Tag Archives: kim obermeyer
The Butterfly House – A One Bedroom Casita on a Budget
We became friends with Marilyn when she came down for a Surf with Amigas retreat a couple years ago and Kim agreed to design and build a small simple 1 bedroom casita on Marilyn’s sea view lot at Seascape Terrace. … Continue reading
Our House Is Finished
This post is a long time coming, but in case you wondering, yes we did finally finish our house. It was mostly complete in time for Luna to be born back in September of 2014. Since then it’s been a … Continue reading
Jacek and Ivona’s House by Hipehabitat
After the seeing the successful outcome and great feel of our L-shaped hacienda home Kim has agreed to build a slightly customized version for a Canadian couple planning to retire in Nicaragua in the next few years. Here, Holly and … Continue reading
Settling Into the New House
It’s been about 3 months and we’re loving our new home at Brisas Del Alma. We’re still very busy settling in, putting finishing touches on the house (building shelves to store all our stuff mostly), and embracing our new lifestyle. It … Continue reading
The New Dipping Pool
The house is now mostly finished, and we have an 11 week old baby girl named Luna. Little Luna has occupied most of our time lately, so I’m way behind on blog posts. Eventually I’ll get a chance to take … Continue reading
Designing the Hacienda at Brisas Del Alma
The design process started with a piece of sketch paper and a discussion of how many bedrooms and other spaces we wanted. We knew we wanted two bedrooms an open living area/kitchen, an office, and of course a workshop/bodega for … Continue reading
Video Tour of the New House
We are six months into building our new 2 bedroom 2 bath house in Northern Nicaragua at Brisas Del Alma in Aposentillo, and it’s just about done! All we’re missing is a few little details that should be complete within … Continue reading
More Monkeys, Better Schools. Investing in Southern Nicaragua
Life in Northern Nicaragua is mellow. Thus far there’s been very little development, at least as compared to Southern Nicaragua. Of course, things are changing. In the four years that we’ve been living here the number of hotels in our … Continue reading
House in Progress Tour
In Part 2 of our Nesting in Nicaragua series, Holly is one week shy of being six months pregnant and the house has been under construction for five months. The roof is mostly on and you can start to get … Continue reading
Cool Roof Design by Kim Obermeyer
Kim Obermeyer of hipEhabitat.com talks about his design for a cool roof – a double layer roof that will prevent heat from the sun from radiating into the living space. The roofing system features pre-painted structural zinc roof panels with … Continue reading
Nesting in Nicaragua
We’d been designing the house for months, but as soon as we found out that we had a baby on the way, we quickly finalized the plan and soon broke ground on what will be our home (scroll to the … Continue reading
South Nicaragua for the New Year
We live in Northern Nicaragua and don’t make it down to the South very often, so it was exciting to get a chance to cruise down for New Years to live it up in luxury land for a week. Hot … Continue reading
Breaking in the Beach House
It was a long time coming (8 months to be exact), but the beach house is finally finished! Ok, so it’s not totally finished. There are still plenty of details to be addressed. We’ve got trim to put up, painting … Continue reading
Beach House Progress – Plycem Walls and Bamboo Siding
We started building the beach house way back in March – or was it February 2013? The point is, it’s been so long that it’s hard to remember. The main delay has been caused by an irresponsible carpenter with a … Continue reading
Planting Non-GMO Corn and Beginning to Build at Brisas
We are the proud owners of Lot #22 at Brisas Del Alma in Aposentillo, Northern Nicaragua. Since buying our lot a few months ago we’ve started making some improvements. The fence and some tree planting came first. Now we’ve hooked … Continue reading
Gluten-Free Coconut Cacao Almond Flour Cake with Spicy Blackberry Compote
My husband Kim is an amazing cook. I used to do all the cooking but now that he’s around, I do a lot less and focus on “ooohing” and “aaahing” over the amazing things he makes, plus doing the prep … Continue reading
Finding Fallen Wood
Our wood dramas continue…. If you’ve been reading about the progress of our beach house construction you’ll see a repeated theme – we’ve been delayed by the local carpenter again and again. Now, the house is pretty much finished – … Continue reading
Beach House Roof Construction
The next step in the saga to build a beach house in Northern Nicaragua is complete. We’ve got a roof! When building anything in this country, you’ve gotta have patience. Lots of patience!
