Where I Bled

My hubby and I have been going to Calatagan three times a week since this project started and we've been discovering surprising finds here and there and this one is courtesy again of my childhood playmate, Mintoy who goes to Balayan once a week.  There's a very reasonably priced Persian restaurant in a small town you wouldn't imagine that it has the freshest, warmest pita bread that's great with their tasty hummus. 

 The bathroom's water tank is positioned where the X is.  My mom suddenly got paranoid that I was putting a huge tank on the roof and that it might fall on somebody.  Take note that at this point, she hasn't see what I'm building in Calatagan so to make sure she doesn't ask me to give the water tank a separate structure, I had the angle bar posts doubled.  When my mom finally saw the structures, she realized she wrongly thought that the giant plastic septic tank parked in our house was the water tank.  When she saw the actual water tank she agreed it was small enough and could indeed be supported by the steel bars.  

This again is a lesson for me not to rush into doing things just to avoid something.  In this case, I wanted to avoid what I perceived as a potential problem that wasn't even a problem because my mom didn't know the tank was small enough.  I should have at least first informed her of the actual capacity of the tank.  Ah well, that's why I'm doing this to learn lessons like these (common sense that's uncommon) and many others so that next time, things would really be better, if not totally free from mistakes. 

Once the carpenters moved these window frames in, they could finally leave Calatagan.  This is mostly where my budget bled -- the workers from Manila were too expensive as every two weeks or so they went back and forth the province and the city.  It would have been better if mostly local workers were employed with a good foreman from the city to oversee the work.  Again, another costly lesson learned but worth it because in the next month when I continue this project, I know what to do to control the costs.  We have to stop the project for a month because my husband, son and I are going to China.

I've already made my next strategy so that costs don't balloon and bleed me dry.  My mom has a wood workshop in Manila so the carpenters can do the windows, doors, furnishings and other small components there.  After a week and a half, we go to Calatagan for three days to put those components in place.  We go back to Manila for another week, continuing other components and then back to Calatagan for assembly.  In this way, operational costs won't be as high.  Material costs would also go down because there are a lot of free wood in my mom's workshop plus stuff from Manila hardware stores are cheaper and have better quality than in the countryside.

The bars that you see on the front actually form the patio roof which will be held by cylindrical hinges welded onto the main frame.  The welder cleverly formed them while temporarily stuck to the structure so that the measurements will be exact.

 The expansive window looks out through views like these.

When the patio roof is raised, it looks like this but those branches are just to drive a point to my mom who's seeing the built mobile homes for the first time today, August 22.  I wanted her to see the two structures and the added patio roof so she gets a sense that the whole thing is truly worthwhile and ultimately economical because it's half the price of a mobile home with four times the area.

After going through pictures of native curtains online, I found the one I wanted for the patio roof.  On the way through Tagaytay, there are lots of bamboo blinds but the rods are too close one another.  Tomorrow, I'll work this detail out with the carpenter on site.