Restoring, Remodeling, ReUsing, RePurposing, Recycling Colonial Buildings in Merida

Is restoring one of those old colonial homes really worth the money it takes? This is a question that gets bandied about among expatriates when they aren’t talking about where they bought their floor tiles or where to get outdoor furniture. Is it better to buy a new house in the North or on the Yucatan Gulf Coast? Or should we buy a restored colonial? Or buy an unrestored colonial and restore it ourselves? Which will cost more money? Which experience will be more satisfying? What is the best investment?

We doubt we can answer all those questions in this article, but we can begin the conversation. And our impetus to do this was the discovery of an article by two Mexican architects from Toluca that was printed in the Academic Magazine of the Engineering School at UADY (Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán) here in Merida. The article was printed in September of this year, 2011, and from this we are inferring that the restoration of older, inner city buildings is becoming something of interest now to engineers and architects of Mexican cities. While there have always been a contingent of professionals and non-professionals who have seen the point of restoring old buildings, that contingent was apparently a decided minority for many years. How else to explain the destruction of some of Merida’s most beautiful structures during the fifties, sixties and seventies?

Now, however, despite the fact that most wealthy Meridanos would still rather live in a new structure somewhere in the north of the city, we think perhaps the tide is beginning to turn. And this paper, whose main points are outlined below, may be a small indication of a coming revival of downtown spaces and structures, led not only by foreigners looking for authentic designs and materials at bargain prices and the architects who serve them, but by architects, engineers, investors and other forward-thinkers with Mexican passports.

What Do The Experts Say?

In this paper, the socio-cultural, material, and economic aspects that work in favor of reusing an existing building in an urban area are pointed out. Architectural considerations that affect opinions about why and when a given building should be revitalized are analyzed. These general recommendations for the rehabilitation or recycling of existing buildings are presented in such a way that assumes architectural functionality will be improved, within economic and structural safety parameters, thereby prolonging the useful life of the building. The study concludes that the building’s surroundings (neighborhood) can be revitalized in a manner in keeping with the ever-popular goal of sustainability because land resources and urban infrastructure are saved. To those of us who have witnessed the flight to Suburbia and the urban renewals in cities like New York, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and other smaller cities in the United States (and elsewhere), this might seem obvious. But it has not been obvious in many places in Mexico, and it has certainly not been obvious in Merida in the past.

Reusing Colonial Buildings

When we think about remodeling an old colonial building in Merida, most expats think in terms of remodeling a home for themselves. As discussed in the article, there are many remodeling projects that can turn an old and abandoned colonial building into either a home or a place of business. The key to sustainability is understanding the area surrounding the building, and in accepting that the usual life-span for any particular use of a building is 20 to 30 years. Merida actually has a marvelous example of this in the current City Museum. The Museum was once the Post Office Building. An architectural beauty in its day, it fell into serious neglect and disrepair during the last eight or so decades of the 20th Century. A few years ago, it was renovated to its original magnificence and now houses not only the Post Office, but also the City Museum and additional art museums and galleries upstairs. Its renovation, and the renovation of the adjoining park and street, have brought a new level of respectability to the downtown mercado and the surrounding area. It has also made that area more desirable and easily accessible to tourists, bringing more tourism dollars to the area and making Merida’s centro an even more interesting place.

When to Buy

Before we look at the major points covered by the authors of this paper, we do need to address return on investment. Purchase and remodel a colonial in a rundown (but not out!) neighborhood and you will not only raise the value of that property, but the value of all of the properties in the neighborhood – for a nominal initial investment. Wait and purchase a property in need of renovation that is located in a colonial neighborhood in which most of the other properties have already been remodeled and you will pay a premium for both your property and for any remodeling you undertake. In the first scenario, you will likely get more land and building for your money, with the same amount of investment in materials and labor. In the second scenario, your higher investment may pay off sooner if you are in an established and acceptable-to-expats-and-tourists neighborhood. Which do you choose?

