Gringos de Marimán

I mentioned last time that Chile has a big celebration coming up for the Patrias Dias. The actual holidays fall on Tuesday and Wednesday September 18th and 19th. The 18th commemorates the first meeting of the Chilean junta in 1810, the first step to winning independence from Spain. The 19th honors the armed forces with a large military parade in Santiago, although toned down in recent times. This year, in a great example of populist lawmaking, the Chilean legislature passed a bill declaring Monday the 17th a holiday as well. No particular commemorative event, everyone just knew the celebration would start on Friday night, so what was the point of interrupting the fun on Monday? More on the Patrias Dias next time, but needless to say, one could feel the holiday fever in the air. Thank goodness everyone felt so energetic, since we'll be losing 3 days next week!

The work started with a little more cielo, as Jorge and Juan moved across the kitchen/workroom. By the next day, we could celebrate another completed task.

Valdovino and Leo also got into action in the formal room. Hard to believe, but the ceiling is all finished inside the casa.

But what about outside? Yes, the same cielo goes up outside the casa too. I watched Leo get started on this section just outside the dormitorio.

Before long I noticed Valdovino and Leo moving the scaffolding onto the pasillo.

I was pretty stunned at how nice the dormitorio section turned out, especially considering that not too many people will ever notice this area.

The maestros started above the pasillo, but a flete interrupted their progress. We'll have to wait a bit to see the finish.

I'm pleased to say that Jorge and Juan also added the last few pieces of volcanita to the dormitorio closets. I'm a little tired of volcanita and ready to move onto something new.

With the volcanita in place, a couple of pintors showed up to start prepping for painting. I had a tough time deciding whether I got more of a thrill from watching pasta pasting or volcanita installation.

Now for the real excitement, Juan and his brother Luis began piecing together the piedra pizarra for the piso. As you can see, our piedra varies in size (capricho). What you can't see, is that the piedra also varies by thickness. Installing the pizarra required following a 20 piece repeating pattern provided by the vendor. Here's the first 20 pieces after they'd been mortared, tapped, and leveled into placed.

And here's Luis explaining why piece #4 was missing - some cutting required.

By the next morning the first section had been disassembled and restarted in the workroom/cocina area. The maestros had determined that starting from the center and moving out would make it easier to keep everything aligned across the casa.

Here's our installation drawing. This pattern brings to mind the fitting spanish word rompecabeza (puzzle). Jigsaw fans can follow along as we move across the casa.

Of course the piedra wore a dusty coat of mortar, but we loved seeing the earth tones displayed across the piso.

Ok, maybe a little too earthy in this case.

We had cielo inside and out, why not piedra? But first Juan had to install some fierro trim to the edge of the pasillo and terazza.

Off we go with the outside rompecabeza, and so it continued down the pasillo.

Meanwhile, Jorge and Juan returned to a favorite pastime, wall stuffing. Bernard, I think this fisiterm has a rating of R 14 and we're using 2 layers, so I guess that's R 28? But then I'm not sure if the R here is calculated using celsius and meters. I'll leave this to the research minded.

Wall stuffing must mean that a flete will be arriving soon and here we are.

The maestros unloaded more madera, in this case coihue for the walls. Coihue, a rapid growing native tree endemic to southern Chile is durable and easy to work with. Coihue has one drawback, it tends to warp in wet climates such as ours. One could choose to ignore this tendency and view it as a rustic feature or one could pay to have the wood kiln dried, as we did.

Curious how the coihue looks? Valdovino and Leo wasted no time, finishing the wall leading to the dormitorio by the next afternoon. Please ignore the spots on my camera lens, I hate it when the dogs start slobbering.

Juan and Jorge moved into the dormitorio, covering the walls they'd just stuffed. They left one last piece to put into place, just so we'd have something to look forward to next week.

I almost forgot to mention the other delivery with bathroom artefacts. There goes Cyn's tina out to the bodega. Notice the duraznos and damascos (peaches, nectarines, and apricots) so nicely planted in the foreground.

Ready for the holidays? One last look at the dirty piedra leading into the cocina with the coihue walls in the far background. Keep your fingers crossed for another update in a few days. Hasta la proxima!