Recent Guesthouse maintenance projects

Recently, we've had 4 different maintenance projects at the Guesthouse.  2 of them were planned upgrades and 2 of them were all-of-the-sudden fixes.  The 2 planned upgrades were the basketball goal and the stairs leading up to the "terraza" (the roof above the garage).

First, the basketball goal:  The old goal had a wooden frame/structure and was looking quite fragile in many areas.

 
We replaced it with a metal structure so that it would last longer.  Augusto, our empleado, cut and welded the metal to form the structure that we needed.  We replaced the backboard with another wooden one.

Raising the new goal up was challenging.  We used a pulley (not sure the name, but the kind that has a wheel/gear and a handle that you can crank).

After Augusto put one bolt in each side of the frame, he felt like it was secure enough to stand on and remove the rope from the pulley.  Needless to say, I was a little worried.

After releasing it from the pulley, we were able to secure the new frame to the wall and to the roof beams. We spray painted the old rim so we could use it again. 

We painted the key and free-throw line.

It turned out really nice.

Second, the stairs leading up to the roof garage:

Both of these pictures are the "after", I didn't take any "before" shots.  The railing needed a new paint job and the wooden steps were really old and unstable.  Augusto bought the boards, cut them, stained them, and secured them to the metal stair frame.  I sanded and repainted the railing.

Now, the unplanned maintenance:  

First, our stove quit working. It is an old (over 20 years) Kenmore gas oven and it was worked really well for so long.  A few days ago Hannah used the oven to make a cheese dip for our afternoon prayer meeting. After the prayer meeting, she was going to make some brownies for the mission team that was here, but the oven didn't heat up.  The burners worked and the broiler worked, but the oven didn't. 

We called a repair man to come over and look at it.  After a few days and two replacement parts, we had our oven again.  It is working great again.  Since we use the oven most mornings, it was a challenge to prepare the breakfasts without it.  We had to adjust the menu we had planned.

The cost of labor here is quite a bit cheaper than in the U.S. - in this case, the repair man had to come to our house 4 different times and in total spent a few hours here, and charged us $65.00!

Second, the day after the oven stopped working, we had a wet floor in the kitchen in front of one of the kitchen sinks.  We called the previous Guesthouse Coordinators (the Chambers) and they said that they had water come up one time when they were here.  They put towels down and dried it up and the water didn't come back.  They suggested we try the same thing and wait before calling a plumber.  Well the water kept coming back - we replaced the towels on the floor several times over a couple of days.  We were finally able to get ahold of the maintenance guy the Chamber's recommended to us and he came over.  I showed him where the water was coming up and he started chiseling away.  Below the tile are a few inches of cement - not exactly ideal for making plumbing repairs.  As he was chiseling and breaking away the tile a lot of water started spraying up and around the kitchen.  Turns out he put a hole in the pipe when he was pounding away. He then found the "real" problem, which was on the other pipe that he hadn't damaged.  So he ended up having to do a repair on both pipes.  He did a good job and now we have no leaks. 

The completed job. Well, not totally complete, we still need to cover the pipe with flooring.

It was a quite a week - we were busy with a mission team and had two sudden maintenance issues, both of which really put a hamper on serving the guests.