New Furniture

 Many people suffer for years with their furniture here, especially living room furniture. Most of the couches and chairs we've experienced or heard about are wood with cushions -- basically outdoor patio furniture -- and uncomfortable. Or often the furniture is cheaply constructed with inferior materials that quickly wear out; cushions that compress and lose their cushioning,  fabrics that wear through. Our living room set in Jucanya was worn and stained, and we mentally cringed every time we sat on it.

Furniture is a big part of making a comfortable home. And  a comfortable home is one of the keys to enjoying your stay and making it long term.

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Our living room set.

There are several stores in Panajachel that sell furniture, but for sake of simplicity we bought from only one. This limited our selection to three living room sets, three price ranges; we bought the most expensive because it seemed the most comfortable.

Our new plush chair and our new TV with blue ray stereo system.

New dining room table and chairs. Cardboard Noah's ark in middle of table was consructed for a toy animal set Lydia just got. The kids have played here but hasn't been used for dining yet!

Outdoor hammock chairs. There are also two lie-down hammocks in the bag on the plastic chair. Haven't figured out a place to hang them yet; the trees in the yard aren't conveniently spaced. 

The old outdoor 'barby'.

We can smell carne [meat] roasting on an open flame from some of the hotel and small restaurants around our house. Really makes me want to fire this baby up! Now if I can only find decent meat and charcoal...

New washer and dryer.

To hook up the washer was relatively straight forward -- only had to replace the two-prong outlet for a three-prong outlet and connect the hoses. The dryer was almost a week long process: searching at 5 or 6 hardware and construction supply stores;  figuring first one way and then another way to vent it depending upon what I found available; communicating with our LP gas supplier to install a new tank, hose, and regulator. It's vented through the window screen; not ideal but works.

New L.P. gas supply for the dryer.

Washer hoses are hooked up into the wall behind.

New stove. Nice!

Purple stool is Lydia's.  It's supposed to be in the bathroom for washing hands at the sink, but ends up all over the house.

Bottles on the countertop to the right of the stove are STRICTLY medicinal!

New hose and regulator on our L.P. gas supply for stove and hot water. This is our third tank of gas in the six weeks we've been in this house! A bath tub and washer really add to the consumption.

The old stove. Broken grates and erratic flames.

Old built-in double wall oven and broiler. We kept smelling rotten dead animal odors until we figured this had a pilot light that needed delighting. Haven't used this yet, but having a pizza party tonight may try it.

Brand new state of the art refrigerator with linear converter [means it monitors and regulates how hard the compressor works depending upon actual need]. The doors beep if you [kids!] leave them open too long.

Let there be light!

Note the "semi-automatic" ice cube maker under the shelf in the freezer. Manually fill the trays with water, wait to freeze, flip a lever, and the cubes [hopefully] drop into the bin underneath. We'll see! 🤔

The old fridge didn't seal tight, so the freezer iced-up solid and dripped water across the floor constantly. It was dark and sort of scary inside -- what is THAT in there! I didn't realize how bad I hated that fridge until we replaced it.

There are still some furniture pieces that I would like to get: a decent coffee table; a larger tv stand; desks for study and play in the bedrooms; a work cart in the kitchen. But all-in-all we've been settling in and getting more comfortable.