Transcription
So, building a house on the top of a mountain in Panama might be one of the hardest places in the world to build a home. It's not just the massive earthquakes, but also the volcanoes around us, the swarms of termites, the 200 in of rain we get every year. And we have to build our house to stand up to all of that.
We've been working on this home for 18 months now, pouring the foundation, raising steel I beams, installing the roof, and building a garage under our home. And in this one, we're finishing a massive step of this home build. And then she waddled away. Waddle waddle waddle to the very next day. But of course, without a few bumps and bruises along the way. I actually have to go to the hospital right now. By the way, if you see Kaye with a little limp, he has a broken foot right now. It's definitely broken. It's swollen up like a balloon, dude.
But nothing is going to stop us from finally and officially placing the last I beams of our whole home. Today we are going to be making our house bigger. We've been working on the foundation for our front patio for about a month now, and today we're actually going to build it.
What a day we got to build a patio, huh? Check out that rainbow. We're also going to be getting pilted in the face with rain all day. Uh, we get this kind of sideways rain here, and we got that going on today.
I know what you guys are thinking. Like, why, why are you making your house bigger? This is, this is part of the original plan, you guys. All right. So, we're going to have a front patio, which is basically going to be the entrance way into our house. There's going to be a lot of activities that are going to be participated out here on this front patio. So, it is not going to be a waste.
And Kaylee has dreams of having a front patio with us having a couple rocking chairs out here growing old together.
That's right. Let, let a girl dream. All right. All right. The first thing that we need to do is fill in these trenches with dirt.
Yeah. So, it's going to be a big skid steer day. I figure that would be a thing for you, huh?
Yes. Love it. Oh, I got to get my headphones lock in, baby.
Before we close all this up, can we just take a moment of appreciation for this foundation? This is going to be the last bit of foundation that we do for this house. And once we close this up, you're never going to see this foundation again. They hating trying to catch me dirty. Trying to catch me. There's a lot going on right now. We got Enrique welding the plates onto the concrete columns that we built. The guys are trying to move the concrete mixer. And I think I got to get over there and help him. Vinos chosing muscular is different. Oh, you're done on the winkle. You're done. So, what Enrique is doing right now is tacking all of these plates onto the pieces of rebar that are protruding through just to get these plates level before we lay down the final weld. This is what we're going to be welding the I- beams onto. That's going to connect from here over there to the house. George just given the columns just a little level check with these metal plates on top.
Perfect though, bro. Is it good? Probably the end. Luckily, we still have a lot of I-beams left over, but unfortunately, they're all too short, so we're going to have to weld some together. This one beam is 10 cm short, which is less than 5 in. We need to add on this much. And to do that, I need to chop this whole beam up and make a overlap. So, it goes like this.
Wait, no, just for that short amount of. Yeah, it's got to hold concrete. We haven't done I-beam stuff in probably like two months because we've been so focused on getting all the block laid for the garage.
What? What? What do you want? What do you want? Huh? You want me to scratch your butt? All right. All right. All right. Oh, scratch her butt. Scratch the butt. cut you a puzzle piece.
All of this just to add that honey. That's kind of. There's a right way to do it and there's a wrong way to do it. And around here, we do it the right way. We used to not do things the right way. But 7 years later, we've learned cuz if you don't, you usually pay for it one way or another. So, we're going to put this I-beam up on this I-beam here because we need a straight edge to be able to weld this little piece onto the edge here. Whoa, baby.
Got it. All right. Just going to put one tack right here and then one tack right here. We're going to have Eberto finish welding this up and then Carlos is going to paint it with the rust converting paint so that Jord. I'm on cutting duty. You guys, I don't trust that. That angle grinder is so dangerous. I don't want anyone else using it but me. If you do one wrong move, you're going to slice your leg and I don't want to bring anyone to the hospital today. And I'm gonna go ahead and hop on the skid steer and just keep back filling all of these holes here because then it'll make our working space over here welding in all these I beams much more enjoyable. This plate is all welded into place now. So I need to just prep this plate to get this beam that the guys are working on over here and get it into place. In order to do that, some of these welds are built up a little bit. So, I just need to grind these down nice and smooth. Dang, is that a lot of work just to add on a little bit of beam, but you got to do what you got to do. Now, we need to lift this heavy beam up and put it over there. This beam is probably like 300 lb. It's very heavy. Oh no. Oh no. Do you see this, Carlos?
Try to get in there, honey. THERE IT IS. SO, we just got to put a couple of wedges under here just to get it nice and level.