Major Points About Urban Renewal

The article in the UADY magazine covers a number of facts that might be of use when you are evaluating your investment decision in Merida…

• Housing: According to the article, Mexico has a shortage of housing because…
  • There has been an increase in the population in an economically active generation.
  • Mexicans are having fewer children now and need a different type (design) of housing in which to raise their families. (By the way, this fact was corroborated in a recent seminar we attended about assisted-living housing and other services for elders in Mexico)
  • Mexicans are living longer and now need housing and neighborhoods that are elder-friendly.
  • Many Mexicans are migrating to areas where they can find work, which puts additional strain on housing.
  • Revitalizing existing buildings helps to solve the problem of urban sprawl and cuts down on the need for new city services and utilities in outlying areas.
• Production: What about industrial centers? These were adopted in places as far-flung as New York City and Beijing by artists and other creative workers who appreciated the large spaces for their activities.
  • Production centers outgrow their facilities and often abandon them. This leaves huge buildings that could easily be repurposed for other uses.
  • When production centers move, they also often abandon infrastructure, such as rail lines, which could be repurposed as an inner-city mode of transportation.
• Education: Education is big and getting bigger in Mexico. There is a huge need for more education as families become less agriculturally-oriented and move into the cities. There is no longer work for children on the farm, and to get ahead in the new world, they must be educated. Mexico is very aware of this.
  • As the population grows and moves, there is an increased need for educational structures.
  • Existing buildings can be repurposed to house auditoriums classes, and administrative offices.
• Health: Healthcare is a growing need as well. Not just for the aging baby boomers (yes, Mexico also has a Baby Boomer population), but for all those people who are living longer.
  • There is a growing need for centrally located health and wellness clinics in Mexico. Repurposing buildings to house such clinics, especially in the vicinity of hospitals and universities is a growing industry.
  • Do not forget about other health-related industries, i.e.dentists, centers that make eyeglasses or dentures, etc. All of these can, and do, function quite well in repurposed buildings.
• Offices: Mexico might as well have invented the word "entrepreneur". At least our experience in the Yucatan tells us that there are always plenty of small businesses being started. This is a global trend as well. And the mention of wireless access? A city entire that is wired for internet access is just around the corner… and Merida, with its internet access in many of the city parks, is on its way there.
  • Offices can now be smaller because of advances in technology. This means that virtually any space can now be transformed into an efficient office of the future.
  • The development of jobs that allow for conducting business with a laptop computer benefits from wireless access throughout all major cities and towns.
• Trade: Encouragement towards the maintenance of small, family-run or individually-run stores goes hand-in-hand with urban renewal and renovation of old buildings. Though sometimes, those large stores might surprise you in their willingness to support urban renewal. Those stores understand the value of walk-streets and mixed-use urban spaces.
  • Chain stores are causing serious harm to local markets.
  • Repurposing buildings can provide space for marketing directly from producers.
• Sports: Sports is big and getting bigger here in Yucatan and in Mexico, as Mexican baby boomers understand the need to stay active as they get older.
  • Investing in anything having to do with sports is an up and coming opportunity today. This might include a shop to sell sporting equipment, a gym, a swimming pool or a place to practice sports.
  • Repurposing properties for these specialized activities is showing itself to be an excellent investment.
• Religion: Well, it seems they are preaching to the choir here. Merida has no shortage of beautifully preserved churches. With the city block that houses the Catedral de San Ilfonso AND the MACAY Museum, Merida is leading a trend. Recently there was an art exhibit in the gardens behind L’Ermita. We would love to see this trend expanded and continued…
  • There is a national trend toward rehabilitating iconic churches.
  • It is new churches that provide design challenges. This is an opportunity to not only build a church, but to add a cultural element (auditorium, art gallery, etc) as well.
• Communication and Transportation: Communication and technology are two industries that seem to do well in urban environments.
  • Whether the need is for a new television station or a transportation industry dispatching center, communication and transportation centers are hot topics now and well worth looking into as options for repurposing properties.
  • Many production centers, left behind by industry, are perfect for this type of investment.
• Cultural Recreation: Again, Merida shines in the provision of outdoor and free-to-the-public entertainment, and spaces for that entertainment. Still, more, in this case, seems like it would be even better. Here, the authors are recognizing the need for more entertainment for tourists, but we would like to point out that there are many interested residents in the urban center as well… and the more you build, the more they will come!
  • There is a growing need for cinemas, theaters, concert halls, museums, theme parks and resorts that meet the needs of specific populations.
  • This is especially true of age groups, which explains the popularity of silent film cinema in Merida. It could also include theaters dedicated to the presentation of works by one particular age group or ethnicity.
  • In either case, repurposing a building in the center of the city is preferable to building something that is too far away for tourists to find it.
• Other Services: What a great idea! Worker housing, temporary and permanent, in the city center to ease the burden of travel from the outlying parts of the Peninsula. Perhaps someone someday will come up with a creative solution to this problem the way the Japanese have done in airports.
  • Don’t forget about the needs of Mexican workers, who often travel long distances to work in the center of a city. They need places to eat, sleep and park. All of these could be developed, as simple properties, from repurposed buildings and abandoned lots.

