The most important room

sand at 250x



With the stress of the marinas temporarily on hold I jumped downstairs to start framing out the now dried out utility room. In a strange twist it ends up being the most important room in the house while usually being relegated to dark, dank areas. In our case it ends up being front and center, something akin to the laundry room you might find in a larger condo. Everything comes together here more so than your typical home. Besides the electric and usual plumbing we have to incorporate pumps and pressure bladders to retrieve and pump water from the cisterns for household use. A rural farmhouse has the same although they would be using a well. For someone who has basically lived in apartments for the last 40 years it is all Greek to me. Our household inconveniences meant picking up the phone to call the manager!

A new friend waiting on the truck. The original stick figure.

 

Speaking of the truck I suppose it had to happen. After eight years of never locking my truck someone had the balls to walk down my driveway, no small feat, and rob the truck and the immediate area. They didn't just pick and choose. They literally took everything, including old rotten baseball caps and electronic cables/chargers for phones that don't even exist. They did however get a complete set of house drawings and my aluminum hand truck used to bring down the appliances. They got me while I was working in the house cutting tiles. After the shock and anger wore off it's the sense of  being violated that takes forever to be forgotten. Sadly I now have to lock my truck and the shack every time I work on the house. I spent two days driving the roads hoping to find my papers tossed by the side of the road. No luck. Hello DMV for a new registration and title. On a side note, of course I thought it was the evil marina supporters sending a message. haha. I'm not paranoid, am I?

 

 

The utility room layout begins. The grand design had the sub panel on the back wall where all the wires are hanging. The other wall is a shared wall with the bathroom. It is here that the washer, dryer, and utility sink will be lined up sharing the plumbing with the bathroom toilet, shower, and sink on the other side. Convenient plumbing 101. The pipe hanging out of the ceiling above is the waste pipe from the upper bath. The other is coming from the kitchen sink and dishwasher.

 

The plumbed waste pipes. Only the toilets are going to the septic. Everything else is gray water heading for banana, lime, orange and grapefruit trees yet to planted. 

 

Connecting to pipes in the slab. The utility sink is going where the level is standing. I had to special order a sink to fit the space. Thankfully they shipped to the island. I haven't framed out that corner yet. I use the opening to go back and forth to the bathroom/bedroom.

 

Sleeping under a T-shirt



Everything was going according to plan until I actually did a mock up of the entire room. Using online measurements of bladders, hot water heaters, washer and dryers it was proving too tight. It would work but using the washer/dryer could possibly be a pain in the ass not to mention an inspector with a tape measure might claim that the sub panel didn't have the necessary clearances by an inch or two. Back to the drawing board and chalk lines on the floor. I might add that this was never going to be a problem on the original drawings. We since have cut off the back five feet of the utility room to expand the walk in closet from the bedroom making it 12 x5 finished. Rather grand for a cottage.




The good news, there was a very workable solution that made the 9x6 room seem expansive and the appliances easy to use. The bad news---I had to rewire the whole room and relocate the sub panel and all the outlets. After all the cursing and swearing it took a day but thank god that voice in my head suggested a mock up. Had I put up all the sheetrock it would have been much harder and taken a lot longer.

Now the real trick. Getting 4'x9' sheets of drywall down to the house from under the shack.

 

Even the chickens on the path want to watch this one. That is a pretty steep pitch even when you are not carrying anything. Dummy that I am, I manipulated a sheet and started off. It snapped just past the chickens. Duh. Then I used my brain.

 

I cut them in place ending up with 4' and 5' lengths. This is how my insect brain works. It only took years! All those ceilings I did alone. It hurts just thinking about it.

 

 

Panic. I woke up on 9-11 of all days to a refrigerator no longer working. This is a serious crisis. Inside that freezer is a month's worth of frozen fish etc. Just as bad, they don't make this particular 4.3 cubic ft any longer. Why is that important? It has the largest freezer. Why only 4.3? Because I can carry it down to the shack and it doesn't take up a lot of room. It is the perfect size for one person living in a 12x12, doing one month runs to St Thomas. Anyway, I had maybe ten hours before everything would spoil. Here's hoping Home Depot had a replacement.

