Odds and ends

The mouth of a Parrot fish! The Joker.

With the monster pour behind me, the forms all taken down and stored, the skies opened up and the rains came. This ended what had been a very dry spell. Great for work but bad for every cistern. The water trucks have a field day making deliveries to all the folks that ran out of water. Locals usually don't run out of water but rental villas do. Visitors bring their usage rates with them. The average islander uses maybe 20% of what passes for normal water usage stateside. When the rains come, for which there is no schedule, everything blooms. The rain forest turns green right before your eyes over three or four days. It has to be seen to be believed. Francis Bay
A Flamboyant tree blooms.

As luck would have it, the property is sprinkled with wild jasmine trees and a few others I don't know about. The bloom lasts maybe a couple of weeks. But oh la la, the fragrance. When the construction finally ends we can then get to the landscaping and have some influence over the current randomness of the rain and what blooms. Many have told me I should have started right away with this, but the truth is, I had no idea where anything was going to go. Had I, it would have been run over by now. Build your house then plant your garden etc and in two years it will look like it has been there for twenty years. Anyone in Florida knows what I'm talking about.
Signs and symbols!

Long story short--Cost U Less on St Thomas has a relationship with Costco back in California--San Francisco/Oakland to be exact. There is actually a Cost U Less up in the Gold country in California near Yosemite. I mean, what are the chances that you move almost 4,000 miles away, land on a 21 square mile island in the middle of the sea and the coffee/bread/cheese etc you have been eating for thirty years shows up within two years.

They carry several of the most popular bakeries from San Francisco including La Brea from L.A. Incidentally a three pound bag of this coffee only costs $2 more. The world is definitely getting smaller. If you want the organic they have that too.
Leinster Bay ruins. An old guard house.

OK, back to work. With the hurricane season, July-November, fast approaching I figured I would first get back to finishing all the tile work. Lay the porch, bathroom and then grout everything. The porch was the most important. While it was covered with a waterproof membrane, Stratoflex for the curious, it was not glued down. Early on I had taken some damaged rolls out of the container and put it down on the deck to protect the sub floor. Not smart. Water still found a way in and I had to take up the top layer and replace it. Not a lot of work but a pain in the ass. It was this water that made it imperative that the tile be laid and grouted before any wind driven rain arrived.

In laying out the tile the pattern the measurements worked perfect-no cuts aside from the threshold separating the living room from the porch. As a result my last row of tile, a full row, was at the edge of the porch. I mean how lucky could I get? Or so I thought.

Hmmm. Why is this perimeter row around the porch not sloping right? The subfloor was perfectly level, sloping one inch over eight feet. And yet it seemed that the last row was not as sloped. WTF.

The real bad news? I did not see this until it was too late. I was sitting in an Adirondack chair looking at something else I screwed up. Not all the travertine tiles were the same thickness and I had some problems with my thinset. You know, I mixed it with measuring buckets and I still screwed it up somehow. Basically I would lay about 50-70 suare feet and be done for the day. Next morning I came in and what had been level was now slightly uneven in a few places/corners. Not everywhere but enough to bug me. Stateside I would just rent a grinder and level the whole floor as they do during a remodel-billard table level with a new honed finish. What happened even happens to professionals sometimes, so living with it on St John won't be so bad.

Denise forgave me. Who knows, someday they may have grinders here and I'll put it on my honey do list.

But back to the real problem--the slope change on the last row of tile allowed water to puddle. Plus, once I saw it, I could not, not see it even when there was no water. I tried to live with it for a couple of weeks but couldn't. Out came the sledge and the meticulous work of only breaking the edge tiles and not the adjoining ones. It took a long time. So long in fact that the 26' long run is still there waiting to see it the gutters and trim work, still to come, prevent the water from accumulating.

After busting out all the tiles I still could not figure out why the sub floor was out. Steel is steel. Every joist is exactly the same. Screw down your sub floor, cement the earthquake waterproofing membrane and be done with it. Lay tile. But somehow I'm a 1/8- 3/16" high on the outer edge--just enough to puddle water. With that I cut out the top sheet of plywood and replaced it with a 1/4" thinner sheet. I got my 1/4 back but where did it go in the first place?
The culprit. The angled pieces of 14 gauge galvanized steel(laying on the ground in the pic above) that I used to sheath my red iron connecting rafters and studs. Among a host of reasons it gave me a screw surface for my siding and roofing panels. In the picture below you can see it more clearly on the roof on the hips and also where the wall meets the roof--the silver banding so to speak.
I used this fabricated galvanized because they would not let me drill holes in the red iron beams and attach 2x10 boards as they do in California. You just bolt the boards inside the I-beams and you have your screw edge. Tying the rafters and studs together with weldable steel did give it a Fort Knox feel however. It also gave me the problem on the porch.