The last thing in the list above from the article is:

• Spend time with a reputable architect. Chances are, they will have even more ideas for repurposing buildings, infrastructure, and property in Merida.

Architects are some of the most interesting and thoughtful designers of our time. They have spent countless years of education and experience pondering these issues. Merida is awash in intelligent, educated architects. If you are thinking of investing in Merida, we, too, encourage you to spend time with some of them.

Conclusion

The remainder of the Escamilla Herandez and Ramirez de Alba study is specific information for architects and engineers. However, the theme remains: Repurposing buildings in cities is one of the best investments a person can make. It is not only good for the investor, its good for the city as well. The list of specialized reuse for inner-city buildings should be required reading for everyone who wants to invest in their own little corner in or near the center of the City of Merida – or any city or town in Mexico.

As foreigners who have come to live in the city of Merida, we must acknowledge that we are guests. We want to bring our ideas about and experience with urban renewal to the table in our adopted city. Not so fast, there, gringo! We have found over the years that the Yucatan is a graceful place. This culture does not appreciate anyone or anything that rushes in and changes things… in almost any context that we can think of. The culture of the Yucatan, and the culture of the Maya that assisted in its birth, are both cultures that are known to take the long view.

With our review and comments on this recent article, as investors, visitors, residents and admirers, we encourage you to do the same. Make your investments as you see fit, keeping in mind what you know about how urban renewal has happened in other places around the world. Take heart that architects and planners in Mexico and in Merida are recognizing the value of their historic cities and beginning to see how the words "downtown" and "modern" can coexist… can even, in fact, add up to more together than apart.

Merida Reborn

We applaud all of those, architects, visitors and investors alike, who have recognized the beauty of downtown Merida and put their money where their hearts are. We thrill every time we walk into a repurposed old building that has both become modern and stayed historic through a combination of the skills of the architect, the caring of the owner and the watchful eye of INAH. We look forward to seeing how the urban planners and architects and politicians and residents of Merida rediscover and reclaim Merida’s historic downtown not just for tourists, but for themselves. When that day is finally realized, the vitality and power of Merida as a city center will be unstoppable.

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We welcome your comments, as usual.

The article referenced above can be found here:

Information for this article comes from a paper by two professors on the Facultad de Ingeniería de la U.A.E.Mex. Paseo Universidad S/N Toluca, México. Documentation for the paper is:

Escamilla Herandez, LA & Ramirez de Alba, H. (2011, March 15). Rehabilitation for a change
in use and extension of a building’s service life. Engineering Academic Journal of the Faculty of Engineering, Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan. 15(1). Retrieved: September
15, 2011
From: www.revista.ingenieria.uady.mx/volumen15/rehabilitacion.pdf

Predicting human behavior has been around since Thales simultaneously kicked off Western Philosophy, the scientific revolution, and earned the title as the world’s first true mathematician.  Just what does one of the lesser-known Seven Sages of Greece have to do with future real estate values in the Yucatan?   Thales loved to explain the world around him by replacing mythology and emotion with logical, scientific, and mathematical principles.  Fortunately for us, Aristotle recounted the following tale of Thales, a story which involves olive presses and olive production in Chios and Miletus,  giving us a glimpse of how logic and math can be used to peer into Yucatan’s misty real estate future.

Thales and the Olive Presses

In part XI of Book One of  Politics, Aristotle spins a yarn about a philosopher  "who showed the world that philosophers can easily be rich if they like, but that their ambition is of another sort".  Aristotle tells how one winter, Thales put a deposit on all the olive-presses in Chios and Miletus, which gave him exclusive use of the presses after the coming harvest.  

Since the press owners weren’t sure whether the harvest would be bountiful or a bust, Thales, secured the contracts for very low prices in what is thought of as the first known example of options trading.   Aristotle also tells us that there was not one bid against him.   The olive press owners believed that they were protecting themselves against a poor harvest,  by guaranteeing at least some money up-front, regardless of how the harvest turned out. Good plan, eh?  Go with the herd. There’s safety in the herd.