Beach House Progress – Slow and Steady
The whole process has been really slow, but at least it’s been steady. We bought a beachfront concession lot back in April of 2012. It wasn’t easy and you can read the full story here. Since then we’ve been working … Continue reading
Drilling a Deep Well in Nicaragua
We’re in the process of installing infrastructure for a small 16 lot housing development in northern nicaragua called Tierra Del Sueno. In order to provide water for the development we decided to drill a community well at the top of … Continue reading
HipEhabitat Honeymooners in the Philippines
Holly and Kim Obermeyer took a break from their life in Nicaragua to cruise over to the Philippine Island of Siargao for a relaxing honeymoon. They stayed at the Kawayan Resort which only has two really private very comfortable cabanas … Continue reading
Holly and Kim Get Married in Nicaragua
Hipehabitat founders Holly and Kim Obermeyer hosted a raging group of friends and family members to a week of fun and adventure in Nicaragua that concluded in an intimate wedding ceremony at the La Bahia Beach Hotel.
Bodega Progress
We are nearly finished with building our teak and concrete block bodega up on the ridge at Tierra Del Suenos. We’ll use it as a garage, storage unit, and workshop. Right now we’re finishing up the details – painting and … Continue reading
Digging a Well in the Sand
If you happened to notice our post from a couple of months ago, we bought a beachfront concession lot in North Nicaragua. To catch up on that dramatic story, click here. After finalizing the purchase, the next step was to … Continue reading
Marvelous Managua
Up until now we had avoided Managua at all costs. It was just the place where the airport is located, a necessary pass-through on our way to the beach. Friends who had lived in Managua for a couple of years … Continue reading
Building a Bodega on the Ridge at Suenos – Part 2
In part 2 of the bodega construction process the floor is poured and the roof is on. If you want to refresh your memory with the purpose of this building and our strategy for building it, click here to read the … Continue reading
Belgian IPA homebrew “Belguraguan”
OK, here’s the brew I’ve been waiting for, wanting to try for months, yearning for – a home-brewed Belgian IPA made right here in Nicaragua. I’m thinking of throwing a packet of dried Belgian yeast into our palm-thatch roof so … Continue reading
Almond Flour Banana Granola Pancakes
We’ve been going gluten-free these days. After a week’s experimentation I realized that I had more energy and just generally felt better. I’m not perfect though. It’s easy to switch out rice for pasta, but much harder to turn down … Continue reading
Teak Post and Concrete Block Bodega
We have begun building up on the ridge! First project – a place to store our tools, saddles, surfboards, wheelbarrow, and the building supplies that we’ll need to collect when we’re ready to start building the actual house. The name … Continue reading
The New Living Fence on our Lot in Tierra Del Sueno
We bought an awesome lot in the new eco-friendly community in Northern Nicaragua called Tierra Del Sueno and are starting to make some improvements. The first step was installing a fence around the perimeter so we can more clearly see … Continue reading
Phase 1 Roads at Tierra Del Sueno
It’s been a year or more in the planning stages but we have finally broken ground on the new roads that will service lots in Tierra Del Sueno. We had been waiting to finalize the lot lines before figuring out … Continue reading
Thoughts on Summer Vacation
An open jar of truffle-flavored honey scents the room in sweet musky earth tones amongst a baker’s dozen young hip lawyers, doctors, and a dancer. They’d come to this party in Cambridge, Massachusetts to admire and celebrate the first home … Continue reading
Living the Dream – Surfing, Dogs, and Ridgetop BBQs at Tierra Del Sueno
This is why we live in Nicaragua – warm water, fun waves, dogs off-leash on the beach, estuary swimming, hiking barefoot, and sausage BBQs on a sea-view ridge with cold home brewed Belgian Ales to wash it all down. Life … Continue reading