When I put up the 20' columns I added a one inch slope to the porch--not in the original plans.
The 20' red iron columns and the porch in question.

This new slope presented a minor roof line issue but the real problem was in the 90 degree angle that I had prefabricated into the sheet metal. The new angle where the porch joists met the red iron beams was now greater than 90 degrees and the sheet did not lay perfectly flat. You can't re bend the angle however. Anyway you could not see it or so I thought. I mean what's 1/8-3/16's amongst friends? The slight uplift translated through the plywood sub floor and finally showed up under the last tile. I know, I'm being annal but the whole idea was not to have water puddle on the last row of tile after every rain. The thought of having to possibly take out the last row is not something I'm looking forward to.
The infamous Lionfish. An invasive species from the Pacific that escaped private aquariums in Florida during a hurricane in the early 90's. They are taking over until a natural enemy emerges.

After finishing the tiling I spent a week or more grouting everything. With easy access to clean water being a problem I used her approach to grouting.

Just the lines ma'am, just the lines....cleaning as you go. It made clean up and rinsing the floor so much easier.
St. John's nearly one month excuse to party. Starts in June and ends after July 4.

The New York Dolls lead singer David Johanson aka Buster Poindexter says it best.

In keeping with a long tradition that I documented in previous posts, a yacht/ferry from St Croix ran up on the rocks the night of the fire works. They thought they knew a short cut. You are allowed to drink and drive here but I don't know about boating!
She sat aground for over a month until a ocean going barge/crane could come down from New York of all places.I guess the blow up cruise ship in the kiddie park might have been a tip off of things to come.

Something I ate? No. This toilet spent several years inside a termite nest!

I dug it out when Denise told me she was coming back in mid July. It seems American airlines was basically giving away a free flight if you signed up for their MasterCard. With that news I stopped whatever I was doing and finished the septic. Poured the lids, installed the interior pipes and laid the waste pipe from the house. I made the connection from the house temporary. I was in no mood to dig about a 30' trench, at a starting dept of 3', on short notice. I need warning for something like that. That's a whole lot more cardio than I want at any given time! As it was, the temporary set up was pain enough on its own.
Waiting for daddy....

Despite the posters, it is not always sunny.

Two weeks fly by and Denise is gone. My mini vacation ends.

This is a mock up for how I may build my railings on the porch. Copper tubing, 1/2". I'll put a vertical support divider in the middle of each run with the standard 2x6 cap ledge. Basically 1x4's with holes drilled 4" on center. Slide them into place and screw the end boards home. I can knock out the entire porch in one day. Besides being economical, easy assembly and upkeep, code fulfilling, it's the patina on the copper that I'm really after!

The time is flying by. By the end of July it was time for my semi annual pilgrimage back to San Francisco. To use my mileage with United I had to fly on US Airways. Of course there are no seats available-ever-except for first class, nicking me for 60k miles. First class on US Airways is a joke. No movies or music. I was surprised they had food. The seats don't recline more than coach. Sure they were a little larger but a much better deal is coach with an empty seat next to you.
Flying over Eleuthera and Long Island in the Bahama chain. Satellite photos. Of course it does not look like this from 35,000 feet but if the lighting is right the views are amazing. The underwater sand dunes look exactly like mountain ranges.

Ahh, back home in San Francisco! The latest fashions.

Showing at the DeYoung--different spelling but the same pronunciation as the Governor of the Virgin Islands. Who knew! In a further coincidence he was in Detroit going to high school while I was at U of Detroit. We talked about it at the fireworks one year. That's the Twilight soundtrack you are hearing n the background!

The usual suspects. Museums, movies, burning cd's for the truck, adding to the ipod and mailing supplies back to St John. This time, strap hinges and the like for the shutters I will be making. Yes, it is cheaper to buy and ship but the real issue is availability. While you can get most everything on St Thomas at a price, the waiting time can be impossible. My two trips a year back to SF has solved most of these issues. I can't say enough about Priority shipping with the Post Office. Extremely affordable and the email tracking service is excellent. Five to ten days and all the packages show up.

