You guys may have guessed when we’re not building the Island shack we work on our goat farm in Central Texas. Coming back from our latest trip we found that our automatic gate opener wasn’t working. For you City Slickers, gate openers are a very sticky subject with farmers. There are only two or three companies that make them (at least ones that are readily available) and due to litigation… Read More »The Gate Opener 2000!
Where does the time go? It was a year ago when I told my loyal readers I would do a better job of keeping track of the action. Well, we got busy with various other things, most of which had nothing to do with building the house. As you will remember at the last post we had started to finish the deck. The “hard part” was done, that being the… Read More »We’re Back!!!
Hurricane season 2021 found us back in Texas. We sold our house in Homestead, FL back in the early 90s 6 months before Hurricane Andrew. It was destroyed. Fortunately it belonged to somebody else at the time. But after hearing story after story from our friends we left behind (they all go like this: It’s all fun and games until you’re cowering in the bathtub from the wind and the… Read More »Fixing to get Ready to Do Something
Has it really been 2 years? Yes!!! Sorry about that loyal readers. I’ll strive to be more prompt in the future. To recap, both Buttercup and I joined the ranks of the retired. Our Day jobs made us severance offers we couldn’t refuse. Good thing too, we were going to quit anyway! As always time is our most precious resource. Now we have time to do the things we always… Read More »Long Time, No See
As November 2020 rolled around I kind of ran out of excuses as to why I hadn’t bought the materials for the deck foundation. I think at the time I thought if I procrastinated enough we would end up getting out to Water Island with no building materials at hand. No building materials, no building! Just fishing and kayaking every day, with a little hanky panky thrown in during the… Read More »How to Lose 10 Lbs in 6 Weeks!
Greetings my patient readers! Sorry for the long break, but you didn’t miss much. Both Buttercup and I decided to quit our day jobs. The Pandemic gave us an offer we couldn’t refuse. So far 5 months in we haven’t missed work much. If anything we are doing more physically than we ever did at our jobs. And every day we find more stuff to do, so boredom is definitely… Read More »Turning the Power On
We were to continue building on the house in early April 2020. Our travel plans were of course interrupted. I had 3 weeks of vacation so started keeping busy working on farm projects. Then the CDC said we really do need face masks. While the cloth ones that I had seen did look cute, I knew from my military chemical warfare practice experiences that we needed something better. Also, our… Read More »Homemade N95 Face Mask
We were so relieved once the concrete pour was done in July 2019. From this point forward we could finish everything that was left on the house with minimal or no help. We really shouldn’t have to hire anyone going forward. In our experience having more hands involved really doesn’t make things go any faster or better than just doing it ourselves. We (or at least I, Buttercup seems to… Read More »A Nice Break!
We’re back in July to finish our deck footings. Our timing was perfect, we arrived on July 2nd and had a day to get ready for the Annual Water Island 4th of July Parade! The 60 or so participants really outdid themselves this year. The 4 of us that were left to be spectators were Wowwed!!! This being our second consecutive Parade as spectators we were well equipped to notice… Read More »Concrete Hell!
In Spring 2019 we made it back for another 2 month long building stint. This time with the house stable for hurricane season we swore we were going to be swimming, snorkeling, or kayaking every day. That didn’t happen. The plan was to excavate and pour the 34 concrete deck post bases so that deck construction can begin the next year after hurricane season. We also had some other small… Read More »Digging Hell!
Since our house is next to “The Fort” we were very curious about the history of the area. The great thing is that our neighbor and realtor Chuck Gidley decided to make his own Water Island History website thereby saving me a lot of research work. Hours of fun and many great photos and details. You can see it here: http://www.waterislandhistory.com/ The executive summary of the history goes like this.… Read More »Fun History!
After a couple of months working our real jobs we managed to make it back for a couple of weeks in November. Believe it or not, for a Texas Boy St Thomas can be a cold place sometimes. We were surely using blankets most nights in our comfy container. The main goal during this trip was to seal the cistern so that we could store our newly collected water. This… Read More »Water Finally!
While I was researching what kind of roll up hurricane shutters we needed, I happened to work with the son of a man with long experience in the shutter business in South Florida. I was surprised to learn that there is only one factory in Florida that makes parts for these. As a result, from what he said, all of the hundreds of companies that market these are essentially shutter… Read More »Hanging the Doors
We had left the house as weatherproof as we could before having to return to work. Then in Early Summer 2018 I got a very nice offer from my work to take 2 months off for half pay. They didn’t have to tell us twice, so in the middle of June we arrived back on Water Island with our customary four 49 pound checked bags of building supplies. A little… Read More »A Two Month Break from the Day Job!
