The scary part

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. 

http://newsofstjohn.com/2016/07/07/current-car-barge-situation-horrible/

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

https://www.facebook.com/pg/SeaTowVirginIslands/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1276744255688221

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/

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.

To get around this problem I decided to use the approach above. I already had the Monowi whalers shown above on the left. I'm not sure if it would work on what I wanted to do but I had no choice. The forms would be left to rot in place. The risk was worth the reward. The steps stay wide and I get around the rock without compromising the "look". No risk to Ryan or myself. We simply stand/lean the forms up against the hillside.

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.

https://www.stjohntradewinds.com/st-john-contractors-hard-concrete/

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.

The push continues

Our bovine friends. While donkey's rule the roost in tourist affections these cattle provide the biggest surprise when chanced upon walking down the middle of the road. They have the run of Centerline and are occasionally spotted on North Shore. A couple of the bulls are incredibly large. How they even walk around is a miracle.

While I wait for Ryan to arrive I finish the storeroom to get it ready for the June 13 concrete pour.

I got it in my head that the footing between the future french doors was not deep enough. While the slab inside was going to be eight inches I imagined that it was not enough under the four-foot wide divider wall. My brain started seeing big trucks above and small cracks below! I had the time so I dug it out to about sixteen inches. The small sidewalk outside remained at about five inches.

As seen from the inside. The plywood ledge going around the bottom serves as my trim boards for the concrete slab. Because I do "mono" pours I need them to control the concrete as it comes out from under the wall and create a consistent height. More importantly, it keeps the concrete from getting on the inside wall forms. I learned this lesson many years ago during the chaos of screeding a concrete floor. It ended about an inch higher than the bottom of the walls and removing the forms was a nightmare then firmly embedded in hardened concrete. Now we simply place our screed 2x6 board on the ledge and the mid-room 2x4 and level out the floor. One less panic attack during the pour. However, I do have to dress it up when I take the forms down. The ledge leaves an imprint. A small price to pay.

Not shown is the 2x4 I'll use to divide the slab in half, pouring each section separately. I'm sure pros might do it differently but this way I do everything in manageable chunks and the quality turns out fine--tile ready if necessary. I won't be tiling this room, however. 

The white pipe is waiting to be installed. I'm using two of the original drain holes in the existing retaining wall to bring in water and electricity when the time comes. 

After the pour, the area above will be backfilled once the forms are taken down. Yes, I know the orange caps on the rebar are not code but they work. Locals use beer cans etc but I bought these on Amazon for next to nothing. The official version runs around $3.50 each, are very large, and you can fall off a building and not be impaled. Dead perhaps but not impaled. Very comforting. These are perfect. 

With everything prepared the waiting begins. Nothing is certain when it comes to concrete. Will the barges be running? Will Jeff with his pump truck show up? Twice before he hasn't. Will it be sunny the day of? If it rains in the morning I will be canceled. The trucks can't make it up and down the mountain much less my cul de sac when they are empty. On the plus side, Heavy Materials is much better run and more professional than Majestic or Centerline on St John were. They thought nothing of changing the schedule for small timers like me.

http://newsofstjohn.com/2016/05/03/the-latest-with-the-car-barges/ 

June 15th dive with low key watersports from Steve Simonsen on Vimeo.

Ryan showed up as planned on June 5. It has been about six years. Seriously, I have no idea where the time goes. If I didn't keep this blog I would have thought it was just a few years. Like Thor, he'll be staying in the house. Unlike Thor, Ryan likes to party more than most. The mountain road might prove to be a major problem. I won't chauffeur!  I made that pretty clear. I did promise him I would every Friday. haha. Other than that there would be times we have to go to town, the lumberyard etc, so it shouldn't be too bad. We shall see. Last time he was here he had his own place and vehicle that ran most of the time.

Waiting for the concrete we jumped down to the outhouse. This comes easily to Ryan. Alone it would take me quite a while to figure it all out. We're trying to square a trapezoid that the septic created. I thought I fixed it but as we went up it showed back up!

The black tarp is one of my old dust encapsulation nets that I had to shroud all my buildings when I was painting apartment buildings in SF. Basically, a shade tarp that made this work really pleasant.

This is where we ended when the concrete was due.

Ryan second from the left. Do not go drinking with these folks. They are professionals. Jason on the right, aka Starbutt, was the original administrator of our first Save Coral Bay Facebook page. It started as a private members thread but later morphed into what it is today. His admin skills and local knowledge of all the players was invaluable. There were and still are a lot of peeps who pretend to support the main issues but they had/have other agendas. There is some deep-seated ugliness that I don't want to touch on here. We were able to communicate about it off the record while he was in Colorado tending to his family's cattle farm. I can't say enough about his contribution.

D-Day....Jeff shows up.

Laying the pipe. I needed to build another cross scaffold for pouring the floor and moving the pipe around the perimeter. It gets very heavy and unruly when the concrete is flowing. 

A selfie between trucks. Only two this time, 8 yards per. Everything went well with only one glitch. Jeff's pump truck got stuck where it was parked during the pour. This had never happened before. Despite a couple hours of trying everything, he had to call a concrete truck from another job to come get him. With a couple of chains, they pulled him far enough up the driveway to where he could get traction. Add this to the list of why they don't like coming up the mountain.

Another Ryan, who I hired to help, knew what he was doing. He usually does granite counters. I did a lot of standing around, yay! My Ryan is not a concrete man. haha, he's a carpenter! The thought of shoveling, digging etc is not in his wheelhouse. There are some ugly days coming with the work planned!

http://newsofstjohn.com/2016/05/23/incredible-boat-hits-st-john-waters/

http://www.shuttleworthdesign.com/adastra.php

Best quality concrete to date. The walls of the storeroom won't need any finishing work. That's a first. 

While we waited for Jose to return to backfill the storage room and dig out the steps along the side going up to the parking area we finished the roof. While overhangs are generally a no-no, the house has none, I was prepared to tempt fate to provide rain free indoor-outdoor living around all the windows and front door. The picture window that I plan on creating is going to run 12x4. 

Two weeks after the pour Jose returned.

The shape of the new driveway. When finished the steep pitch at the bottom will be gone shortening the plunge to acceptable levels after you have done it a few times.

Because we had a new wall to work with I was able to take the "art" out of the dig for the steps. We tacked a 2x6 on the wall to give us the rise. Later on we found a way to still blow it. haha

The "notch" for the future midpoint beam to support the parking area.

Mighty Mouse is very happy with the new parking area.

a beach day for Ryan as promised...;~)

The other shoe drops. The wonderful parking area turned into a giant mud puddle. 

You would think a 4x4 in low would have no problems. Wrong. It couldn't even make it five feet. Once the all-terrain tires filled up it was all I could do to keep the truck from going over the edge. First, we tried washing them with the pressure washer, after all, we only had to go about ten feet to get on the concrete. No luck. Ultimately it took a plywood base followed by the rocks you see above. Even then it took a major running start. 

The next day solution. Larry delivered three yards of gravel. His 4x4 dump truck can back down the driveway. It took us all of an hour to spread it. I had no idea how wonderful this stuff is!

It must be July 4th. The St John carnival wraps up. Usually, I'm on a plane now back to SF. For the first time ever I'm staying to finish the stairs, the storeroom, retaining wall, and the outhouse. Have to make hay as they say.