Yeah. Poito, you want to see how you point? How Latinos point. You go. Want to see it again? You go in the direction you want. Bueno, chos. All right. This beam's looking beautiful. Now, all I've left to do is weld it in place. And this is going to take a while, especially if the welder is not going to cooperate. Welding might be the slowest part of building this home and what slows us down the most cuz with every single weld, we're doing a double pass on these I- beams. And that means we have to go all the way around. So when you add it all up, it's something like 64 in of weld at each connection point for each beam.
Nice. Perfecto. We're now welding in I-beam number three out of four that we're going to have to go this way for the deck. The only way we can make reasonable progress is for all of us to have our own jobs. So, the guys are really great at placing the I-beams and welding them into place. And I'm just been cutting all these beams cuz using this angle grinder is so dangerous.
What was that statistic you told me the other day about losing muscle after 30? Once you turn 30, it's all downhill from there, baby. You start losing 3 to 5% of your muscle mass every decade if you don't strength train. You guys, I'm going through my midlife crisis actively. I'm in my midlife crisis phase. I told my mother the other day, I'm middle-aged. We've had a goal for 2026 to take our physical health a lot more seriously. And we have this gym here. And Kaylee uses it a good amount, but I don't. You see, I have this accountability issue. Like I um, I sometimes have a hard time holding myself accountable to that cuz just sitting on the couch and chilling after a day of work is really nice. So, what we did to combat that is we started using Train Well, which is a one-on-one remote personal training service.
So, the first thing that happened is we both got our own personal trainer. I got signed up with Nate and Kaylee got Chris. And we first started off with a one-on-one meeting with them, which was awesome because never before I talk about my physical goals, what my schedule looks like, places where I have pain, places that I want to get stronger. Okay, here we go. Today is day one of training with Train Well. I'm so excited for this. And Nate put together a whole training program for me with all that information that's designed just for me.
Nice job. Press submit to finish. Man, what a good workout. And the best part is that you're following along the exercise with videos on how to do each exercise. You are in direct contact with your personal trainer. So throughout the exercise, you can even ask questions or say like, "Hey, okay, I need to modify this weight or this didn't really feel good. Can we modify this exercise?" And not only that, but for me, what really helped is just that accountability, knowing that Nate is going to be messaging me the next morning or later that day and be like, "Hey, like, how was your workout?" That for me is that just that extra push that I need to just keep myself accountable. And so far, I haven't missed a workout yet. For so many of us, I feel like there's always a voice in the back of our heads like, "Go to the gym, get your workout in. It's time to start taking better care of yourself. Now is your chance." So, if you guys are interested in checking out Train Well, click the link down below. You will take a quiz that will match you up with a personal trainer, and you guys are going to get the first 14 days for free. So, thank you so much, Train Well, for sponsoring this video, helping us on our health journey, and also helping me stay a heck of a lot more accountable.
I think we just need to take a moment of appreciation for Roberto's glasses. He looks like a mad scientist. It's now time to start measuring the I- beams that are going to be going this way. Sometimes the hardest part is just moving the I beams cuz when these things are complete, each one weighs over 1,000 lb. So, the guys are just going to finish and welding those beams into place. And in the meantime, I need to start now cutting the perpendicular pieces. And these are a little bit tricky cuz they have notches in the top of them. And I'll show you why in a sec. But I need to cut a notch that's 7 cm and 1 mm. Believe it or not, that precise. Right on the top of this flange here. Okay. Now, we need to take this piece and bring it over there. Well, the hard part is done getting these big beams on. That's the hard part for now. It's going to get harder in a little bit, but now we can chill a little bit while we put these perpendicular pieces in. This is a little bit easier. But eventually, we're going to have to go vertical. We're building a roof over this deck. Over this next day, all I'm going to be thinking about is how we're going to lift these large vertical beams ourselves without the backho. So, we'll get a little plan together, but just know all this welding is going on. That's what I'm thinking about. And we're going to have to put those vertical beams right here, here, there, and there going up like 8 ft.
So cute. Ever since we installed the stairs in the garage, every once in a while, just like the dogs will randomly go up onto the house and just hang out up there, and it makes me so happy. These guys are kicking me out. They don't like it when I lift stuff with them cuz I'm taller than them, so it makes it all imbalance and they want to just do it themselves. I mean, I'm cool with it, but I feel bad. Fert. We're always fighting the struggle of trying to cut the I-beams tight enough that they'll sit into place, but not too tight that we can't maneuver them. And it usually just turns in to us smashing it for a while with a hammer because we usually cut them a little bit too big. This is what happens when you cut a beam just a little too perfect. It's like right on the money. It's nice when you have a little bit of space.
