Building Our New Vacation Home in the Mountains. Part VIII. The roof goes on next week

This week was simply manic… Apart from the regular day to day business that must be conducted, we’re also trying to make sure our vacation home is being built properly and had to meet with dozens of craftsman and people at the hardware store 90 minutes away to keep that moving forward.

When we traveled out to visit the construction site on Thursday, everybody was there, people we had invited and people we had not expected. Our architect arrived, the man from the sawmill who makes the log panels turned up with his right hand man and, we had also arranged for two different companies to come and check out the home so that they could give us quotations for the windows and sliding doors.

The good news is that our new home is being built well however, we have been quite surprised at the speed with which our construction crew has progressed because after only eight weeks, they are just about ready to put the roof on…

This is good news really but we had thought we would have had more time to research which roofing materials would be most suitable, the roof is a very, very important part of the home but, we then had to rush to choose and get the home covered because that piercing hot Costa Rica sun is not good for the exposed wood.

We evaluated lots of different products. We looked at different kinds of asphalt roofing which is risky to install with laborers who have no experience with it – our construction crew is familiar with many products but not all – and too expensive to hire experts to install it.

As an environmentally friendly alternative, I considered faux tejas de barro (traditional clay roof tiles) which are made of recycled tires but they also turned out to be expensive even after they offered a number of discounts…

I discussed real clay roof tiles with various experts, they are attractive, they don’t have too long a life, they are also very fragile and transporting them up the rough roads of this mountain without breaking them would be an additional challenge.

Once everything is finished, we’re actually not going to see the roof much anyway so we ended up keeping it simple and decided to use the Metalco Metal Lock roof covering along with the ceiling and roof insulation from Prodexcr which should protect us from the rain, the scorching hot sun during the day, it should keep us warmer in the cooler evenings and prevent us from hearing the pounding rain during the heavy rains.

Keeping Constructions Costs Under Control

Labour: The agreement we have with the construction company to build our vacation home is for c45,000 per square meter (about $80M2) and if we hired extra ‘expert’ laborers then that would obviously add to the costs of finished home. So for a 210M2 home – the 167M2 home (1,797 square feet) plus the bodega, pila and garage), our labor costs should be (keep your fingers crossed) 210M2 x $80 = US$16,800

Log Panels: The agreement we have with the sawmill is for them to provide us the log panels for US$180M2 and with 154.6M2 of log panels, that will cost US$27,840

There are many other items we still have to buy but as you can see from our simple spreadsheet below, we’re doing quite well with keeping things under control…

Build Your Own Log Styled Home – My costs in USD so far:

As of the 28nd February 2009 the total cost so far in building this vacation or retirement home in the country has been $82,422.70 which includes the cost of the 5,000 square meters of land which – as part of our purchase negotiations – was made ready to build on.

You can see the previous articles here:

• Building Our New Vacation Home in the Mountains – Part VII – US$77,376.47 invested so far but the size has increased by about 25% and so will the cost…
• Building Our New Vacation Home in the Mountains – Part VI – US$66,791.47 invested so far.
• Building A New Log Styled Vacation Home in the Mountains – Part V – US$64,346.47 invested so far.
• Building A New Log Styled Vacation Home in the Mountains – Part IV – US$63,373.47 invested so far.
• Building A New Log Styled Vacation Home in the Mountains – Part III – Progress summary US$61,386.47 invested so far.
• Building A New Log Styled Vacation Home in the Mountains – Part II – A simple summary of progress so far…
• Building A New Log Styled Vacation Home in the Mountains – 1,775 square feet for under $100K
• You can see the home we built (and sold) previously at: Mountain Home For Sale By Owner – Fully furnished with one acre of land. Three online videos.

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Written by Scott Oliver, author of How To Buy Costa Rica Real Estate Without Losing Your Camisa and Costa Rica’s Guide To Making Money Offshore.

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.