Didn’t really do too much at all yesterday morning apart from use the Daltile website to try out different tile combinations for my bathroom.
The site contains a great little tool that enables you to choose a photograph of a bathroom layout (or upload one of your own) and then choose tiles from the catalogue to see how they look. After ‘playing’ around with a host of different colour combinations and tile types and sizes I think I have made my choice. I am going for shades of grey (gray for American readers).
Rose and I then took care of general household chores and then pulled together a list which details what fitting is for which room e.g sinks, fans, taps, etc, and sent this to Daniel Camal, our building contractor. With that important task completed we had a light lunch and headed to our build in Ambergris Caye, Belize.
On arriving at the site we went straight to the First Floor to see that Angel was busy removing block and cement work to make the northern facing window in the Utility Room the right size.
A much slimmer looking Angel who told us he lost around 10lbs working in the water tank last week.
Outside Martin and Nicholas were working from scaffolding to apply the second coat of cement to the exterior of the southern wall of the veranda.
Martin at work with the feather edge.
Nicholas with the trowel and hawk.
And then the feather edge.
Daniel had arranged for the guys to move the scaffolding that provides access to the Second Floor so that Rose can get up there so that’s where we went next. It would have been rude not to have used it!
Once up there we could see that they had enlarged the concrete seat in the north-west corner of the roof terrace.
“That’s more like it”.
If you look closely you can just see the previous size.
On the same side of the house they had chased out the block and cement to fit the pipe work for the air conditioning (they had forgotten to run the pipe).
And were busy fitting it.
Rafael (aka “The Frog”) on the outside.
And the plumber/electrician (I think his name is Roberto) working on the inside in the Master Bedroom.
Around the front of the house Edson was working from the scaffolding to apply the second coat of cement to the exterior wall.
And Porfelio was finishing off the coping for the eastern veranda wall.
Inside in the shower area of Rose’s bathroom they had marked out the size for the recessed shelf.
And Eduardo was busy at work with the hammer and bolster.
As we were leaving our build in Ambergris Caye, Belize we could see that Martin and Nicholas were nearly meeting in the middle of the First Floor veranda wall.
And Edson had nearly finished the bit of the exterior wall he was working on.
The headline is based on the title of track six of The Monkees’ album “Headquarters” which reached number one in the US Billboard Hot 200 in 1967.
Belize- building a new life . A Belize blog. 
John & Rose, We are back home now and will again follow you from afar. It was really good and helpful to see you guys on site. After meeting with Daniel we met with a local architect, Vicky Nelder. She had a lot of good info as well. We have a bunch of decisions to make. Thanks again.
You are more than welcome Grace. We enjoyed meeting with Randy and you. Kind regards from us both.
John, It took me a while to realize that the rebar “clamps” were being used to hold the forms to the walls to finish off the openings for the windows and the doors. I didn’t get it at first. That is a smart way of doing whatever it takes to get the job done.
Agree Fred. They have been innovative in lots of ways.
Looks awesome John and Rose. You can almost taste living there by now can’t you?
Thanks Kris. We are very pleased with the way it looks . Well, the whole process in fact. Rose can ‘taste’ it. There is still a way to go for me though.