They did but with a smaller freezer. I wouldn't be in this mess if the full size refrig in the house had worked. Welcome to the rock. I did use the trip to pick up all the bits necessary to install the plumbing for the shower without which I can't close up the wall in the utility room. Silver linings.

the shower plumbing on the right

 

Mother's little helper. Why hadn't I thought about cutting the sheets sooner? With the screw gun below the work was actually enjoyable. I had dreaded laying out the utility room for a long time.

 



 



Almost there. The washer and dryer will be against the back wall with the hot water heater in the left corner. I used the left over gray rock from the bathroom rather than cut up new sheets. Tapping and mudding is easier not to mention this fiberglass rock I brought from Florida in 2007 was $12 a sheet. Here on island the smaller 4x8 sheets are $56. Meanwhile I now have the pump and the hot water heater. I'll have to get the bladder in SF and ship it. The pricing here relative to my budget is way to expensive.

In shipping news.....;~) This is just a sprinkling of what goes on here.

http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/cargo-ship-runs-aground-off-st-thomas-1.1718234

http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/v-i-s-2-new-ferries-finally-in-service-1.1715552

http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/boat-runs-aground-on-savana-island-dumping-debris-diesel-fuel-onto-reef-1.1809983

http://stthomassource.com/content/news/local-news/2014/11/24/coast-guard-rescues-six-boaters-st-john

http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/coast-guard-cutter-crashes-into-sinks-fishing-boat-1.1758919

When you hit the lottery I'll take this 1994 Hinckley...;~)





Round two. The T-Rex marina proposal--this one driven by the corporate peeps that run the Moravian Church empire. Why go small when you can go ginormous. Summer's End Group has 146 slips with long term plans to develop the hillsides with multi million dollar condos and endless gated communities. T-Rex took up the challenge. While they only envision 96 slips theirs includes a hotel, Embassy Suites type, a complete marina repair, power plant, water treatment plant and a whole host of other developments that are focused, like SEG, in driving out the current 500 residents from their homes. If your lower house price from living in a ten year construction zone don't kill you the noise will.

Not shown...their marina literally overlays the northern part of SEG's at the bottom of the picture.

 

Imagine if everything you see in the picture above, to the left and front and center, going almost across the entire bay was covered with gangways and slips. Not only do they say it with a straight face they say it will be good for the community and the eco system.

Supposedly how it will look from the church we are sitting in.



Just prior to this town hall the Coastal Zone Management committee approved without comment SEG's marina plans. Of the two members who were allowed to vote, one said in passing that he hoped, with fingers and toes crossed, that this would work and the other moron said he envisions Coral Bay becoming the largest commercial harbor in the Caribbean. This on an island of 4,000 residents. They further made claims that they read every one of the 12,000 letters in opposition from individuals and every government agency. This is the stupidity we have to deal with. Corruption is as corruption does.

seven freeloaders at the trough...





With about a month left to go before I return to SF I jumped over to St Thomas to replace all the plaster that got ruined in the prior flood. Afterwards I spent my time plastering the utility room and the walls under the porch with Durabond 90. All the concrete walls, house and retaining, are really very, very rough. When they were done they weren't vibrated. Combined with the cold seams and all manner of imperfections three coats were necessary.

 

Coming together. It's all going to be tight though!





Of course midway through I had to drop everything for a few days as hurricane Gonzalo decided to pay us a visit. Here's a series of pictures that held everyone's attention while it is happening.

 

 

 

When he first appeared he was south of us. Not the best place but far enough away that the damage might be limited to monster rains. This was on October 9th.

 

Not good. He is turning north. St Croix is under the US Virgin Islands printing on the map. They have to be worried. At least it is still south. 

 



In a further move north over night, St Croix is projected to be hit by the eye. Not a good thing. Even a Cat 1 causes damage. Lost electricity chief among them.

 

 

In dramatic fashion Gonzalo continues making a hard turn. Now he is projected to miss us. However it is the worse position, short of a direct hit, for Coral Bay. All boats that could leave are long gone.

 

 



 

And finally he passed to the north of Tortola. We were spared any real damage except for some serious rain.

