Creating environmentally designed habitats for sustainable living in Costa Rica and beyond…
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. After many iterations of design and trying to fit it to a tight budget, we …
Continue reading "The Butterfly House – A One Bedroom Casita on a Budget"
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 baby Luna give a tour of the project.
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 feels so good! Here are a few quick pics I snapped the other day to …
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 some photos of the finished house (which still does need a lot of detail work …
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 2"x2" spacers and Plycem cement board bottom layer.
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 to do, furniture to make, etc. but the basics are complete. We've got walls, a …
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 lot of excuses (mostly lies) and a weak work ethic. We had been waiting for …
Continue reading "Beach House Progress – Plycem Walls and Bamboo Siding"
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 - concrete work is done, custom window bars are installed, floor is nice and colorful, etc. …
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! A big issue has been our carpenter. We wanted to work with local people and keep jobs in this area, so we …
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 to improve the lot little by little. We hired a caretaker. We dug a well …
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 the hill. Unfortunately even at 300' deep we did not find enough water for all …
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 varnishing. We've also begun construction on our lot down on the beach.
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 find water. The lot is located right on the beach, with an estuary that goes …
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 blog post of Part 1. This is what we came back to after being in …
Continue reading "Building a Bodega on the Ridge at Suenos – Part 2"
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 it can just be there, growing, hanging out, ready to bring yeasty goodness to any …
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 for this sort of building is a bodega. We wanted it to be as cheap …
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 the lot the boundaries and also keep the horses and cows from munching on whatever …
Continue reading "The New Living Fence on our Lot in 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 how to create the roads that would service them. All that is finished finally, so …
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 able to walk with their kids down to the beautiful beach below. When Danika's job …
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 everything. When I checked the carboy on the last day of the 15-day fermentation, I …
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 the east coast (Caribbean) rushes through the gap in the Central American Cordillera to the …
On a trip to the Osa Peninsula last year we looked up someone called "Super Steve" who we were told was building some beautiful things with bamboo. Despite the fact that we showed up out of nowhere, Super Steve aka Steve Jurries invited us in and gave us a tour of his property which included …
Continue reading "Tiny House with Bamboo Construction on the Osa Peninsula"
Our friend Ben is really excited about earthships. He wants to build one here in Northern Nicaragua. I didn't know much about them, but undertook a program of self-study reading through all three volumes of Michael Reynolds' Earthship books. The basic idea is finding the cheapest, most sustainable method for building. Reynolds tackles this problem …
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 and best species to use for load-bearing construction and we wanted to find some to …
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 things never sprouted at all, some sprouted and died soon after, and some flourished. Holly's …
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 first effort might not be that awesome. I was wrong. So very wrong... To read …
A group of 17 high school kids from High Tech High in San Diego came down to Nicaragua with Surf With Amigas (formerly Suave Dulce) for the trip of a lifetime. They learned to surf, did yoga, went horseback riding on the beach, and boarded down an active volcano. They learned to make tortillas and …
Continue reading "High School Kids Help to Build a New Classroom in Nicaragua"
Living in Nicaragua is awesome. Warm weather, warm waves, affordable homesteading, and a simple life lived barefoot. There are however a few things we miss about the US - mexican food, fast internet, and good beer! Luckily, Kim is an amazing cook, so we get our mexican food fix via homemade guacamole and chipotle chicken …
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 in the end just wanted to have nice wooden stairs finished in a reasonable amount …
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 5 and by age 7 your dad had you herding cattle between pen and pasture. …
Continue reading "Building An Elementary School Classroom with Waves Of Hope"
As a 31st birthday present to myself I decided to build a garden. I've been reading through The Permaculture Garden by Graham Bell and thought the design for a German Mound looked interesting. I cleared out the first layer of top soil and collected a bunch of sticks and other "woody material". I chose a …
While trying to install our signal booster antennae on our new house, we heard a buzzing and came across a buzzing mess lurking under the palm fronds. Kim grabbed a plastic bag and I got in place with the camera. With a quick grab he was able to safely contain the stinging creatures within the …
Designing the window placement was a fun experience that involved measuring, re-measuring, and measuring again, then erasing, measuring, and changing the dimensions multiple times. Our friendly red-headed framer was smilingly patient as we changed our minds back and forth. Right now there are windows on three sides with the North-Western wall window-free since it gets …
Building in Nicaragua is both much easier and much more difficult than it would be in the States. This project in particular is easier than most since we're building on Coco Loco property with full access to power (except when it goes out) and water, and we don't have to worry about any sort of …
Continue reading "Building in Nicaragua – Concrete Floor, Tile, and Wood Dilemmas"
Using the Barefoot Architect by Johan van Lengen to get a few ideas during the design process.
Accessing the palm fronds for the thatch roof turned out to be one of the easiest things we’ve had to do so far. There’s a property nearby owned by a friend full of the right kinds of palms, so we simply had to have a chat with the caretaker there and negotiate a fair price …
Continue reading "Building in Nicaragua – Palm Fronds for the Thatch Roof"
The video footage of the Eucalyptus plantation experience and the start of the roof assembly.
The house progresses rapidly. It’s amazing how quickly the eucalyptus posts can be assembled into home shape. Our nine supporting pillars were bought, cut, delivered, and cemented into place within four days. For the rest of the roof structure we needed thinner diameter eucalyptus and drove a few Kms down the main highway towards Chinandega …
Continue reading "Building in Nicaragua – Eucalyptus Plantation Politics"
A video summary of shopping for the eucalyptus posts that will become the pillars for our cabana in Nicaragua.
Lately our home base has been a thatched roof cabana at El Coco Loco, the Eco-hotel where we run our women’s surf and yoga retreats. Since the guys at Coco Loco have been letting us crash there in between retreats, whenever their 5 cabanas are full with paying guests we get relocated to a tent, …
Continue reading "Building a Cabana in Nicaragua – Eucalyptus posts"
Eco:Design:Life 