Pics of my Kids, our Home including during Building, Pool Construction, and Pizza Oven Creation.

[Lancer]

This lasted about a week.



During this whole process I got to design Zkrib's roof system for him.



Construction started on the other building. This low level is the garage. The extention on the ocean side has the pump room and laundry room. There is packed limestone on the ocean side of both corners of the property to absorb shock when large waves come in.

[Lancer]

From the 4th...



A pic of all of us at the first Apolyton house.



Dolores and Abby! Abby is the girl we're adopting with her brother Augustine who came to us so sick. They're both wonderful kids...for some reason Abby ends up in more pics, maybe because she enjoys getting her pic taken so much.

[Lancer]

Abby got various awards in kindergarten, she was so happy with them.



No, I mean really happy!



Tatay and Augustine get together and watch Number Train, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and he particularly likes TuTiTu vids. He's daily catching up from his long list of ailments, his mental development is hitting stride...

[Lancer]

Best way to get kids to quiet down ever invented!



When the quake made the bridges impassable they redirected us over the hills on a back road to Tagbilaran and for a while I was glad they did.

This is as far as we got on the circumference highway.

[Lancer]

About that time we were about to get involved in the pizza oven and got involved in finding refractory materials. One important one is quicklime which you make by cooking limestone, one thing we have enough of. So, using the firebricks which would later go into the oven we built a kiln.

[Lancer]

I had bought a steel grate for another project but it didn't work out so I had it.



The air vent.



Gary the good doggy.

[Lancer]

It got bigger. You can see white limestone out the top. The problem was that there is no coal here that I could find so we used coconut coal and hardwood ipil ipil charcoal which don't burn as hot.



We clad the thing is used sheet metal which was from the round poured post projects.



Fire in the hole!

[Lancer]

Stuck a rolled sheet metal to the air intake and stuck a stand fan in that. Sand was used to block unwanted airflow. This is actually pics of 2 attempts mixed together.



The sheet metal cladding happened on the 2nd attempt.



Anyway complete failure, the limestone remained limestone. The only failure of anything I attempted on these buildings. When we attempted to slake it not much happened. I found buckets of lime putty wall finishing that has 95% refractory ingredients and lots of cooked lime so we went with that. Was a search to find the stuff but got lucky.

[Lancer]

Anyway, back to the important stuff.

Abby got shells! She collects them on the beach and loves to shows them off.





I love this pic. The world one day turned blue.

[Lancer]

A couple of gay friends and their amigos came to visit. The guy on the left does Dolores hair just the way she likes it. They also have a taste for blush wine over ice.



At my bar I was thrilled to have two of the premier bar tenders of Cebu, father and son, to teach me a few tricks of the trade. Look at what Raul set up on the bar. Margaritas! The ladies loved them.



The lower bridge which connects the two decks to Coco Island, the spiral stairs and points North. (Third floor bridge.)
One of the projects that keep getting put back is the Coco Island water feature. I ran a 3/4 pipe from the pump room, and electric as well, and am going to make a couple waterfalls in a fantasy jungle there. For now the kids shoot baskets to the Coco in Coco Island, but that will be moved to its own hoops oriented post when we do the kids water slide.

[Lancer]

The birthday cake we had brought in from Cebu for Dolores's birthday. It was beyond good, it was the best cake I ever had. This is "Aunt Nina", who provided for her when she had less than nothing, so I love her too.



The cupcakes were gone by the time I broke away from my selfless duties at the bar.



I could not determine which of these potential culprits absconded with them.

[Lancer]

A pic of the coronation ceremony for Abby's kindergarten. Filipinos love pageantry and no excuse to put on a show is too small.

Abby second from left.





We had to do something up there, don't recall what.

[Lancer]

Augustine sleeping above the beach, nice cool spot.



Teaching Augustine to walk...

[Lancer]

The swimming pool build. Before...





After...



Before...





After...

[Lancer]

A bunch of kids sitting on the waver/chair. This part hangs out over the beach or ocean depending on the tide and I wanted to weight test it.



Couple more pool build pics...

Coco Island



Set glass blocks in the pool concrete with no clue as to whether they would work, but they're okay. These are set in the ceiling of the tunnel which goes under the pool and allows people to go out to the ocean. No blocks yet but you can see the frames...

On the left side in the pool floor you can see metal bars coming out, in front of Noype who is tying bar. This is a post and a large foundation is a couple meters down. I had the bars bent over and covered in limestone and then cemented over that and then tiled in. This is the strongest of 3 posts which will come up in a triangle and accept a water slide for the kids. All the pipes are buried where they need to be, just waiting. Since then I've found lightweight materials for making the slide. We'll use perlite instead of sand and have an engineer friend with a rock crusher turn pumice into gravel, and then normal portland cement. That will make the slide a lot easier to carry. I found the perlite and pumice while working on the pizza oven and said...hhheeeeyyyy.



Pipes for the pool (main drain and backwash) come out at the future location of the pump room.



The tunnel starts taking shape.



Four of the key guys that made it happen. Lancer, (design) Sho, (mason and bro in law) Fidel, (exceptional carpenter) and Peter, (an amazing laborer).