Gringos de Marimán

I won't say that Cyn is a skeptic, but 10 weeks ago she said that she wasn't going to get excited until she saw the first piece of vertical wood go up. This week she couldn't help but get excited. The week began innocuously enough. I noticed the floor boards laid down with some holes drilled to tie them down.



As I worked in the garden, I suddenly noticed one of the crew raise a large 4x8. At first I thought maybe he was just pulling my leg, since I'd told Kenny that we were looking forward to the raising of those pillars. But, they actually bolted it into place with the anchor plate. Lo and behold, we'd just gone from a flat slab to 4 meters off the ground!!!



Pretty soon I saw the 2nd pillar standing up and then the 3rd and 4th. As you'd expect, the pinhead remained nonchalant, but I was ecstatic. Oh, don't be fooled by the water showing on the slab in some of the pictures. The curing specs required that the concrete be hosed down several times a day. In fact, we enjoyed sunny but cool glorious fall weather all week long. Even so, I had a tough time getting much work done in the garden, because I didn't want to miss any of the action.



By Tuesday afternoon 19 pillars stretched towards the sky. Our maestro, Valdovino studied the plans to figure out the next step, while Cyn tried to keep the pinhead and Jack Reed under control.



Wednesday the bedroom framing began to appear. In the meantime, Juan prepared the back wall for the pirca rock.



Thursday the crew started adding the inter-pillar braces. As you can see, they first carved notches a couple of inches deep in the pillars and then they cut and fit the braces into place. This practice might be common, but I'd never seen this done before.



By Friday morning nearly all the braces had been inserted and the crew seemed to be racing through the framing work. I think I walked around the house a dozen times during the day, just marveling at the progress.



Here you can see Valdovino, Kenny, and Andrés checking the plans and wondering if all gringos walk in circles so much.



Tuesday, May 1st is a Chilean holiday (Mayday - worker's day of course). In order to take advantage of a long weekend, the crew decided to worked on Saturday instead of Monday the 30th. I can't express how happy we are to see the accomplishments of the past 6 days.



Here's a 360 degree tour around the house. Just stop when you're dizzy or if you're bored already. Sorry, but I just can't get enough of this. Adios, hope your week went as well as ours.

If you get confused, you might want to take a look at the architectural drawings. Here's a shot of the living/dining/guest room. In between these 3 pillars we'll have a bank of double paned windows.



Kitchen, with the lower framing a the level of the counter. Above that, between the pillars more windows and a door to the walkway. We'll have an island where the blue duct appears.



We call this the work room (¿work?), but it's open to the kitchen, so we'll really have just one large open connected room. As you might have guessed, another bank of windows goes between the pillars.



Bedroom with more windows and a another door.



The bedroom also has a set of horizontal windows looking out towards the bosque. Stairs come off the walkway and the pirca wall will wrap around the outside.



Here's a view across the walkway from the stairs. The roof will extend over this walkway.



On the backside you can see the layouts for the master bath (unframed, where the plastic jug is sitting), laundry room (bench with the plans), the guest bath (jutting to the left), and the carport from the edge of the slab going towards the woodpile covered in black plastic.



From up the hill we look down on the bedroom and the master bathroom. Between the upper braces and the framing we'll have 2 large horizontal windows.



Did I mention that Andrés designed the house to have a rooftop terrazza? We'll have stairs from the lower terrazza on the other side, but he's also added a ramp coming off the hill at about this point to the rooftop.



Another view of the ramp location. Not for the faint of heart.



Uphill side of the combo kitchen/work room. Once again, we'll have more high horizontal windows. The laundry room and 2nd bathroom appear in the foreground.



Living/dining room with more of the walkway and the carport in the foreground. In this case we'll again have horizontal windows, but at a lower height in order to get a view of the volcano. The lower terraza appears to the left.



If you fall from the ramp, you'll end up face to face with the pinhead.



This lower terrazza will have a stairway going to the rooftop terraza and a pergola with a solar hot (we hope) water system. Ok, ya bastante!