Jenny's Gifts to Tepoz

Way back when we first bought the lot a book club friend offered us some appliances.  She and her husband were moving back to the States and she said taking them off their hands would be doing them a favour.  We had them picked up and the appliances sat in Arlene’s garage for an embarrassingly long time, while Linda stored other things in her maid’s room.

Here I am in our laundry room (under the indoor stairs) with the family-size washer and dryer, both in perfectly good order. I'm sweaty from cleaning the room after major exterior work.

We were also given a dishwasher (now hidden behind a kitchen cupboard door).

Jenny also gave us a single bed which we’ve set-up as a day bed in your bedroom.  It works perfectly.

On top of that she gave us this elliptical machine.  Naturally all it has done is gather dust despite our continuing claims that, “Next visit I’m going to get on the elliptical”.

Thanks Jenny. Everything is fantastic.

Some "real" furniture

Bit by bit we’re getting some furniture so we can retire the cardboard moving boxes pressed into temporary duty as end tables, coffee tables, bed tables, etc.  We’ve even managed to fold up one of the two plastic tables!

In Tepoz there is an antique dealer with lots of interesting stuff.  We stopped by his store one day to see what he had.  Along with a couple of beautiful old benches and lots of nick-knack type things we saw this table base.  It’s made of old railway spikes!

The picture in the orange frame was in the city.  We bought it from the same kooky lady that sold us most of the art in the Polanco apartment.  She claims it is an original by some famous Cuban artist know for painting roosters.  Who knows?  Looks nice there for sure.

The antique dealer also had this coffee table.  It’s actually an old door!  We really liked it.

He wanted 1000 pesos each for the two pieces.  Well business can’t be that good as we offered him 1000 pesos for both, he said he’d have to think about it, and called us back two hours later accepting our offer.  He also foolishly agreed to supply the glass top for the dining room table without actually finding out how much it would cost – a lot!

We also went to see a carpenter in town to have the small unit made to hold the stereo and DVD player – plus hide some of the “stuff” that was collecting around our “entertainment center”.  It is made entirely of re-cycled wood then with a distressed “antique” finish.  It too was a bargain so we’re happy with that.

Piece by piece we're getting the house into shape so we can generate some rental income.  Meanwhile the two of us are enjoying it immensely.

Post Party Planting

After a brief respite after Sergio's celebration we went to work planting.

The first thing we had to do was "paint" the pool shed.  We wanted it to look like the adobe stone.  I assumed this meant going to the paint store and buying said colour.  Roberto said that we could make our own.  Jerry Kolidij and I spent several hours breaking up a couple of adobe bricks into the finest possible powder.   This was then mixed with water and sealant to create a very thin paint.  Jerry was a great help as we attacked the structure first with rollers then with brushes to get the mixture into all the plaster crevices.  It took all day but the result was so much more pleasing than the white block you saw in previous posts.

Jerry continued to be a great help planting a mix of yellow and orange flowering vines along the face of the building and the start of the far stone wall.  It was slow going, especially in the heat.

Sergio had selected a large palm tree to plant off the side of the house.  We wanted to be able to see it inside the length of the house and it works really well.  It now has more plants around the base.  By this stage we'd run out of sod and opted just to put a layer of tezontle in the meantime.

Gabriel has been busy building stone steps to get from one terrace level to the next.  This is slow work as each piece has to be chiseled flat and the progress is pain-staking.  You can also see that the plants along the stone wall now go all the way up to the corner.

Pat and Marco arrived and they helped out as well with more planting.

We've finally been able to enjoy the pool.  Marco was in it constantly and the adults used it to cool off.

There's still lots to do but we're back in the city for a few days and will return on Saturday to pay the guys and enjoy a quiet weekend just the two of us.

Garden Race

We were franticly trying to get the yard ready for Sergio’s party frustrated by all sorts so things - including the fact that the week prior was the big Mexican celebration of Day of the Dead – and nobody wanted to deliver, work, or do anything.  We basically bribed our three workers to come.

Earlier that week we spent two hours at a gigantic – and I mean huge – nursery.  We walked for miles with a very knowledgeable women checking off things from the list prepared by the guy who did the landscaping proposal.

This is what $1,000 dollars worth of plants looks like before they are planted. My only consolation is that in anyplace else, this load of, literally, 128 trees, plants, bushes, would have costs five times as much.

This is me with our first limes – basically everything that fell off the trees as we moved them.