Level's looking good. Now it's time to weld it in. We're just going to tack on some stitches. Um, I mean here they call them stitches. We're going to tack weld just this beam into place. We're going to be on beam installation duty. Enrique over here is going to be on weld all day and just lay great beads. He's our best welder that we got. So, he's just going to be welding all day while we go for it and get all these beams in. Everyone has their role here for putting in these I beams. And although I beams take a pretty decent amount of time to put in, there's a lot of steps at hand to just get one piece of an I-beam in. But we're really being as as efficient as we can possibly be. Beam number two tacked in.
The rain's starting to come in a bit. I'm getting that sideways rain. But the good news is this is the last piece on this row. As long as it fits. Oh yeah, man. Just putting these I beams up is bringing me back to that part of the house build and just how brutal it is. It's just such a brutal way to build. Every cut is tough with all the angles. The beams are so heavy. It's dangerous. You're using a big old angle grinder that can kick on you, that is kicking on you while you're cutting. You drop it on your foot, you're going to break something. I'm excited for this to be done. Guys who are working with this kind of material day in and day out, a lot of credit to you guys, cuz man, building with wood would be infinitely easier. One day, Kaylee and I will build a house out of wood, and I'm so stoked for that day. But for now, we're stuck building a house out of metal, out of these massive I-beams, standing in massive scrap metal pits, and that's just how it's going to go. moving 400 pieces of metal around just trying to be as safe as possible. We feel comfortable building this way now. And it was intimidating to start, but now I feel like we're we're right at home with building with I-beams. So, this is your room right here. And you're going to walk out your door and then you can go on this patio if you want.
And that patio. This patio. Bye you guys. Love you. Beautiful day we're having here. Matt. Oh my god, it's raining so hard. Um, I actually have to go to the hospital right now. Nothing uh, nothing crucial. Nothing nothing too bad. Wo. I went to a dermatologist not too long ago. This one here just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And the dermatologist space was like, "You should really get it removed." Something about melanoma, blah blah blah. So, this all happened in the States. I was going to say like the health care there. Like what the heck is going on there with healthcare, you guys? It's like I don't have health insurance there cuz I live in Panama and I'm not rich to be able to afford health insurance in the United States cuz it's just outrageously expensive. I went to the dermatologist in the States to first get this checked out. $300. Saw her for all the 90 seconds. She referred me to a plastic surgeon. Had the appointment with the plastic surgeon in Vermont. $700 to do nothing. They, they just, just to look at it. So, it was already $1,000 in the hole and I just called the whole thing off. I'm like, "This is getting outrageous. You guys haven't even removed the thing yet. You want me to come in again?" It's like, "It's a freaking It's this. It's a It's a It's a mole, you guys." And like just felt like they were trying to bleed me dry. And so, I'm going to get it removed here in Panama. And I'll show you guys the process. So, I'm down here in the city. This is Dave. And there's a few hospitals here. There's a public hospital that you can go to and everything's free. This is the private hospital here called hospital teri.
How are you? Man, I'm just shocked with how affordable and how easy that is. 200 bucks, you guys. In and out. 15 minutes. It's one of the things I love most about living here is all the basics. Like the things that you basically need to just get by are all really affordable. I feel like anytime I go back to the States, I just get like my jaw hits the floor with just how things are getting so out of control with just the basics of things that you have to pay for just to just to get by. So yesterday was our one-year anniversary. Can you guys believe it? It was a year ago.
Like how? No, we got married. How? But congrats on one year of marriage, honey. One down, 49 to go. 49. That's what I'm pulling for. That's what you know. I'm trying I'm trying to live to a 100, honey. I don't know about you. If I go n if I got If I get to 90, that's above the the the statistical average. I'm feel I'm not I'm not going to get too greedy, honey. I want to get to 90 and anything over then that's going to be bonus points. 49 to go, baby. It's so funny, too, cuz like we've been together for 10 years. But it still sounds so like even though it's been a year that we've been husband and wife, like when I say like, "Oh, my husband." I'm like, "Oh, my husband." Like that word just sounds so more power. It's more powerful.
It does sound more powerful. I like it. So, we're making some pretty good headway on all of the framing for our front deck here. And we are so close to being able to get all of this metal deck on, which means we're even closer to getting the concrete pad poured for our first floor of our house. That is so exciting. We have this little bumpout right here that extends our deck space up to about here. And that's for a lot of reasons. It's to help water not sit on the foundation. And so all when the water drains off, it's not just hitting the footer here. So we need to tack this piece on first and then we'll run the piece going that way.