And in a first, a car repair. The 20 year old Lexus coupe finally needed a repair. There was a leak in the gasket behind the water pump. I mention this because they gave us a brand new Tacoma pickup to drive for a couple of days. Did they know I have a 1998 that had been in a head on a year after arriving on St John?
Now I ask you, what are the chances that you ship your truck 4000 miles only to have a "local" driving on the wrong side of the road crash head on into you with his vehicle plastered with stickers that say "Keep Tahoe blue" among others. When he comes to, he says his name is "Tahoe Dave". Don't stop the carnival.
And over at the Legion of Honor....



The Unseen Sea. Full screen, speakers on.

Down to Stanford University for the womens finals of the Bank of the West tourney. Serena Williams in her first competition since her injury and almost one year layoff. She won.

Great seats are always available.

Baby's got back!
The MOMA will be home to the 1100 piece Fisher collection. The collection is so large they are going to build a wing larger than the original museum to house it. San Francisco almost found a way to lose the collection. The Fisher's, on their own dime, wanted to build a museum in the Presidio. Local opposition prevented it. Talk about biting the hand.

Also on exhibit at the time
http://www.sfmoma.org/exhib_events/exhibitions/410 The Steins Collect, Gertrude and family.

We are getting close enough with the house on St John that we are stealing colors! This house is around the corner from us in San Francisco. We could not get it right so we will be knocking on their door. There's no guarantee they will give it to us. If they had a colorist pick the color we are probably not getting it.
I wonder how my feral kiddies are doing? They do know how to get by.

F-I-N-A-L-L-Y

No surprises, the septic truck was still there. Now they promise to remove it by the weekend. The concrete folks, Heavy Materials, told me after these constant delays don't call until the truck is moved. It has been a month now. Don't stop the carnival!

I'm not sure how they did it but on returning one afternoon the truck was now sitting along side the road out of the cul de sac. From the frying pan to the fire. As luck would have it, they moved the truck so that it impeded some planned road work to the top of the mountain. The road crew wasted no time with this obstruction. Track hoe meet septic truck! They dragged it and pushed it off the road. Hey, that works for me. Now when the road crew is done the concrete trucks can get by the truck. What's another week or so after all these years! I'm learning to chill.

Oh my god, the pump and concrete trucks finally mate! Very expensive.

Despite his scowl from laying 200' of pipe he's really a nice guy! However, he did screw up later, big time. As I mentioned many times before, the pictures do not do justice to the steepness of this temporary driveway. The grueling part, after already being exhausted, carrying the 10' pieces of very heavy pipe back up to the pump truck when the pour is finished.

In an extreme bit of luck, Thor flew back to St John to crew on a sailboat delivery back to Maine for the summer season. With fingers crossed, I scheduled the pour for the free day that he had. Now Jeff the pumper, barges, the concrete company and the weather had to all cooperate to make it happen.

Psychologically I need Thor, or someone like him, for concrete work. Every pour has its moments of intense labor, very intense labor. The fact that I complicate things with suspended walls etc, making one contiguous pour increases the odds of something going wrong. This pour is ripe for calamity. Should there be a blowout, I have had one, the blow out itself could be the least of your problems. Sure the wall is blown out but that steaming pile of concrete is an even bigger problem. Left alone you have a gigantic mound that has to be later removed with jack hammers. You do not want to do jack hammer work. Thor solves that problem. While I'm good for fifteen minutes of shoveling such a pile, he's good for the whole thing. The only drawback, the other crew I hire via Jeff see this too. When minor things go wrong they just watch Thor/myself, such that I have to yell at them!

After a couple of hours of laying all the pipe and figuring out the sequence of the pour we wait for the first truck to arrive. We wait and wait. Calls are made with tempers rising. Jeff is pissed and I'm having my usual cardiac arrest. You would think after so many pours I would be relaxed about this. I'm not. I want the pours so bad I freak myself out. Here we are, all set up after constant multi year long delays/snafus and the trucks are not here. If it rains, even for ten minutes, they won't be able to make it up and down the driveway, much less the mountain. Even now, writing, it still stresses me out.

Adding to the confusion, we can't understand where the trucks are. The dispatcher on St Thomas says they left and boarded the barge a couple of hours ago. Furthermore, the drivers know exactly where I am. They are the same drivers that did the road work when they pushed the septic truck out of the way. Everyone is telling me to chill, meanwhile, I'm in the beginnings of an anxiety attack. I'm not kidding. On a positive note, I don't pay Jeff's crew until concrete is actually coming out the end of the pipe so their sleeping now doesn't bother me. Who says I have not learned a thing!

