The River House is featured on Paradise Profits
We were inspired to start this whole project after reading Jeff Hickcox’s new book Real Estate Investing Guide– Costa Rica: Fundamentals for Profits in Paradise. This book is incredibly informational, and –even for novice investors like us– fun to read. Jeff writes with a very friendly and helpful tone. We’ve since met him in person, and he really is the real deal.
The website Paradise Profits was created as an online shop for this book. It also has informational articles about investing in Costa Rica real estate, a directory of local professionals, and recommended properties for sale. It’s a nice site, and a must read for anyone considering investing here.
So imagine how thrilled we were when Paradise Profits decided to feature The River House on the site! Yes, this means the house is pretty much done and on the market. It’s been a labor of love for us, and we’re excited the news is out. Check out the listing, and other Costa Rica real estate listings here.
Muebles!
One of the last things we’re waiting on from Mulo arrived today… the Muebles! Mueble means furniture in Spanish, but in this case we’ve been using it to mean the new kitchen cabinet and bathroom vanity we ordered. Every day for the past week it’s been “Muebles? No muebles.” “Muebles? No muebles.” “Muebles? Yes! Muebles!” It’s like the excitement and relief you feel after waiting weeks for a care package from the states, and it finally arrives. It’s not that it took an exceptional amount of time—or that you worried it wouldn’t come at all – it’s just the satisfaction from pent up anticipation. And the pride in seeing a big idea come to fruition.
The biggest thing about the kitchen was the work space. The fixtures themselves were very nice, and I won’t say “no” to granite countertops, but the room just needed a little something to make it right. That little something was actually not that little… but it was easy enough.
To make the kitchen workspace bigger, we installed the refrigerator into the wall, leaving the space next to the range open. There was a chin high block wall that separated the range from the fridge, so that was cut to counter height. The Mueble! was then built with matching cabinetry, stained a nice walnut, and topped with a beautiful almond chopping block (the wood was recycled from leftovers on the property. What a boon! Almond is so beautiful and hard but very expensive). Above that, we installed a shelf for a microwave—also stained walnut.
The effect is incredible. The kitchen is now very workable, and even someone who simultaneously makes yogurt, bakes bread, and prepares three meals a day *ahem. Who could that be?* will find this kitchen very ample. That and the paint to match the granite, the track lighting, and the new faucet, and we’re in business.
Before Kitchen
After Kitchen
Recycled Almond Chopping block
Track lighting in the kitchen
New Moen faucet (excuse the dust)
Painting the Town *er* Roof Red
We were really excited when the next project was completed—repainting the roof—because it’s one of the last things Mulo had on his list. This means we’re almost done!
Gilberto has done the rest of the painting, in and outside the house, but for something like balancing on top of a roof with a bucket of paint? I don’t care if he can dig through bedrock and lift giant boulders—that’s crossing some line somewhere.
(Although, in a quote from Terry Pratchett, the English novelist, he says: “Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.” That said, I still don’t want 70 year old Gilberto on the roof.)
So two young guys came out one sunny afternoon and did the whole thing. It’s great because the Rancho formerly had just a metal colored tin roof. Now that it matches the main house the whole project is starting to look very cohesive and finished.
Rancho roof before
You can see the strapping young lad through the window there
From the top
Another gratuitous shot
Small Change Adds Up
We now have a peanut butter jar full of change. (Figuratively speaking, of course. Although I have to say that many a gringo has a loose change collection or two around their house. It just seems to happen here.) Let’s see what we’ve been up to:
Changes to the bathroom
A grotto-like bathroom is a good thing, but the room was too big and lacked privacy. The house we live in now has a “party shower” and that’s fine and well; but the Riverhouse bathroom—as it was—would have needed engraved invitations for how many people it could fit. A divider was needed.
Bathroom Before
Bathroom Before
Bathroom After
And beyond that, a very strange feature was the window looking from the master bedroom straight into the bathroom. Fixing that would give even more privacy.
Frosted glass
Changes to the kitchen
I’m a bigtime cook, so at first glance I was concerned about the layout of the kitchen. I loved how it was in the center of the house, part of the activity and not tucked away in some closed off room. And the counters are granite and the cupboards are a nice solid walnut. And the sink has a built in compost area. All great things. But it was tight. Not much usable work space, and when you’re baking bread, cooking up yogurt and preparing the nights meal you need more room to work in.
Before Kitchen
But short of tearing down walls and moving rooms, there wasn’t much we could do. The big idea for this room came when we thought “If only the fridge wasn’t there! We could expand the counter and add some more drawers. OOOh. I chopping block would be great.” If only. So we did it. We got rid of the refrigerator—well, moved it out of the floor space, at least. The big idea was to borrow some space from the guest room closet, and install the fridge into the wall. Why didn’t I think of that?!