So how did it turn out?  An excellent harvest forced heavy demand for the presses. Since Thales held a monopoly, he rented them out at huge profits.    Was he an expert olive crop forecaster?   Not really. Rather, he deteremined that even a bad harvest would not lose him much from the lost deposits, while the potential profits of a good harvest far out-weighed the possibilities of small losses. Thus Thales showed the world that “philosophers can easily be rich if they like, but that their ambition is of another sort".

So what is Thales’ lessons to us in the present moment?  Facts, logic, and math are not just the tools of scientists and philosophers.

US Baby Boomer Demographics

For the past few years, many local expats have predicted only marginal real estate price gains here in the Yucatan, but a quick look at US demographics offers a different picture.   We are fast approaching 2013, when the 1947-1948 US Baby Boomers reach official retirement age.  2013 is notable, because the number of people eligible for retirement will jump by about 10 million, from 15 million up to 25 million.  This might seem like just boring facts.   But if Thales were around today, he might make a different case.  Here’s where some simple bits of math come in.

Let’s Do The Math

Since many of the eligible retirees will need to continue to work, maybe only 40% of the US Boomers will retire in 2013.  Let’s say then that there will only be 10 million new retirees every year.   Clearly, Mexico is not everyone’s cup of tea, so maybe only 10% of those retirees will consider Mexico to stretch their retirement fixed incomes, yielding a paltry one million new retirees.    Continuing on a Thalesian path,  Merida is one of Mexico’s top three cities for quality of living, and Merida and Yucatan’s Gulf Coast offer safety, relatively low real estate prices, excellent health care, modern services, and even a growing expat population, so newcomers don’t have to live like isolated pioneers.   If only 5% of those one million consider visiting or living in Merida and Yucatan’s Gulf Coast, that would mean roughly 50,000 new expats coming to north Yucatan every year.  Are you starting to see the Thalesian opportunities?

Where Will They Go?

Like Colorado’s desirable mountain property, there is only so much beach property and only so much Merida Centro property. Like recent buyers, many of these new expats will fall in love with the romance of classic Spanish colonial architecture, driving the Centro market prices upward. Others will seek their beach front Shangri-La’s on the Yucatan Gulf Coast. 

A ten year torrent of five thousand new expats a year seems to belie some current predictions of marginal inflation of Merida and the Yucatan Gulf Coast’s real estate markets.  Keeping it all in good Thalesian factual perspective, the local real estate market is coming off a few flat years for both sales and prices, which makes some people cautious, like their 600 BC olive-press-owner counterparts. These are the ones who are predicting real estate growth that only marginally keeps ahead of inflation. 

Retirement Accounts

Which are you?   If Thales were here today, would he argue that 25 million newly eligible retirees every year between 2013-2030 is tough to ignore, and quietly place his bets? Would he do this even though many of the potential retirees have less in their retirement accounts now due to the recent worldwide economic failure?    Again,  facts, logic, and math may ride to our rescue.   Is it possible that the much heralded retirement portfolio losses are also ultimately a bit of a mirage?

A quick check of the major stock indexes shows recovery to their August 2008 pre-crash levels.  If the current trends continue, the data show that investors will likely erase all their losses in just the next year, reaching pre-crash highs by early 2012.    What does this mean for the north Yucatecan economy?  If Boomers didn’t panic-sell their investments, they should logically recover all of their portfolio losses before 2012.  

A different logical scenario is that many people approaching retirement in 2012-2013 followed financial advisor’s advice and shifted their portfolios heavily to bonds five years before retirement. This would mean that many conservative near-retirement investors had moved their money out of stocks into safer-but-lower-returning investments like bonds in 2007, avoiding the big losses.   This group would still be financially on-track to retire on-time in 2013, allowing some of them to come to Yucatan.   Might this be another data point that improves the 2013 outlook?

So, Nothing To Worry About, Right?

Sunshine, sunshine, and more sunshine, with only smooth sailing ahead?  Not likely. 

