Shopping the Home Depot, IKea, BBB and shipping to the Island.

OK, this post will be most useful for those who are on the Island or like us, need figure out how to get stuff shipped to the Island.

Shopping can be one of those Twilight Zone experiences.  Yes,  the stores look familiar but when you look at the details…  not everything matches  up.  For example, we scoured BBB (Bed, Bath and Beyond) for a kitchen spider-you know, that round, shallow metal wire basket thingie on the end of a handle that you use to remove things like shrimp and french fries from hot oil? Gosh, I can’t imagine a kitchen without one. Funny,  they were nowhere to be found in BBB. At checkout I happened to mention that I couldn’t find one to the clerk. “Oh,” she said “Here in Puerto Rico we don’t fry foods like that.” Oh, really? I though.  Do, do, do, doooo-play the Twilight Show theme here in your head. Yeah. You know what it is and you don’t carry it. I haven’t check Walmart, but I can’t remember seeing one in their housewares department. But in all fairness, I wasn’t really looking at the the time. Continue reading “Shopping the Home Depot, IKea, BBB and shipping to the Island.”

Washer/Dryer and On-demand Water Heater

Washer dryer
Washer/dryer barely fits. The door rails had to be moved out 2-1/2″

One of the first projects for this trip was to get a washer/dryer installed. It would have happened the last trip but we discovered after ordering a stack unit and having to return it, that the utility closet was only 27-1/2″ deep.  Doh! Who thought that a utility closet this deep was a good idea? And with a bedroom closet on one side and a hall on the other, there was no making room. We did a lot of searching and measuring but could not  find a stack unit that would fit and still allow the bi-fold doors to open. In the end we settled on a GE unit that was an almost fit facing out.  We contemplated putting the unit in sideways but the water lines for the hot water jutted out too far to allow the dryer door to open. Clearly the bi-fold doors were going to have to be moved. In the end I moved the track out 2-1/2″ from the back wall and 3″ towards the living room to allow the bi-fold doors to clear everything. Fortunately the hall is wide enough that it is not noticeable at all. Continue reading “Washer/Dryer and On-demand Water Heater”

Evicting our unwelcome tenants (or how good plans go bad)

I had hoped to do some posting during our October trip but quite frankly, things intervened. We had projects lined up  that were necessary but not time-sensitive critical and had planned to space them out, giving us some reasonable time to explore a bit. That all changed the first day. Two things jumped out immediately; first the hot water heater’s rusted bottom turned out to be much greater than we thought and then we found some very unwelcome tenants.

The underside of the counters was completely rotten and harbored a termite nest.

No real issue with the hot water heater, it was going to be replaced with an on-demand system anyway. The washing machine issue (how to fit a 26-1/2″ deep washer/dryer into a 27″ deep utility closet) meant that it was going to have to give up it’s space anyway. But what I thought would be a simple counter repair turned into a nightmare. Continue reading “Evicting our unwelcome tenants (or how good plans go bad)”

October trip

After several months of thinking and planning, we scheduled a return trip to Casa Anolis for the last two weeks in October. Our plans included bringing down a spare computer along with a laser printer to replace the laptop that we left the last time. Dean continues to connect and automate Casa Anolis, integrating it with our home library of music, movies and programs. We also continue to fine tune our automation plans using the Revolv system including thinks like door monitors, etc.

 

This and That

Not finished, but you can get a sense of scale. Unfortunately this view doesn't shown the spaciousness.
Not finished, but you can get a sense of scale. Unfortunately this view doesn’t shown the spaciousness.

I thought that I might share some of the other photos that I took around the condo. Here is the living room with some of the new furniture from Ikea. We like the scale and it fits the room perfectly. The TV is a 50″ with a sound bar and a subwoofer and is hooked up to a media laptop, which is perfect for streaming from the internet. We decided that rather than a cable package, internet access was much more important since we have a Slingbox and everything from our rather extensive DirectTV service (plus everything that we record) is available. Also, we have a very extensive movie collection on our server and with internet access it’s all available. Continue reading “This and That”

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