Finally, after what seems forever, we make phone contact with the trucks. They have been sitting down in Coral Bay in a cellular dead spot. Don't stop the carnival! Not only that, they are all carrying nine yards so they can't make it up the mountain. Somehow, in switching dispatchers they went down to Coral Bay instead of coming over the mountain via the new road they had just poured a week ago. You can't make this up.

With that, I jump into my truck and race down the mountain to lead them all the way back up Centerline to have them come over the top via the road at Chateau Bordeaux restaurant. This is the way we thought they were coming to begin with. Over an hour wasted with concrete setting in the trucks.
This is the view from the restaurant. Way down at the bottom sat four concrete trucks-trucks that did not have to go there. That line on the left is Centerline snaking down into Coral Bay.

The pour hasn't even started and I'm frazzled. I'm starting to think I'm too old for this sh*t. And here I thought we were pissed off. When the trucks finally got to the site one driver in particular went ballistic. He attempted to blame Jeff for the screw up instead of the dispatcher. The drivers also have their own schedules for delivery, making more than one. Plus, they definitely do not like driving around with nine yards in the truck, especially over the road they just traversed. They think Jeff recommended the nine yards. Now their day is screwed up. It went back and forth until I jumped in and told the driver, making it very f'king clear, that the dispatcher and maybe even himself were to blame. It was in his notes that the pour location was at the end of the new road they had just poured the week before. What, you already forgot where the road was? And the notes state five trucks, not four! Seven yards a truck. He backed his truck into the pumper and work commenced.
As usual I have no pictures of the pour itself, no time. These are the aftermath. The corner of the upper patio.
Splatter central.
No, I did not fall in the concrete.

The stairs down with the septic in the background.

As the pour progressed Jeff thought I had ordered too much concrete. Great, just what I needed to hear, 4 to 5 yards wasted at $260 a yard. Hour after hour the pour went on. Pouring footings, slabs, stairs, patios, walls etc, at the same time makes for a very complicated back and forth, breaking down the pipe and putting it back together again. Jeff said in 22 years he had never done this much before. Never. We had just enough crew. Thor and I did most of the screeding on the walls and steps. Jeff and a helper did his best on the lower slab and later the upper patio while the rest of his crew broke down and assembled the pipe.

I don't know how he does it. It's a Virgo thing. He finishes with a spot or two while I look like I fell in the concrete.

The one foot wide boardwalk that I built, under the red bucket, did its job. When we poured the footings/bottom of the walls the concrete flowed out and did not build up swamping the forms. I had that problem when I poured the lower cistern years before. Digging out the forms took forever. This time the concrete took care of itself. What a relief. To me this is all experimental. I think it through and build it. Will it work? I have no idea. All I know is if it does, the work saved will be worth it.

The mid point of the entire job was the 2" we poured on top of the lower slab. Here we had our only crisis. After reconstituting the pipe and putting another concrete truck in the stirrup of the pumper truck, you have to bleed the pipe so to speak. Putting new extensions on the existing pipe/changing trucks, sometimes pressure builds up, such that you have to be mindful of where the end of the pipe is pointing when the signal is given to start pumping. Well the pressure had built up and Jeff's man was not being mindful. A cannonball of concrete shot out of the pipe and hit Jeff in the side of the head.

It was not pretty. Jeff got laid out. The sound alone of the explosion freaked everyone out. Then in the confusion concrete was going everywhere with the pipe doing it's own thing. Wow. Making matters worse, having sat in the trucks so long, the concrete was already very, very stiff. It was all we could do to screed it. We had to stop the pour while we ran for water to clean out Jeff's ear, eye socket and upper shoulder and head. Jeff was not the same the rest of the day. In a bit of comedy later in the day I drank the water Thor brought from the shack. It was bleach water! Almost as bad as the time I drank windshield wiper fluid. Oh yeah, livin' the life.

While Jeff tried his best to screed the lower slab, the pipe was broken down and the wall going back up the stairs was finished. Basically you pour the footings, some of the wall and steps as you go down letting them set up for about 30 minutes or so. Then on the return they can handle the pressure from the rest of the pour without blowing out as you fill up the walls etc. The walls took care of themselves while Thor and I finished the steps. The concrete was so stiff we could walk on it within 20 minutes. When necessary we pumped and sprayed swamp water from the splash pool/jacuzzi to help.

Finishing the walls off after the footings have set.

