Tara!

The view from the lot next door looking east down Sir Francis Drake channel. The picture was taken while standing on the edge of the man made cliff the previous owner below made to build their home. A property that has been in and out of court I might add. However that all seems to be resolved and construction has begun with new owners after many years of laying fallow while the rain forest took over. No one on island would touch it even after major price reductions. I used to go sit in the ruins to take in the view. Originally this house was to be approached from the cul de sac that our property is on. Instead the prior owner came in off a road/driveway below and cut in the cliff, a cliff that had some serious erosion problems until I diverted a gut and routed the water down alongside our driveway. Were we in California, the old/new owners would be liable for shoring up the cliff. But that's for another day. What I have done has withstood monster rains and tropical storms all these years, so enough said.

I trenched the gutter across the estate road in the picture above so the water went down the right side of the driveway. I did this, maybe four years ago, when I used to eat my lunch there every day during the original phase of construction. I'd sit on gate of my truck staring and dreaming about the view. One day I noticed a bunch of trees missing! Walking to the end of the road I noticed them down the cliff. Not good. Stupid excavating.

I placed the driveway along the property line with the thought that if we ever got lucky the driveway would serve both lots or at the least I would deed access to the next owner for a reasonable fee of course--probably enough to pay for the driveway!

Anyway, I bring this all up because we had long mentioned that if the property ever became available, at least let us know. Prior to the housing bubble collapsing this piece was way beyond consideration, way beyond. In 2004 I said the only way we could even remotely afford this piece was the bubble had to burst. At the time most folks didn't even know about what bubble I was talking about. Well the rest is history, if came up for sale, and we are now OFFICIALLY broke--to the felt, as they say. I've been here many times but not Denise!

Babe, just keep looking at that view!!! Tara!

Developing the piece is out of the question but preventing someone else is not. Paradise is paradise until construction starts next door to your property and lasts for years. That can't happen now. The potential view from both lots is everything we dreamed. From sunrise to sunset with a northern exposure, mountains and valleys thrown in for effect! But that pales compared to knowing a track hoe won't be coming down the road to start someone else's construction. We are at the end of the road! Oh yeah!

There's always a minor detail. When they completed the survey, the house next store encroaches on our new property. The property stake is in their backyard garden/patio. I guess they will have to be good neighbors.

Signs and symbols!

Buying the lot was not without its anxieties. Rounding up the money, the endless delays with the holiday's, filing issues, unresolved government tax issues because of the ongoing property assessment lawsuit, just to mention a few. The biggest fear however, having been through it previously, was an owner changing their mind. Once we committed the thought that it could not happen made sleeping very fitful for several months. The "other shoe" syndrome is powerful stuff.
Ok, back to reality. Tiling.

Possible threshold solutions, as sampled above. In several areas when transiting to a room, patio or porch the floor crosses over the concrete walls from below. As such I cannot lay a tile that crosses from the sub floor, over the concrete through the threshold and back to another sub floor. Over time it will crack along the lines as the sub floors move differently from the concrete. Consequently the samples above were an idea. I did not like what was available. Finally I just cut my tiles to fit along the existing grout lines and the transitions are what I was hoping for. The floor now flows from indoors to outdoors, room to room, with no eye distractions.

And so it went. Finally the interior rooms were done but not yet grouted when Thor mentioned he would be back on island for a couple of months come the second week in February.



Work got interrupted again when I had to make trip to Texas to deal with a family problem. You hear about these things, see it in the movies but never believe it could happen. It does. Relatives and direct family members are capable of very bad behaviour. Trust me when I tell you a friend would not do these things. In the old days they would have been horse whipped and the matter finished with. Had I not been living in paradise there are days when the thought crosses my mind. Now they get to live their evil ways thinking no one knows the truth. The attorneys want to move forward but I can't without hurting the one I'm trying to protect. I'm going/have to trust karma on this one, that the truth will out. They already have miserable lives and this gives them no escape. But be warned everyone. When your faculties start to diminish there are some who will contrive any excuse or lie to take advantage of you under the pretense of helping. They will change your wills and undermine everything you have worked for using emotional blackmail to do it. You have to see it to believe it. According to my attorneys they usually pounce during the early stages of dementia. And pounce they did!



Thor shows up and I stop everything I'm doing. The tiling and walls go to the back burner once again. The idea being that we would try to get a concrete pour in. Some of the forms have been standing for over two, three years now. Previous posts have highlighted the SNAFUS that have caused this. The list is endless. How rotted are the forms now?

While contemplating it all, I mapped out what I thought was doable. Of course Thor added to it as the work proceeded. Basically pour the existing forms, form up the stairs/walls down the side of the house, pour the top of the septic and finish the upper patio. A good bit of work.

Why did I wait for Thor? Because we had to excavate the side of the house to frame out the stairs for starters. He picks and I toss. Those are my templates trying to figure out the slope and stairs with a landing in the middle.
The beginnings of the new retaining wall connecting to the old forms at the top of the future stairs. Originally I thought to stop the stairs right here with the wall ending at the stairs. But with the weather/soil being dry Thor excavated the sixteen foot wall that goes to the left. I used it all to back fill the septic, lower down the hill. Once we started the wall I decided to put in the landing and continue the stairs down around the corner finishing the whole ordeal.