As mentioned in the previous post we did manage to film a couple of turtles in the act. Since it was too large a file to upload from our phone I had to wait to post until we got home. As goat farmers we were very impressed that turtles make much the same sorts of sounds that goats do while making love. So here it is, some Adult content and… Read More »Turtles Move Faster than you Think!
One of things that we really enjoy on our Water Island place is the wildlife. Of course it’s nothing compared to what we have on the farm in Central Texas, but at least none of it is venomous! Buttercup ran into this bad boy one night, he’s one of a couple that hang out downstairs: These land crabs seem to be in a a contest with the more numerous hermit… Read More »House Hunting for Crabs
So it’s still mid-Spring 2018. After getting our supplies from Miami, it was time to get serious about drying in. First was the roof. Initially being from Texas my first choice was a metal roof. Luckily Rolando talked me out of that, saving us not only quite a bit of dough but also a lot of repairs later. Wandering around St Thomas and Water Island after the hurricanes it was… Read More »Fun with Concrete Board
So after a 2 month break, we were back at it. It was mid Spring 2018. With hurricane season coming up the main thing was to get the concrete anchors in and as much of the exterior done as we could manage. During the break we had also ordered a bunch of supplies from Florida which were now on St Thomas. Since the roof was now properly supported the first… Read More »Anchoring it Down
So now I’ll go back to regular chronological order (or ordnung for us Germans). Starting at day 14 it was time to put the subfacias up. These are the boards that go around the roof on the end of the rafters. Later on they’ll be covered by the batter boards for the internal gutters and a finishing facia of Hardiplank. Since doing it from the outside like most people would… Read More »Back in Ordnung!
For you loyal readers I apologize for being approximately 6 months behind on the blog. In order to reward you for your patience, I’ll skip from Build Day 13 to Build Day 99 (August 2018) for a little taste of the progress we’ve made so far. I was able to get an incredible deal from my job due to a temporary overmanning situation. Take 2 months off with half pay! … Read More »We’re Still Working on it!
With the boys back at their day jobs, it was up to just us two to finish drying in. The first step was to tighten the bolts on the stainless steel compression collar around the rafters. Due to their position in the middle of a bunch of rafters, this turned into quite a job. There were 6 bolts, and even with a ratcheting breaker bar it was hard to get… Read More »Doing it on our Own!
Since having one project is never enough, I’m always having at least 4 run at the same time and very occasionally actually completing them. One of my side jobs is furniture making, Princess being the primary recipient of my efforts. Over the years every stick of furniture in home base has been built by me. The only exception is chairs, because they have curves and are fairly cheap to just… Read More »Maslow CNC for the Masses
With all the wall panels up we needed to do a few adjustments before proceeding with the rafters. I was also glad to send the $700/day forklift back to its owner. The heaviest items that needed to be lifted were the king trusses, the big rafters that run from the center of the roof to each of the 10 corners. I could almost lift them by myself, so even though… Read More »Getting the Rest of the Heavy Stuff Up
Day 3 started with the first three panels up. One thing I didn’t mention was that when I told Rolando that if he was going to make an error on the foundation to make sure it was too big and not too small. So indeed he did, which was a good thing! Unfortunately some of the angles got off as the poured concrete walls went up. We had initially caught… Read More »Rapid Progress!
Part of the planning was to take two years worth of vacation in a two month period. The building was arriving in St Thomas in the last week of December 2017, so the goal was to have enough time to get it erected, dried in, and hurricane ready by the June arrival of Hurricane Season. Buttercup and I arrived on site shortly before Christmas to get everything ready. We had… Read More »Christmas in December!
We had big plans for our 3 week vacation starting on September 8, 2017. With four 49 pound checked bags packed with building supplies we were ready a few days early to blast off and start getting the foundation ready for the building which was to arrive on site in December. The plan was to set deck ledger boards on the foundation so that when the building arrived we could… Read More »Disaster!
