood Doors

Cid Lang at Pomerode- SC Brazil (glcid at terra dot com dot br) writes:

"Surfing on the net I found your nice page about the construction of your villas in Anguilla.

I noticed that you found some difficulties in get proper supply of doors and windows in Puerto Rico. I may suggest you that next time you should contact Madeco the Puerto Rican largest supplier of Brazilian hardwood carpentry. They have two fancy show-rooms with hundred of models mainly from Imbuia (Brazilian walnut) and South American Cedar. They also have all finishing mouldings you may need, as door-jambs, panneling, floors, baseboards, astragals, etc. You can contact them by phone (787) 250 1737 or by e-mail :[email protected]

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