More spacious kitchen without refrigerator
Looking good
Fridge sits nicely in the wall
Whose adorable dog is that?
We still need to build some cabinets and add the chopping block, but already the kitchen is much more open and inviting to cooks everywhere.
Changed doors and added screens
Not to say anything disparaging to the previous owners, but the doors all seemed to have—shall we say—holes in them. Got to go. Mulo took care of this as if it were nothing, and Gilberto just needs to paint them. Very easy improvement.
New bedroom door, waiting to be painted
Screens on the front door
Screens on the windows
Keeping Dry
We’re now approaching the darkest depths of the rainy season here in Costa Rica, and in Atenas we can expect around ten and a half inches of rain this month. While this is a lot of rain, the clouds get only darker as time goes on, with September and October expecting over 13 inches of rain each. If my mood seems dark and gloomy, it’s because it is dark and gloomy. We’re from San Francisco, where the chance of a seeing any sun on any given day is 50/50 and even in the best month of the year (October) a warm day is just a wish and a dream. I moved to Costa Rica for some sun and heat, and for six months out of the year I get my wish. But now, here in the deep of the rainy season, I get a little morose.
But—moving on. Because we get so much rain here the houses really need to be set up to accommodate it (or rather, be accommodating despite it). Floors are often ceramic tile for this reason, porches are covered with long, deep eaves, and every house has a “mud room” in some way, shape, or form. In the same category as these common architectural standards is the addition of gutters. Even the most basic of “Tico” houses will have gutters, so it was with some surprise we realized The River House did not. The previous owners must have never gotten around to installing them.
But not us. Gutters, or canoas as they are called in Spanish, were on the top of our rehab list. There is a local man here in Barrio Jesus who constructs gutters in his garage workshop, and keeping true to the spirit of localized labor we bought a complete set for The River House from him. Mulo, the contractor, installed and painted these gutters, and just today the finishing touch of plastic chains was added. Que Bueno!
The gutters and chains
Even around the backside
Getting Dirty
The garden was never really one of the biggest changes we had in mind– it’s not really a deal breaker, and it won’t inspire someone to buy the house if they weren’t going to already. But it’s a nice extra touch, and it was something fun that we could really work on ourselves. So much of the work is being done by Mulo and his men, but the garden? That was ours, a job that we could get dirty doing and be proud of it.
When we bought the house there already was an herb and flower garden, well—sort of. The owner had installed a garden in the flat grassy area beside the river bank. The garden was concentric semi circles, and was constructed of stacked cinder blocks. The soil was rocky and dry, and by the time we got to it, the beds were terribly overgrown with weeds and infested by ants. The only salvageable plant was mint—loads and loads of it, which we tenderly saved and transplanted back up at our house. What can I say? We love mojitos and we have a lime tree in overdrive this season.
We decided to move the herb garden for several reasons. For one, the grassy area it was taking up was a prime location for a pool. We didn’t have the budget to put in one ourselves, but we wanted the future buyers to be able to visualize it. A big clunky, junky looking herb garden right in the middle of that area wouldn’t inspire imagination.
Secondly, the cinder blocks just looked trashy. Not in a clever, making do, folksy kind of third world trashy—no, just trashy. We’d have to get rid of those blocks anyways, and we might as well rethink the whole thing while we were at it. Add to that, the fact that the soil was poor and the herbs were all dead, and there really wasn’t much left worth saving.
So we scrapped the whole thing—that is, except for the idea of an herb garden. That we liked. There was another area of yard, back behind the house and near the entrance of the Rancho, that needed some work done to it. The grass was really weedy, the ground uneven, and uninspired. The area needed something. That something was an herb and flower garden.
This is where Gilberto comes back in. Remember when I said I had told him he didn’t have to feel bad about not being able to dig up the earth? That we would totally understand if he hired someone to do it? And then we came back the next day and it had been done? Yep, he cleared out that area in no time flat, arranged some rocks for a border, let the kids back in the area to “play in the dirt”, and then he went and finished painting the roof. That guy is amazing.
The garden takes shape
So we fixed the soil, added a path, picked out some plants from the local nursery, and then got dirty. And hot. And sunburned. But it was fun. And the end result is a beautiful garden. It still needs to fill out quite a bit, and I have some seedlings growing back at the house to fill in the gaps, but by and large we’re incredibly proud of this garden.
After: The Herb and Flower Garden
Path through the Herb and Flower garden
Parsely, Sage, Rosemary, Thyme, and much more
Butterfly flowers, too
Monos!
