Under Construction, Literally UPDATED (finally)!

We have spent the better part of last week tiling. Actually, the better part of the last two weeks tiling. Literally, minimum 10 hour days, every day since late June. This means that, as you can tell, this post is unfinished. When you start work at 8 am and finish at 10 pm and the site doesn’t have Internet… Anyways, we are (hopefully) going to finish up the current job by Friday. And then I will make sure to not only get Internet, but also write a post!

Until then enjoy my notes from our first tile job and H’s organized photos of our adventures. She always seems to have her act more together than me!

Updated sometime in July (we have no concept of time any longer, except that the Olympics start this week!!!):

We are going to think of our first tiling adventure as a definite learning experience. We had always been the helpers for M and F during previous tile work, and this was our first experience being the ones who “knew stuff” about tiles. Turns out we remembered quit a bit about tiling, but knowing how to translate that knowledge into Central American availability of supplies was a bit of a challenge to say the least.

Our boss often fluctuated between sleeping, being drunk, being hungover, being highly caffeinated, and a last category that we can’t seem to figure out… (not our favorite mood for sure) meant that H and I were responsible for the entire tile process, and yet were not allowed to make any decisions on how it was to be done unless we first got clearance from the boss… Not an easy task! But in the end, the tiles were pretty and I hope that all parties involved were happy.

What consumed most of our time in this whole process was definitely shopping for tiles. Apparently shopping for supplies in Central America is an entire process requiring multiple stores, tons of pricing, and asking the same question over and over hoping they are just too lazy to check. You see, not all the tiles on display are in stock in that color (or at all in some cases), there are many tiles that are there that are not on display at all, and no one seems to know which tiles are which because boxes of supplies are piled about the store in no particular fashion. We actually spent some serious time going through piles of tile boxes seeing if all the tiles in the open box were the same style and color and if any unopened boxes possibly we’re hiding our tile choices.

The most difficult was the physical space we were working in, which was a building from the 1930’s, before they had levels and other modern measuring tools. That meant that all of the spaces (walls, floors, sinks, etc.) were sort of going whichever way they could. We were also not allowed to remove any of the flooring or fixtures already in the bathrooms because a) our boss didn’t want to spend the time demo-ing and b) everything was literally cemented in place.

Yes, that means that instead of using the little screw to keep the toilet where it needs to be, they slap cement on it down here and just sledgehammer everything out if there are any problems. Also, walls are patched with chunks of cement, as are any broken or missing floor tiles. So H and I had to literally beat the floor with a hammer to get a rough enough surface for our tiles to stick to, and then work around all the crazy fixtures and globs of cement in the rooms.

We were most serious about the planning process in all of this work, and H and I spent hours laying tiles out in various positions. We came up with some really awesome patterns, but our goal was always to make it as consistent and easy to cut around the before mentioned issues. We were working in the theme of Marilyn Monroe (each room has a theme person, which is kind of cool) and we had diamonds and pink and wonderful pretty moasics at the end of it all.

My designated position in the process was cutting tiles. My tool? A hand held spinning death trap! (i did in fact wear G’s leather protective gloves when i started) I will tell you that I was honestly terrified of that contraption, but the adrenaline rush after each cut made was AMAZING! I will definitely have one of those of my own one day! The machine did electricute both H and I at different times, and broke down so that we had to pry it open and play with the little wires with our swiss army knife, which felt so perfectly normal on a roof in Central America. My cuts were not perfect by any means, and going through to refine them to fit our arrangements and mentioned space issues was stressful for sure.

Some tips we have learned after our first tile job: always explain to your boss that things in Central America will take at least 3 times longer to get done than in the States, hand mixing cement is a lot like making rice, and always make sure to get a photo of the finished product before your crazy employer kicks you out in a hung over flurry.

Tags: Chitre, Panama, travel blog