Semi Furnished and What That Means

Home Sweet Home:  The house we rented is semi-furnished which means that it had some dishes and cutlery, but no pots and pans. It has drapery, beds and beddings, but not enough bedstands and lamps. It had some livingroom furniture but no TV. It also included a microwave, blender, coffee maker, oven, stove, washing maching & dryer.

This place is quite spacious, with lots of blank walls as well, so art was going to be necessary.

There is a website that is a little like Craigslist here called GringoPost. We used that to locate virtually everything that we needed except for some pots and pans. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who got trapped elsewhere because of Covid, so there are entire apartments of furniture and furnishings for sale. That being said, the stuff that is expensive here is still expensive on GringoPost.

The TV we were able to buy new and at a great price of $480 for a 55" RCA 4 K TV. Otherwise we did a lot of 2nd hand shopping and hit the jackpot! At one sale purchased a 3 piece living room set and coffee table. Another we were able to buy about 40 furnishing pieces including 2 wall hangings, a 3-piece mural, and a bunch of smaller paintings depicting local scenes. That sale also had a full set of dishes, some decorative plates, bathroom rugs, and US spec towel sets as well. The towels here are expensive and definitely not the same quality.

The Video House Tour

The TV/Family/Living Room:  Though most of our stuff is in storage bins plastic-wrapped onto one of two pallets and pending delivery in mid-August, a few items ended up in our flight bags (you may recognize one of the two fish rugs we had in our house in Washington).

The Kitchen and Dining Room (the office is on the left)

The Kitchen (and back door leading to the covered patio)

The 2nd Floor Landing

Another ad had a painting that depicted a local scene that had a low price so we walked over and took a cab back with our prize.



The Master Bedroom
The 2nd floor open area (A guest room is on either side of the open area, and the laundry room is through the doors on the right.)




















OUTSIDE! As our house is in the city, high-fenced yards and gates are the norm here. It was just cement with a covered patio, empty window flower beds, and a patch of grass with a peach tree. So, the rest of our rental takeover was decorating outside.  We bought and potted a bunch of plants, flowers and trees. We added some gray to the outside paint earthtones and painted the gate red which has a double purpose. First, it breaks up the boring colors and then it is easy for deliveries and cabs as we are the house with the puerta roja - red door.

In addition, we found a local carpenter advertising on FB Marketplace that made us two sets of rustic patio furniture. We had another artist - of sorts - make us some cushions and pillows for the outdoor furniture and the couch pillows as well.

The two-story building across the street is the Colegio.  As schools are closed, other than the usual street traffic, it's been really quiet so far.

The car gate and parking area is on the other side of the peach tree. Pam is still trying to decide if we want to remove some of the grass and plant some more flowers under the tree.


THE COVERED PATIO: The last of the outside for now was the mural our friend Daniel Williams painted for us. We talked about what we wanted and he drew up a scene with Pachamama whos is the Andean Mother Earth.  There are also clay llamas that tell a story of the Tolita Tumaco culture that was pre-Columbian and is now extinct, but once flourished in the Northern Ecuador / Southern Colombian area.

There is always more to do. I plan on a wood-fired Bread and Pizza oven outside and we need to transfer our picture of South America on the outside wall that leads to the front door. We are musing over the idea of a solid door made of local wood that we can hang sideways as you come into the house and add hooks for coats and purses as well as bounting a mirror in the center of the door.

More on those projects as we complete them. The curfew was pushed back from 11 PM to 10 PM as the covid cases crept up a little. The people here are nearly 100% compliant with wearing masks and other health department recomendations.

Peace and love peeps and more soon...