The Cabo Room, edited 9-5-08

The Cabo Room, edited 
9-5-08
We have this "sun porch" that has been used as a storage room since we arrived. It was filled with the land lady's stuff, left-behind missionary stuff, nobody's stuff, and accumulated dust and pealing paint from the wooden window sills.
Looking through the door into that "room" you can see the junk piled up so high I could hardly get in there to hand up the sheets on wash day. Well, a metamorphosis has occurred and that junk room has become the "Cabo" room. Here is how it came to be.

We both noticed that the sun comes in this south-facing room about 8 am and heats it up dramatically. Some days it will be over 100 F in there. Cindy mentioned that it would be nice to have a chair in there and enjoy the sunshine. Her wish has always been my command, so I started to look into the possibilities.

First, getting the space to have a chair at all. I found that much of the stuff in their belonged to the land lady and so I looked for a place to put it. on the right-hand wall (as you enter facing the windows) there is a floor to ceiling cupboard. I opened it to find a lifetime accumulation of the stuff women (well, any horder) just can't throw away. Broken lamps, blankets, nick-knacks, a boombox, several board games (in Russian), pink pillow shams, half a liter of motor oil, etc. I rearranged the contents and managed to get all of her stuff stuffed into that cupboard and nailed the doors to the floor.

Now with some room to move around in, I began to clean the floor and re-stack our stuff along the walls to clear the center for the chair that I have not found yet. She had a rowing machine and a microwave that would not go in the cupboard so I added them to the stack. Finally with a little creativity and some hot water, I created a space for the sun chair.

In the process I found what looked like the parts of a child's bed, or maybe a crib. It was made of very heavy wood partially covered with fabric. There was also two cushions that looked like they belonged to a chair. Putting the two together I decided this might be a chair of some description. Yep, with some imagination and leaning things together I figured out that this was indeed a rather large, kit chair. By that I mean one of those things you buy at IKEA or on the internet that comes in a box and you have to figure how to put pin A into slot B while holding the pieces together and turning locking nut C to lock the pin into the slot.

After the room is prepared, I took the chair parts into the living room, more space, and tried to figure out how it it went together. Most of the locking nuts were missing and all of the pins. I decided to use carriage bolds and nuts to replace them and with some fancy work with a pair of pliers and nails managed to assemble the chair temporarily.

So far, we have not been adventurous enough to find stores around our office or apartment where I can buy the stuff a do-it-yourself guy needs, so, I ask President Gushin ( I would really like to know his first name) to find the stuff I need every time I get a project. Several days later he showed up at the office with the bolts and I was ready.

One thing that I had not anticipated (among many) was that the hole formerly occupied by the locking nut was not large enough to accommodate the nut I had AND any kind of tool to tighten it onto the bolt. With some experimentation I found that I could flip the nut around with a screwdriver and thus got them "finger tight". An hours frustration and a lot of mild cursing finally found me sitting in a large, cushioned, slightly wobbly chair.

OK, we're in business, but wait. Have you ever heard about people building a boat in a basement? Well that's what I did in reverse. This chair weighs about 60 lbs and is a 36 inch cube of not very well connected parts and I have a 27 inch door to get it through. I tried it every way and being a cube, nothing worked. The only thing to do was, you guessed it, take it apart again. Another half hours of screwdriver work (I'm getting pretty good at it by now) and I carried the parts into the porch and reassembled it in record time.

OK, I am about three hours into this project and finally get the thing set up for Cindy to check out. She likes it. It is the most comfortable chair in the place. Good strokes. The only thing missing now is the sun. But wait, there is one more thing necessary, something to do with your feet. We need a stool or something. I got one of the stools out of the hall and now Cindy is comfortable in her new sun-room chair. But wait. There's more.

I have decided the only thing left to get is some sand. You can't pretend you're in Cabo with out some sand. I am considering the midnight construction supply bit like I've seen here other nights and get a box of sand from the construction site across the street. I probably won't, but a box of sand, 100+ temperatures, the laundry hanging overhead, and a great, comfy chair; IT'S CABO SAN LUCAS in Novosibirsk.

Here is the Cabo Room by night.

And here is it in full sun.
Pretty hot.
Pretty cool.

I even found some coconut syrup (mostly suger) and pineapple juice. With our new fridge we can have ice trays so it looks like Pina-Colata time.

What a room. What a country.

DS