We’ve lived in Barrio Jesus for going on two years now, but today—for the first time ever—we saw monkey’s while working down at The River House. It was unbelievable… we were just standing near the garden, admiring our progress, when we heard a ruckus over near the river. We looked hard at the trees, hoping to see a big toucan, or perhaps a giant iguana. But nope, the little face we saw was white, and the body was that of a monkey. We couldn’t believe it.
We asked our groundskeeper about it. He also lives along the river, and has lived there for his entire life. He said, yep, there are monkeys, four of them. And they come by along the river every day at 10am as they work their way back up the mountain to where they live. We took this news with a little skepticism, because, hey, we’ve lived here for almost two years and this is the first time we’ve seen them. We’re not newbies around here. If anything, those monkeys are the newbies.
In any case, it was fun to see them, and for sure we’ll be looking out for them everyday soon after the coffee hour.
Cana Brava
The house was so dark, and other than painting, we knew there was a lot that could be done to lighten the place up. Because, honestly? Who likes to live in a cave? Well… other than these people. But cave dwellers are few and far between, so we knew we had our work cut out for us in making this house seem a little more home-like.
So a big part of our rehab was in fixing those unfinished eaves over the porch. A thing about living in Costa Rica: houses here are small, and it’s not necessarily because people can’t afford bigger houses. It’s because they don’t see the need. So much time is spent outside the house, talking with neighbors and having nice “sits” on the porch. It’s almost an artform, this sitting, and our groundskeeper is a savant. Because they spend so much time outdoors, much of their house is outside. One of our neighbors has their kitchen underneath their big porch, and it’s not at all uncommon to see upholstered couches and televisions outside.
And so the porch on this house is very important, and it’s a great porch that wraps around the entire front and one side of the house. The problem was that it was never finished, so you could see the underside of the tin roof and the metal beams that supported it.
The cave
A change is discussed
A very common building material used here in Costa Rica is cana brava. It’s a fast growing plant related to sugar cane and looks very much like bamboo. It’s incredibly renewable, growing very quickly during our long and wet winters, and matures within 2-3 years. That’s one thing we really wanted to keep in mind with this rehab, and Jeff’s book on Costa Rica Real Estate had an entire chapter devoted to “green building” materials. But that’s a whole separate post.
The hotel we stay in when we’re visiting Granada is so beautiful, and as we would lie in bed thinking about how lucky we were to be able to afford such a nice hotel room we would stare at the ceilings. Which were made of cana brava. The effect is very impressive, and very tropical. We knew this was something we wanted to do in our own house, when we had the opportunity.
And the cost is great. It’s just $8 for a square meter, and although we have over 700 square meters to cover with this house, the cost was more than worth it.
Before they could lay the cana brava, though, they had to figure out something to do with those metal beams. The idea was great, and it looks fantastic. They encased the beams with regular two-by-twos and then stained the wood a very nice maple to match the posts. The cana brava was then tucked above these new wood beams, trimmed to fit perfectly, and soon will be stained and varnished. Very impressive.
Work is being done on the eaves
Detail shot
After
Even along the back side
Some exciting progress is made
Gilberto has been hard at work on the painting. We knew it would make a huge difference, but wow. W.O.W. The place has really opened up.
So far we’ve done just the outside and ceilings of the main house. It has taken an incredible amount of paint to cover up the ghastly colors chosen by the previous owners. Four coats (at least) to cover the pea green ceiling, four coats (we think) to cover the brick red shingles. Each time we think, oh just one more coat and we should be good to go. We thought that after three. We might be proven wrong again after four.
But even with a partially covered ceiling the room is looking great. We decided to go with a very bright white for the ceilings, and with the domed detail it should look really nice. The ceilings are white, and as you go down the wall the colors transition into darker, deeper hues with a nice shale grey above the wainscoting and a little deeper hued cappuccino below. Painting the ceiling white is something my mother taught me, and—along with sending thank you notes—I’ve always stuck with it. For good reason. The dark paint the previous owners had used made the room look like a cave. Even when the light did penetrate the room, it was quickly sucked up and swallowed by that paint.
The same problem was outside as well. The previous owners had chosen brick red for the shingles on the top half of the wall, a mustard yellow for the stucco wall along the bottom half. Because the top part was so dark, and because the eves from the roofline dipped so low, the whole area beneath and inside looked dark and dreary. We decided to use a similar color story as inside on the outside walls. A nice classy gray along the shingles and a very sophisticated creamy tan along the bottom.
From the front, with the Rancho for comparison
You can really see the difference between the two color schemes in this picture of Gilberto:
Gilberto paints the side of the house with fresh new colors
The side of the house, and the new garden
Before we can paint further inside we need to repair the walls and get the refrigerator moved. That means it’s time for Mulo to step in. He will also be working on the cana brava eaves, another improvement which we think will really lighten the place up.
