1960's
The traffic nightmare keeps getting worse. Stateside peeps think rush hour. Here, we think how many barges are running. Four is perfection, three is doable, two is hellish, and one is not even conceivable, yet here we are.
The minor miracle is getting my concrete pour on June 13. Rarely am I that lucky. I'm still not going to escape this current snafu. Besides making monthly trips to St Thomas for major foodstuffs/Home Depot/Kmart, I make use of MSI for most of my building materials delivered once a week to their yard on St John. The delivery charge is 10% of the total bill. I can't say enough about Keith who runs the operation. The bulk of my purchases are rebar and lumber.
The savings and convenience can't be matched. Furthermore, I don't have to traverse St Thomas with my truck loaded down. Better still, the yard is always open so I can pick everything up on my time, making multiple trips if need be. Not only is it always open, there's no one there. Think about that. It's all on an honor system. It's a beautiful thing. Todd's lumber yard in Coral Bay is the same. Imagine pulling into a lumber yard after hours, loading up your truck, filling out a slip and dropping it into a box, receiving an email confirm, and paying him the next time you see him.
Once you get used to this, there's no going back.
ZoZo's restaurant new location at Caneel.
A buddy, Greg, who came down from SF with his children to go sailing out of Tortola. Damn, this job is giving me gray hair. They came down with enough people to make a flotilla. I forget how many rental yachts they had. They usually do Hawaii. I told him he was nuts doing a red-eye etc to come all this way for a week. He jumped over to Caneel for several days at the end of the sailing. I gave him the quickie tour. He saw the shack! He's another stock jockey.
Some more of the ruins at Caneel Bay.
First things first. We finished the roof and sided the outhouse. I still had a roll of Tyvek left over from the house. What a surprise. It makes a great temporary cover on the roof. Much more durable than tarps and it seems like it will last longer than peel and stick while it stays exposed. With so many other things to do, I have no idea when I will get around to putting a final roof on. Unlike construction stateside the treated plywood can go a long time with nothing on it. The Tyvek makes it especially durable. Ryan put it up in a heartbeat. I wish I had figured this out earlier.
The Smart siding had been stored under the shack. Another product that is very stout showing no ill effects from having sat for almost ten years. As advertised, it proved to be termite proof. They try but the borax treatment puts a stop to it.
A grim reality, goats falling prey to semi-domesticated dogs that get blood lust. They just kill, they don't eat. This was just one of twenty that littered the mountainside. They were Rupert's goats. He asked me to drag them off the road and toss them down the hillside. Weeks later, I saw two of the dogs involved. We were sitting on the porch when the wild goat herd, that I have previously posted pics of, ran by at full speed on both sides of the house. WTF. They usually eat their way past our place taking a few hours with a little lounge time on the patios. About ten minutes later, two very large pit mixes came through stopping right below the porch. Drenched, tongues hanging out, panting and wild-eyed. They ignored my screaming and throwing things at them. We even got nervous and jumped up and closed the upper patio doors. After running around frantically they picked up the trail and took off again. Thirty minutes later they returned and repeated the search. It seems the wild goats gave them the slip. A few weeks later I spotted where one of the dogs lived and notified Rupert. He already knew.
Every commute has its traffic report, accidents and the like. These pics are ours.
On the bottom
Sea Tow saves the day, every day.
And from our ever entertaining local news we have this:
https://stjohnsource.com/2016/07/22/hacker-invades-delegate-stacey-plasketts-privacy/
https://stjohnsource.com/2016/07/22/hacker-invades-delegate-stacey-plasketts-privacy/
Now the hard work begins. The stairs. Will my made up plans work?
The upper stairs take shape. It seems I always start with the easiest job first. Having the wall of the storeroom as our guide definitely makes these steps easier than the lower still to come. We literally drew the rise and thread on the wall with a magic marker to scope out the stairs all the way to the top. I made the steps 56" wide, nothing to do with Roman chariots, but I had the pre cut boards above from the steps I poured years before on the side of the house. All treated lumber so they can withstand being up for a long time if need be.
Next, build the retaining wall and put the risers in. The almost completed wall without all the support 2x4's inserted. The steps are literally pinning the wall to the hillside. I have no intention of removing the backside plywood. It will rot in place and later backfill itself over time. The final step is cutting out the step pattern on the wall with a Sawzall allowing the concrete to flow filling up the forms and installed rebar. This is how I did the others. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Other than this I have no idea how it is actually done. This can be done by one person if need be. Not fun but it can be done.
The infamous ramp relocated once again.
The dreaded lower steps. I have been putting this off as long as possible. So many costly things can go wrong. Forget the actual monetary cost, it is also the back-breaking labor and the time. Not to mention all the time, agonizing for months thinking about it. I kid you not, I woke up in the middle of the night on many occasions with the same loop running through my subconscious mind. How to start, where to start? Can this be done this way?
