Coronado House

La Casa Rojo

The home we moved into is offered through AirBnB as La Casa Rojo or The Red House. We are living in the town of Coronado de Vasquez. For me, the "towns" around San Jose feel more like burros ; similar to my experiences in New York City or Sydney, we are in the city, but the place is its own neighborhood that includes individual municipality. Think "The Bronx" or "Queens".

There are some red walls, red curtains, and other red touches throughout. Our host, Mauro, has been working to continue updating the place. We are basically the first tenants since Mauro (Mowdro) began the renovation.

Maybe this home is pretty typical of middle class living. It's not tiny and not huge, maybe about 1000-1200 square feet including the garage. The size is perfect for me to keep up with daily light housekeeping. One Tico friend describes the house as bonita and grande. There are two average size bedrooms and one smaller bedroom. This is considered "an older house" according to Mauro. Even though it is half the size of our Missouri house, there is plenty of space for the 4 or us to spread out. I feel so grateful to live in this beautiful home! 

Our Tico friend, David (pronounced Dah-veed with the accent on the 2nd syllable), says he is always tricked by the size of the homes because from the street you cannot guess how "deep" they extend. All you see is rows of double wide garage doors intermingled with gated in yards and driveways. Most properties have high sturdy fences and gates around them, some with razor wire on top. The schools, stores, houses, you name it, have high grated fences around them.

Ours is the one with the red door, called a "gate".

A glimpse of the neighborhood.

Looking from the corner down our dead-end street. 

Each room here has a window with glass shutters in the middle. Clark says the shutters are the HVAC system. Haha!! These are sizeable windows that let in an immense amount of light. Also, we can see into everyone's rooms and communicate no matter where in the house we are. 

Most the rooms have sky lights. Some skylights are smaller. There is SO much natural light we don't have to use the interior lights much during the day. I LOVE how bright and airy this home is!!  The ceilings are made to look like white wood but is really sturdy plastic panels.

Looking from the kitchen through the laundry room into our bedroom. You can see the glass shutters are open. Many of the walls are tiled.

Looking from my office all the way through the living room. There is a literal garden in the living room...right in the middle there! Also, couches behind the walls looking towards the TV. The front window looks into the enclosed garage. 

The entire house has tile floor. The bedrooms have beautiful wood looking floor tiles I have never seen in the states but are a fabulous idea!!

This is looking from the kitchen into the patio area. The window takes up the entire wall! There are small glass shutters at the top that open and close.

The patio garden is overgrown with "weeds" which I hope to tend to. Maybe we will get something pretty to plant there among the wildflowers. I saw a farmer vending some flowering plants recently. We will look for someone like him again once I get the "weeds" pulled. 

The red garage door is considered the "gate" and is the only way into the house unless someone can hoist themself over the back garden wall. Actually, there IS a walk-through door built into the garage door, but it is caged and padlocked. The garage door looks like a normal double wide door but opens side to side like a gate. The garage is the size of an oversized double garage and though it is completely enclosed in the house, it's not airtight. In fact, there is space between the roof on purpose to allow air to flow through the house. Imagine enclosed patio...in my opinion, its ingenious.  

Most "older houses" in Costa Rica do not have hot water in the kitchen. Ours is no exception.

There are 8 dishwashers: the same # as human hands. Figuring out how best to clean and sanitize the dishes has been a work of progress. I heat the water up in a kettle and pour it over the dishes to get them nice and steamy. I am looking for a basket of sorts for the sink since we can't seem to find a drain plug. Cross our fingers I can discover a little dish pan or similar. 

There is only a stove top, no oven. This seems unusual to us but here may be typical? The stove top is hooked to a propane tank under the cabinet much like a BBQ grill. It will run out and need refilled. If Ticos want to cook meat, they usually sauté it in a frying pan or outside on a grill, referred to as the "barbeque". It is customary to eat rice and beans with every meal and you don't need an oven for that. They use a rice cooker and a pressure cooker (or pot OR buy the beans pre-seasoned and cooked). 

These are "chubs" of beans. Think of a ground beef chub but multiply by 5 times the size and its squishy because there is beans and liquid inside. This chub is the size of a small watermelon.

We have a microwave and did consider buying a toaster oven for making quick foods like chicken nuggets or frozen pizza. The kids prefer these in the toaster oven...OR we will learn to eat the way Costa Ricans do: gallo pinto for breakfast, casado for lunch, and chifrio for dinner. All are served with rice and beans. We cooked up some mac and cheese and a kind of sausage Clark picked up. It was like a very cheap kebasa made with chicken, pork, and spicy peppers and spaghetti is next up.

Washing the laundry is an adventure too. We don't have hot water for the washer and our dryer is hooked to a propane tank that sits beside the dryer. When I want to dry clothes, I turn on the gas then turn on the dryer. I think the washer doesn't drain well because there is water on the floor and the dryer duct essentially blows into the house. To circumvent the warm moist air, I opened all the shutters and the patio door since the dryer is near the back. I would say I could run the dryer at night to heat the house some BUT the moisture makes it humid. Not the best for the fabrics around the place. 

Anecdotes:

The neighbors' cats enjoy coming out onto the roof. They can get loud with fighting but nonetheless entertaining, especially for Rosabel.

The walls are thin enough between the houses we heard someone practicing their trombone and a toddler having a tantrum.

A pretty bird that went to heaven. Ciao for now!