This is how it says do it in the OK handbook, honey, in case you're wondering. Yeah, I'm sure. Especially here in Panama. I mean, it might not be the safest, honey, but that's dang level, huh? Is going to weld this little piece in now. And now we just need to measure out the piece that's going to connect this little guy over there. 7 267. The I-beams need to slide into each other and the flanges will get in the way. So for every I-beam where there's a connection point, we need to cut the flanges off and cut it just right so the one I beam will slide right into the other and then we can weld it in place. Don't they gusta? I put on some like super old school like traditional Panameanian music. It's called Kumbia and I've been listening to it a little bit and I asked these guys if they like it and they're like, "No, bro. We listen to reggae."
So, we're going to give you guys a little tour cuz sometimes when things are just beams, it's really hard to envision what the heck is going on over here. It's pretty cool standing up here. This is my first time up here. But this is our main entrance. I mean, not this. This is our front patio, but you basically walk in the door over here, and this right here is like the main entrance to our house. All of these are three pane sliding glass doors. So, the whole idea is we can open the whole house up. So, this whole section here are three big panes of glass that we can push all the way over. The same thing with this section here. We could slide all three over and open this up. And this section here, too. So, the whole front of the house we can basically completely open up. And the whole idea is we can have this idea where it's like we can open the house up. We can close it down.
Exactly. Like an inside outside kind of thing. When it's super windy like today, we could shut it shut the thing down. Shut it down, baby. Because this three panel, three glass sliding doors sections is also on the other side of the house as well. So when it's beautiful out, we can have this like incredible cross breeze ventilation going on. And then eventually we'll have stairs obviously that lead down to where kind of this big driveway parking section is going to be as well. And this section here also has a roof on it. So now that we're finishing up with the beams in a minute, we're going to start going vertical again. Honey.
I know you thought that the vertical beams were done. But they're not. Luckily though, these are much smaller. These are only going to be about eight feet tall. So this beam, this little overhang here is tacked in, ready to go. The guys are basically just going to focus on welding. There's going to be like four more hours of just straight welding and this thing's going to be done. We We don't want to torture you guys with that cuz it's like, "All right, how many welding shots can there be?"
I think it'd be a lot more fun if we went swimming. You want to go swimming? Yeah. I thought we were going to go hiking and then swimming at the end in a waterfall. Let's go, baby. Let's go. You've been doing such a good job at school. I think what we should do is not go to school today. instead. Well, she likes that part. Instead, what do you think about going swimming in a waterfall? You want to do that? Is that a yes or would you rather go to school? A yes. We're playing hookie. Woo! Skipping school, baby. Look how sick all that looks from right here, honey. That's where you can really take it in. Like look at everything that we've done.
I know. You forget when you're in it. It's like man, these days are gonna start being far and few. At least this time of day because rainy season is approaching. You know, I got to say it is pretty damn cool that we live in probably the best coffee region in the whole world, which means there's quite a few decent cafes in town to fuel up on some caffeine before we go.
Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. I love your commitment to the Cheers, honey. And this drive we're on right now, this road is the road that we drove on our motorcycle that made us fall in love with this town. You're so right. And this and this is the hike that we did. And the whole time we did this hike, we were just thinking about moving here. And as cliche as it sounds, like even with it being almost 7 years later, it's going to be 7 years this year, honey. It truly feels like it just gets better and better every single year. The lost waterfalls. Look at this bridge, honey. Don't mind the hole. It's just just a little hole. No worries. By the way, if you see Kaye with a little limp, she has a broken foot right now. And I'm not over exaggerating. Like, she literally has a broken toe. And this is her idea. And I told her like, "Honey, we don't got to go hiking. Like, you got a broken toe." And she said, "I'll be I'll be good. I'll just limp through it." It happened. I I'm not sure if it's broken. It's like. It's definitely broken. It's swollen up like a balloon, dude. It's like totally black and blue. Oh, no. Get under the tree a little bit. If you're afraid to do anything in the rain in Pano, you're never going to do anything at all. It's going to keep moving. It's starting to rain, though.
When Jordan and I first met, I used to hate hiking. It's almost a deal breaker for me. I would complain the whole time. And now I'm pushing Jordan. I'm like, "Honey, I got a broken 2:00 on a Monday. My foot's broke broken. Let's go. Let's go, baby." Whoa. Well, the plan was to come swim in here in some of these pools, and you have to do it when it's not too rainy. And clearly, it's rainy. Like clearly north of here up there it's raining really heavy and that's why the water's flowing so heavy. This is not uh, this is not swimmable. But my goodness is beautiful. Like look at how huge this waterfall is right now. Another cool thing about living here is we have these homemade chocolate bars made from Panameanian cacao like grown just up that way. And uh, people in town make chocolate out of them. And it's kind of like a healthy dark chocolate bar which is kind of cool. But if you guys want to come and chase some waterfalls with Kaylee and I down here in Panama, we just started a tour company called Nomadic Adventures and we're actually doing some tours in June and August. There's a couple spots left and if you want to come down, we'll link to it down in the description below. And we can't wait to show you guys Panama. It's going to be the best time ever. You're clearly excited, too, huh? There's a reason why we live here in Panama. We are truly obsessed and we want nothing more than to share it with as many of you guys as possible. So go check out Nomadic Adventure Tours and come adventure with us here in Panama.
