My husband and I have now been living in our house for 6 months. Of course, we have an overwhelming list of things we want and need to do. I’ll admit that of all the things on our list, I have been most anxious to start renovating the inside. Thanks to Pinterest and Houzz, I have a variety of grandiose ideas for ‘beach cottage style’ cabinetry, tile work, paint colors, lighting fixtures, etc. Naturally, I immediately started calling contractors to get estimates on the price to take on these projects. My goal was to get estimates from contractors by September and begin work in October. Ha! That’s not happening.
By the end of July I had reached out to 5 contractors. Spoiler alert! None of them have worked out. The first contractor came right over, looked
at the place and shot out a very quick, arbitrary and unreliable number
for pricing. Disqualified. The second contractor was too busy to take on
another job. The third contractor came
over, spent a good deal of time looking at the place, emailed me back and forth
a couple of times, then went radio silent.
The fourth contractor came over, appeared to really want to work with
us, took the blue prints of our house for measurements and never came back
(with, or without our blueprints). We
are still trying to track him down. The
fifth contractor was also too busy, but said he wanted to help by referring
some really good workers to us. I’ve
still not received any of his ‘referrals’.
Needless to say, we have reached a standstill and have put this project
on hold.
Meanwhile, we have been working with a couple of solar
companies to get pricing to install solar power. If you’re local, or if you’re a regular
follower of this blog, you probably know by now how expensive power is here, so
we thought that if we could supplement the cost with solar, we would be doing
ourselves a favor. Talk about a roller-coaster
of very unclear and mixed information with regards to setting this system
up! Without getting into too many
details, the local power company, which is government run for the most part, has been less and less willing to work with
new solar customers. Luckily we received
our permit to install panels prior to their cut-off date. So, we are moving forward with this. In fact, we have some guys doing
work on the roof right now, and soon the solar panels will go on. Progress.
Yay!
Next up is the yard.
Our lot is probably ¾ of an acre and the prior owner was using the house
as a rental property, so he did the minimum with regards to landscaping. The entire lawn was pretty over grown and
needed some serious manicuring. My
husband, along with 2 different teams of landscapers, and our brand new
chainsaw, have worked countless, backbreaking hours in the Caribbean sun to
clear off our lot and plant new trees, flowers and bushes. We have gotten to know the entire staff at our local nursery, as we go there weekly. However, things thrive down here, and as soon
as everything is in order…it rains. A
few days later everything needs to be trimmed back, and, again, there’s Kevin
out there sun burnt and sweating as he trims everything down. So, the lawn is a work in progress, but it’s
coming along nicely.
Of course, we’ve run into a variety of other chores and
issues that typically take a bit more time to fix than if we lived in the states. I’ve had to call the gate guy, the pool guy,
the generator guy and the refrigerator guy (several times). Islanders,
please enlighten me, why is it that you can’t simply make an appointment with
repairmen and have them show up at the scheduled time? Why do I always feel like I’m inconveniencing
them, or that they are doing me a favor by doing work for me? They do know that I will pay them, right?! Every time I call a repairman I get the same
reply….call me tomorrow, or okay I’ll call you tomorrow (doesn’t happen), or I’ll
be in that area the day after tomorrow, so call me then. Even if you do make an appointment, they don’t
always show up.
Last week, I called a pool guy to come out to take a look at
a chip in the diamond bright of our pool.
When he answered (bonus!) he told me that he’d be in my area the next
day, and asked me to text message him my name, number and location. I told him I would be around in the afternoon,
and I promptly texted him all of my information. I never
heard from him. So, I called him again
first thing in the morning, 2 days later.
He apologized and said he would re-work his schedule for me that day to
come out and take a look. I didn’t hear
from him until after 2:30, at which point I wasn’t home. This is a normal course of events, so it
winds up taking longer than necessary for anyone to simply come out and look at the issue,
let alone fix it. I’m starting to
realize why most of my friends that have lived here for any significant amount
of time have become quite handy on their own.
Maybe it’s good that we didn’t start renovating this house
right away because there are so many other things that we need to do to get the
house in order that I can see the budget for cabinetry and tile getting lower
and lower. The other day, I was showing
our friend, who is currently staying with us, around our downstairs apartment. I kept catching myself saying, in as much a
surprised tone as it was prideful, ‘…and, everything works!’ I proceeded by turning on all the lights,
the fan and the air conditioning units.
I once read that when you’re
feeling challenged, or frustrated you should ask yourself what this situation
is teaching you. What are you learning
from this experience? It's abundantly clear to me that I’m learning
patience, but I wouldn’t simply apply this lesson to my house. I’d apply it to the entire experience living
on an island!
Now, I must go call the exterminator. The landscapers just knocked down a termite
nest!
The enemy.
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