What a whirlwind of a weekend. We moved out of our rental home in General Villamil Playas on Saturday morning. The truck driver arrived at 8am sharp, with us completely packed and on the road by 9am. The last two houses we rented were fully furnished so our total household belongings were mostly boxes and a very few pieces of furniture.
This is the archway you drive through leaving Guayas and arriving into Manabi Provincia.
We had a driver, Eric drive us to San Clemente and we arrived almost two hours ahead of the truck. Just enough time to get a bite to eat and look around our new town.
Joe enjoying a refreshing Pilsener with lunch.
The truck was unpacked and we were starting to open a few boxes, set up the bedroom when we started turning on faucets we found all of them dripped and the next morning found that the one kitchen sink was not just leaking but dripping into the wall between the bathroom and the kitchen, making a small river out the door to the porch. Oh and the water to the unit was disconnected and we were using water from the cistern. Also, the raised water tank which is made of concrete has seen better days, leaks and looks like chunks of concrete will fall at any given moment.
Now bear in mind we bought a fixer upper and knew it – we had planned on redoing all the electric and plumbing. But being pretty basic folks we somehow thought we could live there with it while it was being upgraded. Not!
Our friend Patricia who is handling the renovations dropped in early Sunday morning and suggested that we move into a rental for a month while her crew did the work we contracted on the house.
It took less than 5 seconds for us to make up our minds that a hot shower and running water were exactly what we needed so we moved out of our home into the rental that morning. Lets count here, moving out of Playas, into Beach Hut, out of Beach Hut into Rental, wow we were exhausted and we did very little of the work in any of these moves. You could not get any more convenient than finding a rental directly across the street from our home. This way we can watch the progress without being in the way of the workers, are available to answer questions or address issues that arise. Work started bright and early on Monday morning with the demo crew smashing down several walls, removing doors and by Tuesday were already starting on blocking in those doorways. Here are the pictures on move in day!!!
This is the first blocks to be smashed removing this kitchen area completely making this area our salon.
As of 5pm today both doorways have been blocked and completely finished in concrete on the inside and the tile needed to patch the floors where the walls have been removed has been purchased.
We combined two bedrooms into one master bedroom by removing the door to the smaller bedroom and removing the wall between the rooms.
They removed the walls between the two kitchens, removed the one door and blocked and concreted this opening today.
The kitchen sink, tile and pipes were removed from this area to make our salon.
The young woman picture in the center of this photo is Patricia McKinsey who is the coordinator on our job.
This is the front of our home with the one kitchen door removed, almost ready for the concrete covering. Today Pat shopped for the electric and plumbing supplies as we are having both completely redone. I would say that for only the second day of work a great deal of progress has been made. Lets hope everything else goes as smoothly so that we can be in our Beach Hut by month end.
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The apartment located on 26 de Marzo has a beautiful view of the water. Small and compact it will be a breeze to keep clean.
Montevideo is a big city with much to see and do. I will be posting as we travel around the area looking for our more permanent home. We are now in the Buceo, or Nuevo Pocitos, area of Montevideo and enjoying it – we are right by their World Trade Center, Buceo Yacht Club and Montevideo Shopping Mall.
Finding our Paradise in South America 