Despite the hectic nature of the work you do get breaks from the tension when an empty concrete truck pulls out of the pumper. It can be as much as twenty minutes. You can get a lot of cleaning and screeding done during these breaks. On this job we probably filled 15 five gallon buckets from the waste piles that result from breaking down the pipe. We used it to top off all the walls and fill in the steps.

The upper walls are finally completed. In this picture the larger wall in the foreground sat unfinished for a couple of years when rain interrupted a pour and darkness set in.

So far so good, excepting Jeff's accident. Now we all worked on the patio, trying our best to screed very stiff concrete. Let's put it this way--it is not tile ready as they say. When I drive around and see other work I only can dream about it. I'm going to find out if that self leveling mix works! An expert tiler could probably make short work of it with his thinset. I'm not an expert but I am the tiler.

The scary part. It was these walls where most of the rot and termite damage was located. A professional crew, being paid by some one else of course, would have torn them down and rebuilt them. As the payee, not me! To say they were of some concern goes without saying.

It was only fitting that they were the last to be poured being at the bottom of the driveway. It was hard to watch. The creaking sounds of the nearly three year old forms straining under the pressure was almost too much to bear! I had them start at a certain corner figuring if a wall blew I still might be able to get most of it done.

As you can see they all held. Only the far end of the run below did the wall sort of bend when one of the crew was hanging on it directing the concrete flow. I can hide that when I pour the finished driveway. How it stayed up I have no idea.
Thankfully, Jeff was wrong, the thirty five yards I ordered were spot on. In fact with using the waste piles the only left over was the standard amount remaining in the pumper truck. Eight hours later, during twilight, we were done. I don't think Jeff is ever coming back! For Thor and I it was a 10 hour day. I could barely make it to the shower. Jeff had to park his truck in Cruz Bay and take the passenger ferry. The car barge had already stopped running.

And there you have it--how to spend about 17k. Expensive to some but way less than contracting it out for 35k with multiple pours. Admittedly the work would be better. Larger crews and tile ready slabs, however not 18k better. Money I do not have to begin with.
They are back!

They always announce when they are around. Kind of makes it an even match. The chickens and cats are warned.
Here's what they are after. They work an area for several months before moving on..

This time around there were the parents and a flying chick. While two make a racket, one lies in silent wait and then boom. I have had them come down right over my head in making an attempt. Usually they are not successful. Everyday they make attempts.
That said, they got three adults and a teenager over the course of several days. In the one above they surgically removed all the vitals. Amazing.

This one they ate everything!
I pulled up in the truck when they were attacking her.

Some days are so clear.

Amateur above, professional below.
Previously I mentioned how dry the island was. Here's two photos taken from my truck that show the difference.

Full screen, speakers on...

Part of the crew hanging out.

Thor left a couple of days after the pour. Now the clean up and the removal of all the forms. The process reveals how well the pour went. Stiff concrete can look pretty ugly when the forms come off. Cold seams aside, honeycombs and voids are not unusual. To my complete surprise all the walls turned out great as evidenced in the pic above. The labor at this point is just grunt work. Take down 40 or so sheets of plywood and store them for the future. 15 or more sheets were at the end of the road, rotted and termite eaten. The rest I stored downstairs using the new steps of course. What a luxury. Patios and steps. The years I waited for this. Slipping and sliding in the mud are in the rear view mirror. I spent two days pinching myself, literally sighing, almost hyperventilating, realizing that this pour had actually, FINALLY taken place. Yes there are a couple more to come but they are not complicated, 100' pipe vs 200' and not essential to securing the perimeter from mud slides etc, as this and all the previous ones were. I can finally sleep at night.

Rather than carry the marginal ply down to storage I built another 16' extension to the ramp. I should have done this a couple of years ago. It's dry now but in the mud it makes a huge difference. That's some leftover 14 gauge galvanized steel flashing that I used to wrap the red iron. It later ended up causing an unforeseen problem on the porch.

There's always some forms that just don't want to come off.

After I dug out the old mud slide and removed the whalers to free up the ply, the remaining hillside caved in. Crazy, I know. But with treated ply at almost $50 a sheet, dig I must but not twice! When I was about to give up and get the skill saw to cut it in half I chanced upon my "come along". It worked. You do scratch your head when you realize you spent half the day getting one sheet free.
I found this guy drowning in the splash pool. Nothing I did worked. So I drained the swamp and put a couple of 2x4's in making a ramp. Dumb as these guys are he figured it out.
Now, back to tiling, grouting and skim coating the interior walls.