The finished wall and steps start to take shape. It is true. I design and build as I go. I stand there, while Thor does something useful, staring at the space for about an hour and then we dig it out and build it. All the while Thor is chomping at the bit to swing the pick. He sees paid exercise and I see unpaid work! The design part flows on its own. The land gives the shape etc.

While I framed out the stairs Thor jumped up to the old retaining wall and patio. As usual, I build everything so that I can pour my footings, wall and stairs at the same time. It can get tricky to say the least. Not to mention it is always a first time for me. Hell, I haven't even seen it done before. But if you reverse engineer it and take your time it obviously can be done. The trick here, I built my retaining wall as usual then put up and attached all the risers as seen above. After leveling everything etc, I then cut out the openings in the retaining wall with my sawzall using the inside of the risers as my template. The risers then acted as spreaders spanning the steps. Now is this the way to do it? I have no idea but it looked like it would work perfectly. They were so solid we walked up and down them while we worked. We shall see!

This was the state of the wall put up the prior year. The back fill mud and silt were deposited by Hurricanes Earl, Otto and Tomas. Unfortunately the silt went under the elevated wall and filled in the patio on the other side. The rebar had to be taken apart and the patio dug out again. Every concrete delay or shortage always creates more work. The only question is how much and what will it cost?


Cleaned up and dug out looking at the top of the stairs to downstairs.

Looking along side the house towards the upper patio. In front is the first riser of the steps going down. Along the left I put a 12" boardwalk so the concrete bubbling up from below would be easier to screed and would save a lot of time and effort preventing it from cementing the forms in place. Taking down concrete encased forms is no easy matter. Hopefully this will help. The small opening at the back is where the stairs will enter from the parking above. That all had to be redone.
I put up this small, side pony wall for future landscaping purposes. It also allowed the continuing wall to only be four foot whereas it had been sloped down to six. This way the side of the house does not feel so crowded. I even shaped the wall going down the stairs with my skill saw to get the slope I wanted relative to the landscaping. It helps to be the chief bottle washer. I made the stairs five feet wide with all this in mind

One of my roommates doing his job. Yes, that's the cutting board.

Not a pretty site. Spotted this driving Thor home. It seems an elderly woman set her couch on fire and the next thing everyone knew the entire roof was ablaze. No one was hurt thankfully.
St John is like rural California. If there is a fire you are the one putting it out. Yes, trucks did show up when they finally figured out how to get there but the damage was done. Other than the roof the house was concrete. However it the fire burns hot enough it also destroys the concrete. I think that is what may have happened to the upper floor in this house. With fire out everyone left only to have it ignite once again the middle of the night. What little was left was gone.

With most of the work done on the stairs and lower retaining walls we jumped back up to the driveway walls which have stood ready and rotting for over three years now. Every time they were to be poured a truck broke down or it rained and they could not get up the mountain. It was always something. Sure they could come the next day but I was not prepared to pop for another $1200 for the pump truck to pour five yards! My thought was I would always add it to the next job. So here we are once again.

First things first. Just how rotten is it? The screwdriver test rules. You can see the new plywood.

Maybe six or eights sheets of plywood were too far gone. A dozen or so 16 foot 2x4's and assorted termite damage. We put a whole bunch of strap patches everywhere. Silt and debris had to be cleaned out of all the rebar. The usual pain in the ass stuff. Where Thor finds the patience I don't know. Me, I don't have a choice. But that's not the end of it. The real question/fear is will it still hold? Since my first blowout I trust nothing.

Trunk Bay in season.

The tiny white dot on the mountain in the upper right is the house.

No rest for the wicked. The top of the septic had to be replaced. The ply rotted over the past year.
Trying to keep the dirt out as we back filled it while excavating the stairs and retaining wall.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. Seeing I was already going to be paying for 200' of pipe, I figured we would frame out the lower house slab, pour 2" on top to fill in all the goat tracks and a large swale that existed from the original pour. Plus, it would bump up the interior floor 2" above the patio level. This would help to prevent any wind driven storms from spreading water inside. With any luck we will screed it to be tile ready.

There's also another 4'x32' retaining wall that we did that I did not take pictures of. Duh.

Just to add a little color to the affair we had a wild goat come up on the lower patio and try to give birth. Yikes, childbirth is not easy for them either. The whole day in labor. She moved a couple of times during the process. She quieted down after dark. The next day she was gone or so we thought. Three days later when we started work the stench made our hair stand up. She moved alright, right below the lip of the patio where she then died. Oh my god. 100 pounds of bloated, maggot invested, dead goat. It's not like you can call someone. 2x4's at the ready, dry heaving all the way, we propped her up to roll her down the hillside. Down she went further exploding an already unbearable stench. It lasted over two weeks. At one point Thor could not take it and he actually climbed down and rolled her another 30 feet. It did seem to help.

Meanwhile life goes on. This gives you an idea on how dry it has been. What a godsend with there being no rain for the last couple of months. Thor and I have never been so productive. Shoveling ,working in mud, as we have previously always done, kills your production.

Now the waiting begins--for concrete. With Majestic out of business there is only one company on St Thomas who can deliver. We are scheduled next week just before Thor leaves. I bribed Jeff to do the pumping.

The waiting begins....