Project #1 - Courtyard

1.  COURTYARD – At first I had thought of only putting the adoquines/cobblestones in the area in front of the house – that is to say – between the front entrance and the house – which isn’t all that big of a space.  However, as we were standing out in the patio this week looking at the entire area in front of the old Clinic building, we are now considering laying adoquines over this entire area (the area would be bordered by the albergue, the Clinic, the house and the front gate, as well as the area between the house and the front gate.  That would make this quite a big project.  The more I think about it, the more I think we probably want to cover just about all of that area.  The only two materials that I think we need for this job are sand and adoquines.  As far as equipment goes – we are checking on where we can get a Bobcat.  I have my doubts about finding one here in San Lorenzo, but we haven’t exhausted all our options yet.  If we can’t rent one here in San Lorenzo, we would have to rent one from Ibarra.  Besides the Bobcat, I need to be told exactly what else you will need – such as (?) shovels, hand tools, whatever you need to pack down the sand, etc.  We have very little here in the way of tools, so the more specific you can be with me, the better.  We do have a couple of fairly well stocked hardware/supply stores, but I would rather have everything here when you get here – instead of having to go look for things after you arrive.  Another question about laying the adoquines.  I don’t know if you remember the path from the pedestrian gate to the front door of the Clinic, that is paved with adoquines.  Along the edges of this walkway is a small cement border to maintain the edge of the walkway in place – to keep the border adoquines from falling out or slipping away.  I imagine we will need to do something similar on the borders of the area that we pave with adoquines.  That being the case, will we need some wood to form the borders, will we need a small amount of the “mixings” for cement?  Let me know what you are thinking about how to secure the borders.  I sent a few pictures earlier.  One other thing that we’re not sure about yet – if we do the whole area between the buildings, we’re not sure if we want to take out the adoquines that are there currently, so that we can re-do everything, or if we should leave them there.  We also talked about leaving some “holes” in the adoquines where we could put trees.  If we do that, then another thing we have to think about is how those “holes” would be framed.  There are also adoquines in the entrance area just in front of the albergue.  That area is on an incline (there used to be a step there – and a group several years ago took the step out and replaced it with a small ramp of adoquines) and we would have to decide what to do with that area – leave it alone and bring adoquines right up next to it – or re-do that area in the process.  As far as having a supply of adoquines on hand – we had an excellent group several years ago that did several different projects for us.  They were here for two weeks. One of the things they did was lay adoquines in a small area between the ministry area and the back of the albergue.  We bought those rectangular adoquines from a place here in San Lorenzo.  It was a bit of a nightmare.  Most places here don’t have a lot of stock on hand, so they have to order the adoquines for you.  That’s not so bad, but you often can’t be sure if you will get what you ordered for the agreed upon date.  We were promised the adoquines on a certain date, and the date kept getting pushed back and pushed back.  They finally arrived on the evening before the group was to leave San Lorenzo.  These guys were awesome – and the ended up hanging lights out near the work area and working past midnight to get the adoquines put in.  I say all that just to let you know that I think it is going to be much wiser to buy our adoquines in Ibarra and have them delivered here.  We won’t be able to rely on a place here to have stock on hand so that we can go get some more if we need them.  So – we will have to do our best to measure the area that we decide to cover – and then make sure that we buy enough to cover that area.  Dámarys and Loida will be in Quito the first part of this week.  They are planning a trip to Ibarra on Tuesday to visit places where we could buy adoquines and figure out all the details, and they will also look for places where we could rent a Bobcat.  OK – I guess that’s enough about the courtyard for now.