 

 

Ten inches over the four days from Gonzalo. I'm getting really good at hurricane proofing the house and shack. When it rains this hard the back wall of the shacks cries and floods the floor. And yes the roof leaks a bit here and there but not over the bed so I have never dealt with it. haha. On a serious note I did find that the grout on the upper porch in a few spots was not doing its job. Drip, drip underneath, downstairs. When it finally stopped raining I dug out all the old grout and redid it all. You know the house has taken too long when you are already doing maintenance and the house isn't finished.

the back wall seeping

Overall a pretty quiet season.

 



With all the ruckus we have raised against the marinas we are now considered an important player in community relations. In a tight race the future Governor found time to hold a town hall with about 20 of us just prior to the election. We pinned him down to not being happy about the sizes suggested. I filmed it all. Short versions of which made the rounds. Like a true politician he left open the idea that smaller would be better. He doesn't realize we want no size. The goal remains as it is...all boats on moorings. End of story. We are a bedroom community based on eco tourism with over 300 million invested. You and yours do not come in, no matter what the pretense, and steal our investment. We built the community from scratch. The government and other anointed folks had nothing to do with it. All the roads were privately built except one--and that was built by the Army.


 



 

 

With that another year closes on an unfinished project. Who's idea was this anyway?! I'm so ready for the holidays.



The turtle plods on

 

 

The turtle returned to a shack in good shape. The sink made it without a dent and the truck started

right up. Wilson was a little upset traveling in steerage but he likes his new digs.

 

 



As usual, to ease back into work mode, I started with something left unfinished when I left for SF. The lower bathroom floor. This is how it last looked. Reasonably level, given the circumstances on how I had to lay each stone individually, and the color was what we hoped for--basically off white.

 

 



In a break for the good guys I finished the floor with six, count them, six stones left over. I don't want to even think about it had I come up short. Next step was grout. Jumped over to St Thomas for a few bags, food, and a  muffler. Second muffler since I have been here. They told me the cheap one would last four or five years and it did. Went and got another!

It's good I always worried about getting busted on a humbug, that way I didn't. I don't know why I have gotten lazy. The floor jumped up and bit me on the arse of course. How? While sitting outside for years in the sun and rain the stones remained impervious to everything including the thinset. But not the grout. Our beautiful floor changed from a creamy white that would virtually go with every décor  into a mélange of many colors. Worse still I had no matching stones for the shower.

 

The picture doesn't do the color change any justice. The stone tiles from Home Depot will no longer work. Too much gray. A tighter stone pattern would be great for the shower but the samples looked really bad against what is now a tan/brownish floor.

 

we had hopes that these would work in the shower

 

Well, I'll have to put the rest of the floor on hold. I checked everywhere on St Thomas and there are no alternatives at the moment. I'll wait until something turns up. If not, back to Berkeley at xmas.

 

Tis' the season...our first, no rest for the wicked. Only 10 days after I got back. Hurricane drill for house and shack, waiting to the last moment of course.

 

 

Lots of rain and then the unexpected the following morning. If you are one of the few that has read this blog it is a legitimate question, as Sartre asked, "why haven't I killed myself by now?"  It seems that when we installed all our pass through pipes in the cistern walls for our plumbing and the overflow outlet pipe, the interior pipes to the pump were about 1/4" lower. In the real world no big deal. The interior pipes would be going to the pump when the utility room was completed. The problem never faced before---the cisterns filled up before the pipes were connected. Never has 1/4" meant so much.

 

The fatal flaw...first it flooded the unfinished utility room. Then it migrated through the fiberglass sheet rocked stud wall into the closet free flowing into the bedroom. On the positive side I had most everything critical up on strips of wood so some damage was mitigated.



 

 The flood coming out of the closet. By the time I saw it in the morning the rain had stopped.

 

The slight slope built into the floors saved the day keeping the high water mark to less than 1". The 8' doors suffered no noticeable damage as the water passed under. The real pain, I had to clean out the entire downstairs. All the plaster and concrete went bad along with all the cardboard boxes holding everything. Later on a lot of  the sheetrock screws showed. Welcome to paradise.





 

 

My feral cat free loaders had no sympathy. You can look but not touch. An uncle with two nephews.

 



 

With downstairs drying out and no stones to finish the bathroom/shower floor I went back upstairs to work on the kitchen counters.

When last visited.