The current economic icebergs dead ahead include a few troubling points.   The majority of the US State Governments (30) are reporting significant 2011 deficits that could translate into up to 2 million new lay-offs, unless US taxpayers accept higher taxes.  Following Thales’ example, if we guess-timate that 50% of the potential government layoffs occur, that would add one million new workers to the current ranks of the 14 million official US unemployed (a jump of 0.64%).   RealtyTrac researchers reported that 2010′s high unemployment drove foreclosures up by 72 percent in 206 leading metropolitan areas last year, including many which were not hit as hard by the initial foreclosure waves that pounded cities in Nevada, California and Florida. They predict that foreclosures will increase by another 20%, reaching a peak in 2011.*  

These figures are troubling, in that they project yet more distressed properties being dumped onto already overloaded US real estate markets, creating yet another one year backlog of unsold homes listed at depressed prices, all needing to be worked off in 2011 and 2012. The math and data point to a US real estate market that hits bottom in 2011-2012, but then starts to improve by 2013.   Yet again,  that pesky 2013 date pops up.

If US real estate markets finally improve by 2013, and hidden state government debts stop driving new layoffs, then gradually increasing home prices will encourage US Baby Boomers, who will then be considering retirement abroad.  The potential combination of some life in USA’s 2013 future, as unemployment turns and real estate prices turn, coupled with a surge in greying Baby Boomer retirees, buoyed by fully recovered investment portfolios, bodes well for Yucatan real estate. It points to significant growth of the Yucatecan expat community between 2013 and 2030.  A rapidly growing expat community would also seem to illuminate real estate opportunities now that would make Thales smile.

Whether it is 600 BC or 2011, the more things change, the more they stay the same. So now… Buy, Sell,  or Hold? The ball is in your court… what will it be?

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Bloomberg article about foreclosure futures

Another article about foreclosures from Money News

Thales, on Wikipedia

Yes, we know. It’s been a very long time since we have updated our readers on the progress of our house. Perhaps you can imagine how very tired one gets when one’s house has taken over a year to build… the day in and day out struggle with keeping one step ahead of the workers by buying the right tiles or faucets or whatever. Perhaps you can imagine the pain of writing big checks and handing over large wads of pesos every week for things like fosa septicas, light fixtures or yet more cement blocks. Maybe you can feel our pain when we tell you how tired we were of polvo (dust) and paint drips and little tiny things that needed to be done but hadn’t been done… the endless lists of things that still needed attention before we could be finished.

Frankly, we hesitate to even dredge those memories up enough to even write about them. But we will… for you, our loyal readers. And when we’re done, we hope that we can finally be done. Truly hecho or, as the Mayans like to say, estuvo. Terminados. It all means "finished". And that’s what we want to be with building this house.

They say that building a house is one of the most creative things you can do… it’s like childbirth in a lot of ways. You go through an extended amount of time that is both exciting and painful, and in the end you have created an entity that is something separate from you… that will live on after you, a part of your unique legacy to the world. Really, we couldn’t agree more. However, with childbirth, we remember reading that the woman’s body actually serves up hormones that help her forget the pain, so that childbirth actually looks attractive again after the passing of time. No such assistance is available for the birthing of a house, so you probably won’t see us building another house in THIS lifetime.

This particular legacy of ours, in the end, took almost two years from start to finish. During that time, we spent a lot of money and an inordinate amount of time and attention, creating the house we now (thankfully) are living and working in.

Fin Sin Fin

In our last installment, we thought we were almost done… and were at the ‘endless end’. As it turns out, the construction continued for almost another two months, during which time we moved in anyway (on February 8, just in time for Working Gringa’s mother to arrive on February 10). We lived with people coming to the house every day for months, a process that is finally almost… not… quite… ended. Just the other day, the plumber came by to look at an annoying water hammer problem…

Chicum

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of acquainting yourself with this acabado (finish), chicum is an ancient Mayan version of stucco that was used to line chaltuns (cisterns). It was also used ornamentally, because it lasts a very long time. We’ve seen it (we think) on the statues in Ek Balaam and on facade elements at Hacienda Tabi, among other places. We learned about it from the famous architect, Salvador Reyes Rios, who made his name restoring some of the most beautiful haciendas in this area (Hacienda San Jose Cholul, Temozon, Santa Rosa) and used this finish in his restorations. As it turns out, Salvador also built our former house (Casa Panadero) and used chicum for the finish of the plunge pool in the backyard there. That’s where we became familiar with the beauty of chicum. And that’s why we wanted it in our new home.

