Creating environmentally designed habitats for sustainable living in Costa Rica and beyond…
We were the first to build our home at Brisas, a small community in Northern Nicaragua, and we're looking for good neighbors! Here's a quick tour of a few of the lots still available. The benefit to these lots is really beach access to a beautiful empty beach with great waves - the Boom. It …
Continue reading "Quick Tour of a Few Lots Available at Brisas"
After four months of construction, we have walls completed to roof height, the roof of the bodega is finished, and we're starting to install the alfajias (rafters) that will hold the roof of the main house. It's the end of April. The official start of the rainy season in Nicaragua is May 15th, but rain can be …
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. …
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"
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"
When trying to figure out what type of siding we'd use for our new cabana we checked out the cabanas at the French Guys restaurant (who also have a few cabanas). They used guanacaste horizontal siding and it looks really nice even after a couple of years. Then there was a killer lightning storm!
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"
Mangle, mangle, mangle! We were told we needed to get some varilla to support the palma (palm thatch leaves used for our roof). So we said “OK, where do we get that”? We could either buy it from a local guy or at the market for 30 Cordobas (cords; exchange rate = 22 cords/US$) per …
Continue reading "Building in Nicaragua – Is Cutting Mangroves ever Sustainable?"
It’s been brewing for a while and now we’re going for it. We’re planning an eco-friendly community on an amazing piece of land consisting of two ridges, a hilltop, and valley situated behind a bay with great waves and a beautiful beach within easy walking distance. There’s an estuary on one side of the bay …
Continue reading "New Ocean View Eco Community in Northern 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 