 





We tried every possible combination of tiles. With six being totally different than the rest, color and pattern, it presented some real difficulties. Ultimately we decided on one group on the sink side and only two of the six on the stove side. We would have to come up with a backsplash behind the stove. Options included stainless steel. There was a fabricator on St Thomas and the prices were very reasonable.

 

But that's for another day.

 

I used two of six tiles to make the bullnose. The difference in pattern won't show. Nothing goes to waste especially when there are no other alternatives.

It's coming together. A lot of different whites have to merge. Under that blue is a high gloss white.

 

I don't want to tell you how many times I moved that range hood. It's embarrassing. And lets not forget the refrig that never worked. That has to stay until the driveway is done and the stairs down are finished. Where's my gun...;~)





 

A possible nightmare begins, always innocently. As happenstance would have it on a cab ride to the airport last July in route to SF, I sat next to guy around my age. We got to talking, my living on St John, his being here on business, blah, blah, blah. Nine passenger van with a couple of guys of front. Anyway it got around to sailing back in the day--the mid 70's with everyone up to no good, Jamaica and the like. Fast forward, he says he ended up in the marina business and that's why he had been on St John, specifically Coral Bay. I laughed about the fabled "marina", a long whispered affair, 30 years long. He laughed along and then leaned in surmising a supporter and said it was a "done deal" all the way to D.C. through all the appropriate channels via the Governor's office. As we departed I wished him all the luck as I to was in favor of a small marina for locals and transient sailors alike--nothing like a hot shower after a long transit. They help make the world go round.

When I got to SF, I made some phone calls to see if this person actually existed. He did in deed. I left it at that and figured we might have a slip if we ever get a putt putt.  In very fast fashion stories started to appear about a new marina.

http://newsofstjohn.com/2014/07/22/happening-marina-coming-coral-bay/

No worries it might even be a good thing. Then we got a look at some drawings. This wasn't a small cozy marina, this was a mega marina that was going to take up the entire bay for "super" yachts.

If that wasn't enough there was yet another on the north side which overlapped this one. The one shown was called Summers End Group and the other T-Rex. I kid you not. Suffice is to say all my free time is being spent trying to put a stop to this madness. Thankfully I'm just one of many, otherwise I would be buried in a piling. In an all hands on deck moment we have started a FB page, crafted a web site and started a Go Fund Me page. The Daily News on St Thomas is printing our letters as editorials. My letter was the first published. Very disconcerting to be honest. I don't like popping up on radar especially in this neck of the woods.

Without boring you too much, this will be take many years.

Here's what a hearing looks like on St John. Summers End Group makes their pitch at the first Coastal Zone Management committee. We flooded the meeting. Here's the chief perps making their case to a bought membership. They shall go unnamed. I don't need any searches pinging back here.

.
Ex Senator, very well connected, another is a grifter and his wife, who I first thought was his daughter, and lastly the guy I rode in the cab with. I think the grifter and his wife were hired strictly to take the heat in the community while the principals could hide. Another not shown actually sits on the CZM committee, a five person body that only has three members with one recused. The two remaining will profit from the marina. Governing, island style.

Like everything else there had to be some personal drama. I sat in the back row, from where these pics are from, of the assembly building owned by the ex-senator in question. Thank god that's where I sat. Unbeknownst to me until early the next morning my wallet slid out of my back pocket (long pants were the recommended attire in the Assembly hall) and fell on the floor against the wall--there was a space between the seat and back like some church pews. At least that was my hope or I had been picked in the tight crowd waiting to enter. All night I freaked out. My world was in that wallet. It is the same feeling if you ever lost yours travelling in a foreign country. I drove to the hall at the crack of dawn and explained my plight to the desk clerk. She agreed to accompany me into the assembly hall. Praise the lord, there was my wallet found before the cleaners came in. Perhaps the contents would have been turned in but I suspect the crocodile part would have disappeared!

I admit over the next couple of weeks home building was pushed to the back burner consumed by meetings, texts, emails etc. If this marina goes through paradise will be ruined. I'll move. There is no way I can live through a ten year construction phase with 1300+ pilings being driven into the seabed. One road in filled with an endless number of construction vehicles, strip malls and the like. Buh bye...