Our First Building

I love tests that might also have a practical use. As long as your planning takes into account that it's just a test (and dependencies are mitigated) any benefit derived is just gravy. Therefore, we thought a bodega would be a great first building project since we needed somewhere to put our stuff and it incorporates numerous conventional construction techniques that we wanted to experiment with.
The most critical test of all is the water/weather proofing. The rainy season in Nicaragua is torrential and will be the biggest challenge we will likely have as far as the CEB process goes. In that regard we needed to test techniques for the footer, roof and stucco. Ideally we wanted to go with a lime stucco but learned too late in the project that the lime needed to hydrate for a longer time than we had. To compensate we went with a standard masonry stucco using 6:1:1, fine sand, lime, cement. You can see we used cut stones (about $1.50/each) for the footer on top of an existing slab. This got us a foot off the ground and is working well so far. The roof could use more overhang but still is giving the coverage needed. We used all plain blocks bonded with a standard masonry mix.