(Side note: Emily was there, too, but she's always been a tolerant "one of the guys" when it comes to this kind of thing. Fifteen years of house remodeling has rubbed off on her.)
Tuesday, we went in search of a Spanish school that we had heard good things about ("Telerama" on the map), but couldn't find it. We double-checked the address and went again today to the Telerama building, but twice we were turned away by security guards who said that this wasn't the place.
To make the most of the walk back, we went to Ferrisariato. Ecuador doesn't have Lowe's or Home Depot, but they do have an Ace Hardware franchise where a person can buy most tools and supplies. There is no dimensional lumber, brick or concrete block available here, though, so we'll have to look for other sources for that.
As I've mentioned earlier, items that are imported are expensive; items that can be harvested locally are reasonably priced or better.
Enough talk - onto the pictures!
vs.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Arrow-Fastener-Heavy-Duty-Staple-Gun-T50/100021099#.UeiREm04jQI
The first item for your consideration (TZ-style): an Arrow T50 stapler. I knew I could make a direct price comparison with this item, so it's first on the list. $34.99 in Ecuador; $17.76 at Home Depot. Prices for imported goods are basically double what the product would cost in the States. This is true for tools, electronics, food and everything else.
(I apologize here for the extra white space you might see between pictures and text. It doesn't show up in the blog editor.)
Here are some other tools and their prices:
Stanley is about the highest quality that they carry. $110 for a socket set, and they're not even SK's? Unbelievable (as Mike Krukow would say).
This one really caught my eye. It's a 10" saw; I paid about $300 for my 12" saw back in the States. This one is $219 at Home Dumpster.
Rubber galoshes aren't too bad, though, at $9 a pair. I didn't check the sizes at the time, however. At another shoe store that we had gone to, the largest size they carried for men's shoes was a size 10 - right at the edge of what I can fit into.
I did think that oil would be cheaper here - Texaco drills for it in the northern half of the country. (They also are trying to drill in the Amazon, but that's a rant for a different day.) These are the prices for imported brands:
Sheet goods were very interesting. Plywood is available in standard 4x8' sheets. MDF and melamine, however, are a little different:
They come in 6x8' sheets! (It's available in either 3/8" or 1/2".) I wish this would have been available in the States! There is a price to pay for this, however:
Want a pine, pre-hung interior door?
A simple slab closet door isn't too bad, however:
Here are some other fixtures and their prices. It's good to know that these items are available, but I might have to container-ship them from the States if we build from scratch and want higher quality.
Hunter is the only brand name that I recognized; faucets by Moen, Delta or even Kohler are a pipe-dream (at least at this store).
And, of course, the obligatory do-it-yourself suicide shower:
I did find one import that was a bit of a bargain. The Ikea Poang chair is $70 in the States:
www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S79825193/
In Ecuador, it's $20 cheaper:
This one is cloth, not leather, however. We had two of these in San Mateo, and they are very comfortable chairs.
The ubiquitous plastic patio chair, which can cost anywhere from $4 to $9 in the States, is more expensive here ($14):
Full extension drawer glide, while not 100 lb. rated-AccuGlides, are reasonably priced:
Some ex-pats complain about how expensive paint is; I don't know why. While it's not Benjamin-Moore Super-Spec (my personal favorite), it's still okay:
Ladders, on the other hand, are outrageous! Here are the prices for a 4' Ace stepladder and a 22' Werner fiberglass extension ladder (the yellow one):
Some relief: as I said at the top, locally produced materials are cheaper. Most home interiors are lath-and-plaster, not drywall. Interior finish plaster (20 kilos/44 pounds):
Build like the locals do and it's pretty economical. I've already started to change the way that I'm thinking about building our house; this trip to the hardware store reinforced it!
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