January 2013

The pace of life picked up over the holidays and into January. Barbara's college roommate Pam and her husband George came down for a visit - their first time in Jamaica in 40 years! The fire season has started with both the wild grass fires and the intentional cane fires.

Tom oversaw getting a floor put into the Spiegel's store room, and then promptly filled it up with the materials for our guest room project. Our contractor Mr. Coke was tied up on another project, so our construction didn't start until the third week of January. In the meantime we had a visit from Bill and Lisa Turner. Lisa brought down a tile project with her and installed it on the downstairs wall of the house. Most impressive for a first project!

Tom's apprentice Binghi did a lot of the work on the braided arch, and then designed and is now finishing up a large section of the wainscoting in the bedroom. Barbara has been sewing up a storm, finishing a quilt top for our bed, and starting on new curtains for the living room.

Once construction got started on the guest room and second bathroom it has moved along quite quickly. The walls are most of the way up, and the bottom part of the columns for the extension of the porch are done. Next comes a lot of form work for the tops of the doors and windows, and then the really difficult part - forming up the four more catenary arches for the porch.

The weather has been great, as usual, with a little more rain than we got last year. One or two more rain storms would be nice, and prevent us from having to buy any water this year.

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