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Some Projects at Home

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There have been a few things I’ve been thinking of doing, so I decided to finally move forward. My neighbor’s brother does all kinds of work. I was super pleased with a bit of work he’s done in the past, and he was even better than expected this time.

My first thing was a place for the trash. People don’t seem to use trash cans here, but if you leave bags in the open sometimes the dogs get to them. Some people have a metal basket thing on a post a few feet off the ground. Others have a little “trash house” which is what I choose to do. I didn’t realize what a large amount of work it would take though. Amaris came by Monday to discuss the work I wanted, and then later with the list of materials needed so I could pay for them. Tuesday morning a truck delivered the materials, concrete blocks, cement rocks, sand, and a few odds and ends.

Tuesday the work started. He dug out an area with little trenches for the footers, mixed cement and started building the walls with the blocks, and put in a cement floor. Wednesday he worked on covering the walls with cement, and he made a wood frame for the top with a supported wood floor. Thursday he made the cement top and put another layer of smooth cement on the walls.

Saturday he came with his brother who does welding. They cut the metal bars and welded them together to make the gate on the front. Amaris is in the brown shirt and his brother is in the green shirt.

On Monday Amaris painted the gate with primer and removed the wood framing from the top.

I should take notes so I’m sure I have my days right, but I do know this was the sequence of work. The final step was painting the whole thing, black for the gate, and the house paint color for the rest. He had gone behind to cover the back wall with smooth cement, which left some spots of gray on the fence so he painted that also. Now the fence behind the structure looks brand new. This is how he is. He leaves everything as perfect as possible.

Then, we put our trash in the little house! When the trash men came the trash was right there waiting for them, and we didn’t have to run out when we heard the truck coming. 😊 Now, when we have a full bag we can just put it out there instead of leaving it sitting around in the carport.

The next project was putting some screen on the bottom of the fence. Some of the neighbor dogs are small enough to fit between the bars of the fence. They are nice dogs and we are friends, but I’d rather not have them inside messing with our trash, drinking our dog’s water, and making her uneasy. We choose some inexpensive, plastic, but sturdy screen material. The next day we discovered that a dog had managed to push some of it loose on the edge of the gate. So, Amaris got a length of metal screen, painted it black, and installed it on the gate. So far, it’s been fine and nobody has managed to get anything loose.

I have some yucca that has been in the yard for too long, and some big bijao plants that just appeared a few years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calathea) The leaves are used for wrapping tamales. Mine keep spreading though, and they look bad if you don’t cut off the deal leaves now and then. The yucca just wants to spread out all over the place. Amaris made short work of cleaning out the whole area! He can do more in a day than I can do in a month. I made a comment that other parts of the yard also look messy, so he volunteered to return with his machine (weed wacker) and clean the whole yard.

All his work has been a huge help, and he charges less than I think he should (but manual labor is very inexpensive here). I’ll definitely be calling on him again when I need things done. He’s easy to be around, doesn’t talk much but laughs easily when you get to know him. He’s picky picky and wants everything as perfect as possible. He cleans up after himself and put tools away neatly at the end of the day. And, he knows how to do all kinds of things. We’re getting to the age when we don’t want to do as much as we used to, so I’m really happy to have a relationship with this good man.

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