To Build in Costa Rica

We have had quite an interesting couple of months.

Plans change. I think that if we all agreed that this is the simple truth of building a home. It is a huge step- financially, emotionally, physically. There is no doubt that the journey to build your dream home is going to be filled with changes. All you can try to anticipate, is whether your team- whoever they may be, are really on your team. It may make you crazy, but my one suggestion right now is to fully evaluate all the players on your team, and ask yourself honestly- “are they really on MY team?”. Do they have their own motives? Do they have their own interests held higher than the common goal of building the best possible home for you? Have the conversation up front, of every possible scenario you can think of, and run it by the members of your team (architect, development board members, builder, engineers etc), and make sure you know how any change of mind is going to affect you- financially, socially, emotionally. Let’s face it, your dream home is just that. YOUR dream home.

OK, enough rambling about that.

Yesterday, we finally put down a deposit to the builder, Trevor Chilton of Suenos de Amigos S.A, to hold our place in his construction schedule. Construction should be starting as close to the month of March 2014 as possible. We are still very much in line with the decision to use Mgo SIPS and the endless knowledge Trevor and Michael share. Every time I look at the ceiling and see mold spots where we live, we think… ‘not in our new home!’, because MgO board is mold resistant, non-porous and simply will not permit mold in the vicinity. Awesome!

“What plans changed?” you may ask. Well, here is a somewhat abbreviated answer to what could take a page. We have never seen a home built from scratch by Trevor Chilton/ Michael Pawluk, here in Costa Rica, because they have not built a home from start to finish here in Costa Rica. Yet. Would you not deem it somewhat wise, then, to start small, get a feel for whether this is really the best construction system for you, by building your casita FIRST? We think so. We are going to build a lovely casita of around 800 sq. ft, based on the beautiful and accoladed tiny home designed by Nils Pearlson. With a few modifications to fit the tropics of course, as well as some personal preferences such as pocket doors, to suit such a tiny 2 bedroom home. We think of it as a kind of mini-me version of the dream home, and we do hope with all our might that everything goes to plan, with little pain, and big prospects.

What else changed? Well, this is another important point to consider before embarking on even the DESIGN process… choose your team very carefully. Changes cost money. We are fortunate and have an architect who tries their best to accommodate our changes, understanding the obvious- that a different construction material will have different considerations. Be prepared to at least discuss this in advance of contracting any professional. We were strongly advised by Trevor to not use just whichever structural engineer the architect was going to use, for a number of reasons but one very obvious one. SIP construction has very unique considerations, that one must pay attention to. An experienced Structural Engineer in this field is going to save you a LOT of money, even though they may cost more up front. They will be less likely to over-engineer for the sake of saving their own behind, for example.

Enough lessons for today. The fun stuff is looking at the plans… ours are attached.

We cannot wait to start, but even more, we cannot wait to be finished, and living in our own home that is well built, well insulated, critter-resistant, mold-free and won’t burn down in the next bush fires that rage through this area.

Casita 17-11-13 (1)Beans-1st floor 25-07-13 Beans-2nd floor 25-07-13