Reunited and It Feels So Good

The thing about restoration is that you can spend a great deal of time and money to repair something that ends up looking the same once you’re done. Is this good?  Should one be happy that the job was so “perfect”, or feel deflated that after all the work, you are back where you started. Such was the conundrum of our tejaban.

Six months ago, the old tejaban covering the space designated for our kitchen was dismantled. Although it looked great, it was rotten to its core and had to be reconstructed. The old wood came down, tiles were stored and our kitchen was left open to the elements. Last week, the tejaban came back.

New beams of machiche - a native hardwood - were laid from north to south, matching the original slope of the kitchen.

Primed and treated for termites at our carpenter’s workshop before arriving onsite, each beam was positioned above the kitchen. Hard to reach areas were hand painted before a paint gun was used to turn each beam blue.

To prevent the exposed beams from warping in the harsh tropical sun and heavy afternoon rains, a tarp was laid across the top of the freshly painted beams.

Despite the tarp, the beams still warped. In the photo below you can see the bowed ends hanging over the south end of the kitchen. We were a little worried as some of them were as bent as bananas; not a good look for our tejaban. 

We shouldn’t have stressed as our carpenters had things under control. Once all the main supports were laid, they pulled the beams back in line with a wooden brace and secured them in place using cross supports and nails.

Once all the cross members were up, everything was straight again!

Finally, after a week of work, the old tiles were brought back to site and relaid onto the new structure.

The ragged ends of the beams were cut at an angle to expose a little of the machiche hardwood beneath. These ends will be sealed with polyurethane so that a little of the wood can peak out from beneath the blue paint.

After six months, six grand and a few weeks of labor, we are reunited with our tejaban and it’s just like before. Is this good? You betcha! Although it would’ve been nice to design something amazing and new, restoring something to its original state is great too - especially when it’s so good you forget it was ever anything but.