It was time for house renovations! We provided the contractor with a list of all the things that needed to be fixed.  He came back with a detailed quote which we pulled apart, and finally deciding to do a subset that fit in our budget.  We came to an agreement and the work was to be completed in about a month.

I selected colors for the exterior.  In Puerto Rico, houses come in all sorts of colors. I decided on blue and white, which my Puerto Rican friend said was a perfect Democratic choice.  Each room had its own warm color.  It was going to be a colorful Caribbean home.  I tried to be as specific as possible, as I did not want any mistakes due to miscommunication.

I was anxious to go Puerto Rico, but as was custom, we spent Christmas with the family.  Christmas was a perfect time to start shopping for the new home. So many sales. But how does one take all this stuff across so many miles. I discovered that we could use boxes maxed to Frontier’s check-in luggage requirements. So I packed and re-packed these boxes till they were perfect – under 62 linear inches (that’s length + width + depth) and no heavier than 50 pounds.  Don’t you love those handles fashioned by my creative husband?

Mid-January, we left for the enchanted island.  The work should have been completed, but of course it was not. So, we again stayed in our friends home, and traveled to our casa and worked on it.

I was eager to spend my first night in our new home but without basic utilities like water, electricity and gas, it was simply not possible. So we worked until it was dark and before the mosquitos could eat us alive (the screens still had holes) we departed.

When we were not working, we were shopping. We were either in Costco, Sam’s or Home Depot. I was super driven. I wanted all the bedrooms livable as soon as possible. So we bought beds, mattresses, pillows, side tables…. While I don’t regret any particular purchase, I could have taken my time. It was not till Sept that year when the whole family came and all the bedrooms were used.

We bought one bed and two side tables from IKEA.  The IKEA showroom in San Juan is probably one of the smallest in the world.  They take your order then schedule a time for you to come back and pick it up.  I know there is a warehouse somewhere but who knows, maybe you order gets shipped from Miami… Anyway, what happens when two tired people work on assembling IKEA furniture?  You guessed it – a full blown, loud fight.  It was our first fight in the house, well on the island. The windows were open and I’m sure the neighbors heard it. Guess we got that out of the way.  Anyway, Santosh was unhappy that we did not have any fun on this trip and it was work, work, work.  Project creep as he likes to say.  So we did take our last afternoon off and enjoy the beach at Rio Mar.