All week long the workmen, including the two of us, have been leveling the lower levels of the lot and placing a layer of tezontle on top of it.  Tezontle is a red volcanic stone that absorbs a ton of water and is especially useful here during the dry season.

Then two trucks arrived with 24 square meters of top soil. It took six of us two hours to move it off the truck and get about half of it dumped in piles around the lot.

Then the sod arrive – 350 sq. meters – this was over 1000 pieces of rolled sod.  There were three of us in the truck and another three up top piling the rolls.

We treated the worked to a taco lunch and multiple beers before they left to join their families for Day of the Dead celebrations.

Here’s out three guys, Roberto, Gabriel and Samuel laying the first sod around the pool.

Unfortunately we were so beat we passed on going into town to enjoy the festivities.

A Kitchen!

While there are many things Sergio and I like about our house, we are both really pleased with the kitchen. We wanted a space that was big enough for lots of people to help out, or just be there as other chef's did their thing.  It is finally ready.

This is a view looking from the living / dining space.

The windows straight ahead look towards the village.  The windows on the right open to the covered terrace and facilitate passing things back and forth.  The granite counter top extends to the terrace and there is even a little bar on the other side.

Sergio was inspired by these tiles in our local park where he takes Uma for exercise. He found a ceramics factory in Guanajuato (north of Mexico City) and worked with them to create replicas. The result is wonderful.

The floor is concrete with lots of swirls and a few stains.  Oddly, that's the look we wanted.  The stove is sort of industrial looking with five gas burners. It actually has two ovens - the one on the bottom is meant for smaller dishes! Too too.

After both of us working especially hard I took full advantage of the bath - my first.  Ignore the Costco size bottle of cleaning liquid on the corner!

Inching ever closer ...

Sergio and I have been spending a lot of time at the house trying our best to help out in any way we can.  The interior is almost finished. But man does it ever need a really good cleaning!

The carpenter has all but finished his work.  The countertop people have installed the granite counter top which looks fab, and the tile work is being finished this week in the kitchen.  Once the dirty work is finished inside the downstairs floors will be cleaned (with acid apparently) and sealed.

This is our front door!  The bedroom and bathroom doors are equally attractive, so nice, in fact, that we have asked the carpenter to quote on making us a dining room table top.  He still has to design and make the cabinetry for the bedrooms but that may have to wait until our cash flow is a bit more robust.  For now - metal shelving.

We now have cabinets, sinks and running water - hot and cold - in both bathrooms and we can even take a shower! This is the master bath vanity with "his" and "his" sinks - total caprice!  Still need mirrors tho'.

The last of the windows were installed up in the master bath.  It took nine of us to hoist this metal structure up to the master bath.  Three on the ground, three in the bathroom and three guys on the roof.  It will have glass windows on three sides plus a glass roof.  It looks great.  The windows in the corners open on both sides.

This is the view from the shower stall!
Gotta love it.

Lighting fixtures were never part of the original agreement so we've been buying them in bits and pieces and Sergio has been busy installing them so we don't have to shade our eyes from the bare bulbs that were hanging there before.  Sergio wants LED lights everywhere which is costing, in some cases, more than the lamps!

Sergio left for Cuba today for his birthday celebration.  I'm going back tomorrow to check on progress and to leave Uma with the dog sitters for the week while I go to Texas.  When we are both back home we intend to move to the house and help out as much as we can.  As you can see from this shot, we still have not done any work on the yard and will try and have at least the majority of the area covered in sod the week after next in anticipation of Sergio's party.  Our first guests arrive in just two weeks - yikes!  We might have to put them to work un-rolling sod.

I'll do another post with kitchen pictures tomorrow evening.

Let there be light

We are inching ever so closely to having a finished and secure house.

Check out this picture of the house with actual lights on inside - sure they are bulbs hanging from wires - but they are lights.

Here's Uma and I standing in the stairwell to our upstairs bedroom.  You can't really tell but the stair risers are black stone.  In a week's time we should have a metal handrail made by the same craftsman that did our windows.

You gotta love this view from the living room.  We've stayed over the last two weekends and it is wonderful to wake up to this vista.

Still no shots of Sergio - sorry - lots of me tho'.  Here I am doing some detailing of the upper terrace with Uma's help.

We went into town for "stuff" and there was a celebration of one of the parishes - San Miguel - lots of costumes, music and noise.

A shot of the two of us enjoying a beer and tequila after some garden work.  We're back tomorrow to see how things are advancing.