In addition, the beginnings of the wall that Thor and I had started, as shown above, had been bugging me for several months. When we did the excavation my "art" was off by several inches not evident at the time. If you look closely at the picture above you can see that the constructed forms are not parallel to the existing retaining wall. What's happening is some blue bitch rock is pinching the future wall inwards such that everytime I walked the ramp I see it. Worse still, the future landing would not be "square" and will be noticeable as you walk down the future stairs. Furthermore, the wall would have to bend back out to get to its original shape. I was not a happy camper. What to do?
To Ryan's chagrin, I decided to tear it down. He thought I was nuts. Was I overworking the masterpiece? Haha. I did have some second thoughts but I knew the bad angle would bug me to the end of my days. I also knew a few days work would solve it if I could come up with a solution. How to get around the rock, square the landing, and not lose too much stair width, etc?
Looks simple on paper but it took me the better part of the evening to draw it out. I got back some of the lost stair width by incorporating the procedure I used on the upper steps. The difference now was I was very nervous. The upper wall was only four feet high vs eight now. The pressure on the bottom of the wall was going to be a lot larger on a back side wall with no 2x4's for support. The mono pour helps however as there is pressure relief to the other side as the concrete oozes out to fill up the stairs and landing. At least that's what I keep telling myself. This should work.
The new wall takes shape. You can see cut out steps on an old piece of plywood I tried using as a template. It didn't work.
Above, the wall is pressed up against the hillside. Typically when you form up walls you need at least two feet of clearance to move about and install supports etc. Actually, by code, you need a whole lot more than that plus it has to be sloped in case there is a cave in. I don't expect anyone to remember but I had one when we were forming up the downstairs of the house. It took me almost five weeks to dig out the mud by hand walking each shovel fill almost the length of the house.
Who says you can't curve 3/4" plywood? ;~) I had no idea until we did it. The wall is bending around the rock that we couldn't break up with our commercial jackhammer.
The lower wall meets the upper. If everything scopes out there will be a landing where the cement blocks are. We won't know until we draw the steps on the wall and find out what we have.
The wall is basically done waiting for 2x4's. Everything has to be tarped. The rains are causing mini mudslides entailing tedious shovel work and pain in the ass slipping and sliding. The tarps have helped.
Miracle of miracles. I didn't get the 12" tread I wanted but the landings and step count were perfect with a little curve thrown in.
August 15, no turning back now! Bad news. With the barge situation and subsequent job backups, I'm told at least a month depending on the barges.
The last steps to the patio. The dirt line on the walls was caused by the earth we threw there when Thor dug out the future landing. Because of the distance to the front door columns, I am limited to the number of steps off the patio. Believe it or not that relationship played into all the steps up to the storeroom. The height and size of the landing determined all the steps to come.
While Ryan was out partying for a couple of days, he has a girlfriend now, I removed all the fill separating the rock from the dirt. I used the rock to backfill the retaining wall giving it, and my brain, some comfort. There is no way we could suffer a blowout against the hillside now.
They look rectangular at first glance but they are curved at the corner.
I still can't believe we pulled it off. I still have to put in all the rebar for the steps joining them to the wall. The steps act as the wall's footings all locked into the existing retaining walls. It will take a major earthquake to damage this. Never say never but this is as close as I think you can get. I have seen work done the standard way that gets jumbled with some stiff tremblors. Who hasn't seen leaning walls and separated and cracked joints on steps?
My goal is to have all this work last well over one hundred years.Two hundred sounds nice, new ruins! I'm hoping the effort to tear it down will be so expensive no one would think to do it. Haha. How nuts am I? I plan on publishing this blog in hard copy so that it goes with the property. I have always wished there was a similar record of everywhere I have lived. I love history, no matter how trivial. Spock's mind meld would be a power I would want. Put my hand on a wall and see and feel everyone that has lived there. At my age, I'm not kidding myself. Someone other than me is going to live in this house longer than us. If they don't appreciate this blog, fuck'em. Maybe the owner after them will! It's dedicated to that person(s). Meanwhile, I have a personal record as I lose my memory---which has already happened! ;~)
On a sad note. Frank Quan has passed.
http://www.marinij.com/article/NO/20160819/NEWS/160819805
For more than fifteen years this was our go to beach, even after we moved into the city. It was also a great winter beach. Temps at the very end of the rocks could reach the high 60's, low 70's.
If you were lucky they would be open. Of course, they served bay shrimp! With a small museum, a couple of shipwrecks, and a view to die for it is everything you could ask for. He got to live his whole life on that beach.
It doesn't get any better than this. Thank you, Mr. Quan.
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