Soon it was Spring of 2017. The foundation was ready for the house, but we still had to wait until Christmas for the house delivery. So with 3 weeks of vacation to blow we started on some projects to turn camping into “glamping”. The first was to get out of the dirt and relocate the screened in shelter to the top of the new foundation. Half a box of tapcon… Read More »Home Improvements
Now that we had a hole in the ground, it was time to put something in it. Rolando and the boys were soon very busy forming up and pouring our foundation. One thing I told him before he started was that if he was going to make an error then to err toward making the foundation too big rather than too small. The Deltec prefab home design doesn’t allow any… Read More »Pouring Da Crete
Given that it was going to be awhile before the house arrived we decided a camping upgrade from the tent was needed. Since the ultimate plan was to have two 20 foot shipping containers for use as a garage and stained glass workshop for Princess, why not get one out while we had the excavator out there to move it around? I started the search for a container to buy… Read More »Containers Everywhere, But none to Buy
One thing to worry about when you’re off the grid is poop, or specifically how to make it go away. A lot of the older houses were on old style septic tanks. Some of these tanks were left over from the World War 2 era when the “fort” (a coastal defense artillery battery just above our lot) was being built. These days there are two options, a water treatment system… Read More »Composting Options
In the Summer of 2016 all the stars lined up and we were finally ready to start. It was very important to us that SOMEBODY be there when the boys broke ground, just to be sure we didn’t end up with a disaster by putting the foundation in the wrong place or facing the wrong way. Since my day job is very busy during the Summer months that meant Buttercup… Read More »Moving Dirt!
I’ll take a little break from the building action to mourn our boat. As I write this in February 2018 we’ve just wrapped up the finances from the sinking of “Cata Rose” in St Martin during Hurricane Irma. As we were swapping documents with the insurance company it brought to mind our last trip on her, which was just prior to starting construction on the foundation of the house. “Cata… Read More »The Last Boat Trip
As in all great campaigns, there usually are some changes between what’s on paper and the final product. Here is what Chris Tavernier the architect envisioned: The Foundation The wooden Deltec building was to sit on top of a concrete foundation approximately 10 feet above ground level in the lower part of the picture, and about 5 feet out of the ground in the upper part of the picture. Experienced… Read More »The Final Plan, At Least Until Construction Starts
As we learned more from Chris Tavernier about permitting requirements and local siting rules, we started getting worried. From our 3 camping trips up to this point we knew exactly where we wanted to put our house on the lot. We also at the time wanted to leave room for a future expansion. The Coastal Zone Management (CZM) part of the DPNR has some pretty serious setback requirements for new… Read More »Where to Put It?
Previously I had spoken with the DPNR (Department of Natural Resources) about the process of building on Water Island. We quickly figured out that they wanted way more than we could do on our on. On the recommendation of one of the kit house companies we were given Chris Tavernier’s name. The next time we were on the Island we arranged to meet him and show him the site. Chris… Read More »Enter the Architect
Don’t be like them As we were waiting to close on the land we started looking at other blog sites about building in the USVI. I’ve included a link to most of them on the homepage, if you are considering building it’s an excellent resource. Some were tragic, others funny, but all show that things definitely don’t run according to schedule in the USVI. This is where I learned about… Read More »What to Build?
About a month after closing on the property we decided to go down and camp on the land for a week or two. The thinking here was that it would give us some insight on what we wanted to build and exactly where. We already knew a couple of things. We were never going to rent the property out, we were going to make it small, and the main goal… Read More »The most expensive campground ever!
There’s some great things about owning land in the USVI. The land laws are pretty much the same as in the US, so you don’t have to worry about weird arrangements like leaseholds and such. The taxes for residential property are very low compared to Texas at least, a little less than .4% assessed value/year. And developed land is actually taxed at a lower rate than undeveloped land. On the… Read More »How Hard Can it be?
Finally free from working for the Man we arrived a day early in St Thomas to look at the Water Island properties prior to heading over to the BVI for the boat trip. At this point I underestimated the wife’s commitment to this quest. It all comes down to the definition of the word “adventure”. It turns out she and I had different ones… ADVENTURE (Mine) In my previous career… Read More »Whatever She Wants…
As we bounced around the Caribbean on boats with our boys as they grew up, we went to most of the Islands. The boys learned to dinghy drive, scuba dive, and to instill in the youngest brother an irrational fear of stingless small jelly fish that abound in the waters. We welcomed the lack of communication in the days before the invention of smartphones. This type of boating was camping… Read More »The Search is on!
We are two almost retired married for 32 years people from Texas. I served 14 years in the US Air Force, my wife will tell you that she had the harder duty. As usual, she is right. The USAF took us all over the world, at times we lived in Germany, Japan, Korea, Turkey, Alaska and more than a few US states. As our three boys got older we decided… Read More »In the Beginning…
This blog is about building a small house in the US Virgin Islands, in particular a 650 sq foot 10 sided Deltec prefab house. As we started on this project I became an avid reader of all the blogs I could find about building in the USVI. There are quite a few and some are goldmines of information. I also searched for blogs about building a Deltec house. Either I’m… Read More »A Quick Forward