Saturday, June 2, 2012

One crew - three houses.

Bogart is acting like a crazy cat lately...races around the house, making squeaky noises and throwing his toys in the air and all over the floor. Do cats have second childhoods? Or is he just going senile? Whatever it is all about, he is very entertaining and bewilders Cagney, who has his mad moments at a later time in the day. Sometimes, it's like having two mischievous little boys around!

In Panama, yet another week has passed with no activity. According to friend Don in Pedasi, our builder has only one crew for the three houses he is building and these guys switch around during the day AND have to also pave the road. Sounds like a case of mismanagement of resources to me, or simply not enough resources! Apparently, we can expect another three months of construction to complete the interior...what a crock! I am glad I have a "friend" on the ground there to keep us abreast of what is going on.This will make the build longer than one year. I have a friend in Canada who tells me that in her home country (Netherlands) a house always takes one to two years to build. Here, in British Columbia, we are used to a maximum of six or seven months. We use a timber construction style and houses often are up and lived in within four months. Not built to last here!

The message I am conveying is that one should be sure of time frames before starting construction, get to know your builder, and double any times provided. At the end of this treatise, I will be collating as many of the suggestions and caveats as possible so you will have the information in one chapter! I am also very sure that if we were in Panama now, the progress would change a great deal (for the better), so the sooner we can provide a date of arrival, the better for us.

No comments:

Post a Comment