Screened porch, Ecuador style

There are alot of interesting things about this apartment, one of them was 'what were we going to do with the huge opening'? For all intents and purposes this "apartment" is a garage, and when the door was rolled up, half our living room was open to the street.

I turned to Pinterest as I often do when I need to research something visual, and after much perusing and thought I came up with the perfect plan. Treat it as a porch to screen, and here we screen with security bars first, then we can actually add screen to keep the bugs out.

That meant a trip to visit our welder friend Rene. It took several weeks to hook up with him, (he is so polite he wouldnt bother us if the roll up door was half way) but after the measuring happened it was one short week until...

I chose a sliding door option, probably more expensive, but something we can and will take to another residence when we move. The security bars have a padlock and we can lock from inside or outside. Now we dont need to roll down the door when we go beach walk, or to the store, locking the bars is enough. We also can be in the bedroom or the garden, and not worry some bad child is going to climb over the fence. The dogs are also secure, no more immediatly running into the street when the roll up goes up, we can keep them behind the bars.

Our landlord showed up the day the bars were going in. Rodolfo Delgado.

"Filete" Jose putting his two centavos in...what a character!

Not the best picture, but you can see a couple plants and some seating and we are on our way to a cozy screened porch, Ecuador style. We need an outlet for a lamp and the music speaker and we can open the door so the porch party can spill onto the sidewalk. So many things in the works, so as always...stay tuned, the adventure continues!