Green Papaya Thai Salad Recipe
Kim spent 8 years living in Thailand and learned some great recipes for delicious and healthy Thai food. One of my favorites is the Green Papaya salad. It’s super easy to make, fresh and healthy, looks awesome with all the … Continue reading
Steve and Danika Choose Their Lot
Steven and Danika Thomas lived in Nicaragua for several years and invested in a large piece of property over-looking the bay they liked to surf. They formed the dream of one day building a home on the hilltop and being … Continue reading
“Volcan” Cacao-Cafe homebrew Stout
The third, and possibly the best batch, in tropical home brewing adventures, almost met its end in the moldy rainy season condition of June. The rainy season brings clouds of mold that drift invisibly through the air landing on … Continue reading
Windmills In Nicaragua
One of Nicaragua’s most valuable resources turns out to be wind. Super strong (often hurricane force) and consistent winds blow across lake Nicaragua. These amazing winds are basically Trade Winds that are funneled and amplified as the high pressure on … Continue reading
Surfing and Surveying at Tierra Del Sueno
The next step in the process of development for Tierra Del Sueno is getting the GPS surveying done. We had a surveyor from Managua come out and put in permanent concrete markers as well as confirming the boundaries of the … Continue reading
Surf Trip to Central Nicaragua
It’s like driving from LA to SD for a swell except just a little bit better…. There are really nice waves all around us in the North, including a few within walking distance, but sometimes when you see a big … Continue reading
Growing Guadua bamboo
We had been searching for it for nearly a year, since we learned about it in Ecuador. Guadua bamboo (Guadua angustifolia and other species) is the giant bamboo species native to Central and South America. It is one of the strongest … Continue reading
Our garden grows
We started planting the garden in late October, 2011- lots of chillies (habanero, jalapeno, arbol, New Mex, serrano and others), various greens, tomatoes, Thai basil, lemongrass, dill, tea tree, sunflowers and a bunch of randoms like purslane and indigo. Some … Continue reading
Extreme Driving to Extreme Luxury in Southern Nicaragua
We were headed down to Southern Nicaragua to check out Rancho Santana and talk about possibly using it as a location for an upcoming women’s surf and yoga retreat. The drive usually takes about 6 hours but we wanted to … Continue reading
Hippy Hop Attack IPA
I’ll admit that I was a doubter. After participating in numerous homebrewing efforts over the years I learned that it isn’t easy, there’s a lot that can go wrong, and especially considering our lack of refined equipment I thought our … Continue reading
Coconut-Rolled Cashew Honey Cacao Balls
We are all about the homemade – home-brewed IPAs, home-fermented honey wine, and now hand-rolled cacao balls!
DIY Guanacaste Stairs
We moved into our new cabana about a month prior and had yet to take full advantage of the loft because we didn’t have any stairs. We had considered several funky stair designs with notched logs and spiral things, but … Continue reading
Simple Life at Home in Nicaragua
I’ve been in the States for two weeks and I’m getting desperate to be back home. After a year of living homeless, bouncing around from one available cabana to the next, sleeping in a tent, the back of our truck, … Continue reading
Building An Elementary School Classroom with Waves Of Hope
Imagine you’re a 12 year old kid growing up in a remote fishing village in Northern Nicaragua. You’ve spent most of your life barefoot, chasing chickens and skinny dogs through barbed-wire fences. You learned to ride a horse at age … Continue reading
Wild (and free) Fermentation
When we were at the Real Goods Solar Living Center in Hopland, CA last September, fermented pleasures were not (as usual) far from our minds. We had already rounded up beer-making supplies to take back to Nicaragua (no more being … Continue reading