We hired Rolando (cel phone: 044-999-232-3619), a man who had worked with Salvador Reyes Rios and had learned how to do this ancient Mayan finish. Orlando brought only three other men, and spent most of his time supervising their work. They sifted the regular white cement through a type of cheesecloth and then mixed it with ingredients that are a closely-guarded secret (said to include Coca-Cola and Chaac knows what else). Then they spread the chicum paste onto the prepared cement areas: two benches, the bar (pictured above), the outdoor bathtub and the deck of the swimming pool. When they were done, we waited a week for the chicum to dry thoroughly, and then they sanded it by hand to give it a smooth finish. The chicum color is a light tan with mottling that is enhanced with age. We’re thrilled to have it in our house and only wish we could have afforded to cover more surfaces with it.

Old Paint

A lot of people think we’re crazy (for many reasons…), but we like the traditional cal paint that has been used here in the Yucatan for centuries. It’s all natural, all local and it lets your walls breathe. We know that Comex and others have perfectly beautiful vinilica (latex-based) paints here, but we’re partial to the old style of paint. Walls painted with cal age and change with the humidity and the seasons. They develop stains and spots that give them the same character we saw in the walls of aging palazzos in Venice, Italy, where we were married. We like old walls. So we used cal paint on every wall of our house. This employed Merida’s best painter, Isauro, and his two or three helpers, for about five or six weeks. It will also ensure them recurring employment every few years when the facade or other outside walls need to be updated. That’s okay! We like Isauro, and we love our cal-painted walls, complete with water stains. A real faux finish.

Everyone In the Pool

For the first time in our seven years in Yucatan, we have a pool. A real lap-swimming pool. We chose to put in both a regular pool filter and a saline filter, planning to use the saline filter most of the time in order to have a pool sin chloro (without chlorine). That’s a bit of a misnomer as it turns out, because even a saline pool has a bit of chlorine in it. The saline filter turns the salt (sodium chloride) into chlorine (ah, that’s where they hide the chlorine!) and gives your pool just enough chlorine to be clear, but not enough to turn your hair green and your skin dry.

Well, we learned rather quickly that it doesn’t really work that well here. The Yucatan is too hot to accommodate a saline filter… our pool experiences a lot of evaporation in the heat and sun, and we were needing five to seven 25 kilogram bags of salt each week to keep up with it. Those salt bags aren’t expensive (after all, they make salt here in the Yucatan) but they are heavy, bulky and that’s just a lot of salt, isn’t it? Since we had installed both the saline filter and the normal traditional pool filter, we just stopped using the saline filter and have kept our pool clean with the lowest amount of chlorine we can get by with. Chalk it up to a rather expensive lesson… anyone want to buy a perfectly good saline filter?

We built the pool above the ground, just outside the TV/living room. Half of it is under an overhanging roof, allowing us to enjoy it even if we don’t want to be in the sun. Working Gringo is the tall, dark and handsome pool guy that we’ve hired because keeping a pool beautiful does take attention. He’s out there almost every morning, keeping the pool sparkling blue and beautiful. He says it’s good therapy. And Working Gringa likes watching him, too!

We built a water-wall fountain at the end of the pool for aesthetic purposes. It turns out this fountain, which draws water from the pool, pumps it up and then drops it back into the pool, allows us to circulate the water (and chemicals) even more quickly through the pool. It turns out the top of the water wall, which has about one inch of water in it even when the pump isn’t running, is also the neighborhood’s most popular birdbath. Who knew how much enjoyment we would get out of lying around in the pool, watching the local xcav birds (those noisy black grackles you see everywhere here) and mourning doves splashing and carrying on in their own private spa? It turns out the water wall, besides looking particularly beautiful at night when the water sparkles as it falls down the rajuela (stone chips) wall in the light, also gives off the perfect white noise to cover up any neighborhood noise that we may not want to hear. The pool is a blessing in the heat, and the water-wall fountain completes the picture.

