A New Casa - Casa Pono Sayulita - Mid Winter Update 2020

Though the rental unit in the house, The PŌNO Suite, is in pretty good shape there are areas of the upper house where we live that have been ignored.  Ignored not because we didn't care it is just a budget issue.  Piece by piece, door by door we have been finishing parts of the house and prioritizing the finish of other parts of the house.

One of these areas is part of the upstairs living area.  While the kitchen and living spaces are comfortable and functional, the dining room just needs a table.  The last part of this area is under the polycarbonate roof that allows light into this space at the back of the house.  We had stairs put in over a year ago but the floor has remained just dirt.  Ashley has tried to make it look better with plants and even placing a carpet over the space to make it look less "dirt" like but it was still just dirt.  Even one of Ashley's friends who came for a visit remarked that she wasn't sure if she could live with just "dirt" as part of her living room.  Essentially a full quarter of our family living area has been just a dirt patch and it was time to begin to change it.

Though several ideas were considered we decided to make this area an interior deck space.  When the jungle rains get in the materials would be able to handle getting wet plus the wood deck would break up the mostly concrete and metal finishes we currently have in the house.  It would soften the look of the living area as well as create a bit of separate space within the space to do fun things with at some point.

To do this decking we needed to install metal deck supports and so we got our metal guy to come back with his crew to install metal joists.  Set at a height that would allow the wood to be at a finish height equal to the concrete floor, it will eventually create one large continuous space with no step ups or downs.

The other thing we had done was have a hand rail installed on the stairs in the same space.  Too many visitors got freaked out and we always had fears of someone walking off the upper landing in the dark not realizing that there was a 3 meter drop.  So, we had a partial handrail installed as well.  Enough for safety but still allowing for Ashley's plant shelf to remain as is or be added to in the future.

The finish decking will be done in a tropical hardwood called "Cumaru".  Insect resistant and a good choice for this climate.  Because the deck is protected from sun and water we hope we will rarely have to maintain it.  Installation of the actual decking is coming but the metal work was a big step in the right direction.

We had a new house sign made as well with a CNC plasma cutter.  Pretty cool!