Today is a vertical column day. This is a very intimidating day where we're going to lift some 400 lb of I-beam and lift it up. Try to hold it upright vertically with the backho and weld it into place. Okay, I just cut the first vertical column. This is how big it is. They're 9 ft tall. a lot better than 22 feet tall like these ones were. We should be able to handle this. The first thing that we need to do is weld the plate that that beam is going to get welded onto. So, it's basically just to shore up and stiffen up this whole area here. Wait, sorry. This whole area here.
That's where it goes. That's where it goes. I almost messed that up already. Honey, you can't be doing that. 3 2 1 lift. And then she waddled away. Waddle, waddle, waddle till the very next day. And stop. Whatever you guys do, don't try this at home.
What do you mean? This is in page seven of the ocean handbook. Honey, this is how it says to do it. Are you going to actually reach this? I need your help, honey, wrapping the strap around. Okay. So, we have this going vertical now. And now I'm going to just tie it to the bucket. And then we should be able to lift it and get into place. I'm just going to need your help wrapping this around, honey. Okay. You got both of us holding it. And my foot is on this strap. So, you should be okay. You will be okay. Let me Let me reward that. You will be okay. You should be. You will be okay. Yeah, this is one of my better ideas. Honey. Look at that. I mean, it's better than my original plan. I said we were going to be able to pick this up with just some manpower. Oh, no. Not on not on that wheel. But after seeing how heavy that thing is. Yeah. No way. So, for all of the other verticals that we have put up for our house has been done with a tractor. A very, very, very, very, very large tractor. So, this is the first time that we put up a vertical beam on our own with our skid steer. I think it's going to work as long as these ratchet straps are strong enough. Plus that other really thick strap that we have going on there.
All right, here we go. So, we got it in place. Jordan's going to climb back up there and just unstrap the straps while the guys hold it here. Okay. D. You know those nights sometimes, honey, where I'm just laying in bed thinking about stuff. This is what I've been thinking about. Yeah. And it just hit me now that it's going to work. Like you don't know. Like you got to just try it. You think it's going to work? I got to be honest, honey. I was doubting you there for a moment. I was like, there's no way those ratchet straps are going to hold this thing. But you were right, sweetie. It's getting welded into place right now. So, we have a string running all the way down there to one of the I- beams, and we're basically just trying to figure out where in line this beam needs to go. It looks pretty good from here. And there we go, baby. The first vertical for our front patio is in. Enrique tacked it in. He's now welding the whole thing in. Super, super strong. We're just going to keep going. We got three more to go. One here, one there, and one right on the end over there. Going for number two, honey. For me, this was a big moment cuz I feel like I was coming over. Um, I don't know. Raising these I-beams was really intimidating. And with a lot of the big ones for the house, we had a lot of help. We had a backhoe and we had some guys with some experience. But this is the first time that we're placing verticals on our own. And I was definitely intimidated and I was dealing with a little bit of that imposter syndrome of like, you know, you just want to keep everyone safe at the end of the day. But once the first one got into place, we were really moving and we just kind of flew through the rest of putting these columns up. I mean, I've been working with these guys for a while now and we are really comfortable working together. And that gives us a lot of trust in one another. And when we're doing difficult things, we can really just move through it and and problem solve together. And you know, four brains is better than one. And it's definitely a team effort here. I think we went six or seven times through this house build that you've said, "I'm so happy we're done with the verticals." Only for the next day for us to have to install more vertical columns. This is actually the last vertical column of the whole house on it.
Let's go. WE'RE OFFICIALLY DONE. WOO! NOW, we're going to have to put some big old roof beams over It's still going to be sketchy. If you think the sketchy stuff is over, it's not. Honey. That's true. Yeah. But the at least the vertical columns are are are finished. Like, this part is finally done. That's pretty insane. Just want to thank you guys so so much for following along. We appreciate you guys. If you guys want to support us further, you can check out Train Well down in the description below. You start off by taking their quiz and by clicking the link down below, you'll get 14 days for free. 2026 is our year, you guys, and it's our year to focus on our physical health. We love you guys and I'll see you on the next one.