Stoned

Speaking of rajuela, this is a word we learned because we employed it in a number of different places throughout the house. And if we’d had a few more months, Working Gringa probably could have figured out a few more ways to use it! Rajuela is pieces of limestone, chipped off in cracker-sized slices. The traditional way of using those chips is to embed them in cement, lined up in the same direction so that they form a nice pattern. The wall that the water falls down at the end of our pool is done in rajuela. So is the column of the outdoor shower next to the pool. And the arch above the fountain in the courtyard that houses our Virgen of Guadalupe statue is done in rajuela too… fanned out around the Virgen’s head to look like a halo. But where we really won the rajuela sweepstakes (took the rajuela prize?) was in the concrete walkway outside in the pasillo. We didn’t want to have a plain cement floor. We couldn’t afford tile for such a large area. We needed to break up the cement into a pattern that looked both attractive and would allow for expansion and contraction, thus avoiding cracks if at all possible. We settled on a diamond pattern of cement squares (echoing the diamond layout of the saltillo tiles around the pool), separated by lines of rajuela. This sounds exotic, but it is quite common here in the Yucatan. It might be common, but it certainly isn’t easy or, because of that, not particulary inexpensive. The rock doesn’t cost much. The cement doesn’t cost much. But the labor to chip all those rocks and then lay them in lines… well, in our case, that seemed to take months. And not for lack of people spending time on it, either. By the time the entire pasillo was finished with the rajuela pattern, we were sure the albañiles doing it wereready to ride us out of town on a rail. They were probably chipping rocks in their sleep for weeks afterwards. Despite the torture of creating it, however, the end result is lovely, and we’re glad we bothered.

Built For the Breeze

Throughout the design process for our house, we continued to make decisions that led to maximizing the way air flows through the house. We only installed air conditioning units (mini-splits) in the bedrooms and the offices. The rest of the house would have to depend on the prevailing breezes. We built high ceilings whenever possible and situated the house so that it faces north to south. One of our requirements was to have our master bedroom on the second story, hoping that with a design that maximized air flow, we would be able to sleep comfortably as many nights as possible without using the air conditioner. We’re happy to report that this has worked very well. The bedroom faces south, and the master bath faces north. There are windows in both, and when all windows and doors are opened, the breeze sweeps through, cooling down the bathroom and bedroom very well. There have been very few nights, even during the heat of the summer, when we have wanted air conditioning.

The breeze flows well throughout the ground level of the house as well. There is a pasillo all along one side of the building that is open on both end to the sky. And there is a central courtyard between the office and the main house, which effectively gives the kitchen/dining/living room area open windows on three sides. We don’t have air conditioning in this area, and we haven’t missed it once this summer. If things get a little hot and stuffy, with a push of a button, our remote-controlled ceiling fans turn on and cool everything off sufficiently to get by. Did we mention we have a swimming pool? If things heat up too much, we just head for the pool.

Airing Our Dirty Laundry

Where did that expression come from, anyway? Nobody hangs out their DIRTY laundry… they hang out their CLEAN laundry. And so do we! One of the very last things we added to the house (courtesy of Handyman) was a clothesline on the roof. What a great idea that was! The laundry hangs out of the way, only visible by Working Gringa when she’s taking a shower and gazing towards the front of the house. It makes her feel good to see it hanging in the sun (and the rain sometimes) and in the almost-constant breeze. Laundry dries quickly and putting up and taking down clean laundry on the roof, overlooking the city as the sun rises or sets has become a recurring and pleasurable experience. The laundry line is safely hidden away, visible only to us and the cameras for Google Earth. We highly recommend rooftop clotheslines.

The Earth Laughs in Flowers

That’s a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. It’s about a garden, our big garden called Planet Earth. We have a small approximation, in a style called ‘tropical’, in our backyard. The first thing we planted, before we were even done with the house, was a ceiba tree, a gift from a friend who found it growing on her property out in the countryside. This little sacred ceiba was chosen because it was growing so true and straight and with lovely symmetry. When it was planted, it was barely taller than Working Gringo. After the albañiles were done and the polvo (dust) was reduced to a dull roar, we invited in a local nursery to plant the rest of our garden. We settled on a price, as well as a few likes and dislikes, and then let them have their way with our little plot of land. Our few requirements were a path along the wall so we could walk through the garden, a lawn area for the dogs to play in and the ceiba tree (in the center of the photo on the right). We were grateful to have bananas and heliconias and lilies and elephant-ears given to us by friends and those were planted also. The garden was installed in the space of two days, including lawn, four royal palms and two truckloads of other greenery. Our sprinkler system (and our pool, by the way) is fed by our own well, so we have watered freely from the day the garden was installed, and it has rewarded us with growth the likes of which we have never seen. We come from California, where water is scarce and gardens ought to be planted with drought-resistant natives. So this tropical paradise is quite astounding to us! The bananas (two kinds) which started as babies no bigger than our forearm, are above the wall (9 feet) by now. The palms are well beyond that, as is the sacred ceiba tree. The elephant ears would make any elephant proud, and the heliconias have been cut back twice already.

At one point the lawn seemed to be dying, and we noticed that it was visited constantly by little low-flying wasps. These wasps didn’t seem the least bit interested in us, but we thought perhaps they were killing our lawn. We brought in the exterminator to spray the garden, and from that day on, the lawn has been fine.

Every morning, Working Gringa spends time in the garden, mostly cutting things back and pulling weeds. All week long, flowers and dark green leaves sprout from vases in various places throughout the house, bringing the garden inside whenever possible. We have a compost heap in the back, where all the lawn cuttings and vegetables parts from the kitchen are thrown. In five months, we’ve already enjoyed the production of a ten-bag equivalent of rich loamy dirt, which has then been returned to the garden around some of the plants that seemed to need the nutrition (the challenge of a tropical garden is keeping the nutrition from leaching away). We have had some bug infestations, which we have tried eliminating with soapy water or garlic spray, but in the end have resorted to chemicals. Bugs and plants alike seem to be stronger and grow faster here in the tropics. We’re still rank amateurs when it comes to tropical gardening, but we sure are enjoying the chance to improve our skills.

Oh, The Water

A house in the tropics involves planning for the catching, directing, draining and controlled enjoyment of water. Perhaps our biggest problems with the house so far have come from water. Water is everywhere here in the Yucatan… it comes from above, it comes from below, it comes out from the walls, it’s in the air. This is actually a fact we are grateful for, and when the rest of the world is paying for water what today they pay for oil, we hope that the Yucatan may be exempt. But because there is water, there are water issues, and one must build one’s house with water in mind. And even if one does, apparently, water can still find ways to puzzle and confound.

One day during construction, a valve stuck somewhere and the tinaco (water tank) on the roof of the second story was overflowing for four or five hours, spilling water down the walls and into the pasillo. The problem was discovered and solved, and we all moved on. After the walls were painted and we had moved in, those walls started to discolor and show dark spots (sure sign of moisture). The white cement floors in the dining room have also discolored with moisture spots. To this day we still aren’t 100% sure what was or is the problem, but we suspect we are still seeing the water from that tinaco accident working its way out of our cement block walls (it can take years). We conducted a lot of tests (including breaking into the walls) to make sure that no pipes or desagues (drainage) were leaking (they weren’t) and the tinaco accident is now the only thing we can come up with. Since we are in the middle of the summer rainy season, we have decided to wait a few months (a year?) to see how it works itself out. One thing that the Yucatan has taught us in seven years is that not everything can be solved overnight. Some things just take time, and taking time is a luxury that we can afford here.

The Fat Lady Sings

We think it’s fair to say that the construction of our house is now officially over. We don’t want to call Working Gringa fat, exactly, but she has noticed that the acoustics for singing are especially good in the downstairs bathroom and the kitchen. We’ve noticed that the upstairs terrace outside our bedroom is the best place for watching stars, and the roof terrace is the best place for watching fireworks. We’ve noticed that sitting in the pool with a plate of cheese and crackers on the chicum siding is the best place for watching television (iTunes downloads, mostly). We’ve noticed that the offices are warm in the morning, but cool off quickly when we open the front postigo doors (those little doors within doors on the old colonial doors). We’ve noticed that the fireflies dance in our garden at dusk after a rain, and that the iguanas that live in the drainpipe by the compost heap like bananas and apples, but not carrots. We’ve noticed that the cats next door like the chicken bones we throw down onto their roof and that the men selling "Tierra!" will stop at our door to get water for themselves and their thirsty horse. We’ve noticed that laundry smells particularly good after it has sat out in the rain and dried again afterwards, and that the Flor de Mayo trees bloom almost constantly, and their flowers smell good all the time. We’ve noticed that bats love to fly down the pasillo at night and then dip into the pool for an evening drink, and swallows like to do that too. We’ve even noticed big white barn owls flying around our house late at night in the moonlight, and one night we noticed them right away when they flew into (and promptly out of) our bedroom.

We’ve noticed that now that we aren’t building a house anymore, we have more money, more time and more peace. We’re grateful to ourselves, our wonderful architects Mercedes Sanchez and Alvaro Cervera (their contact information is listed in this article about How to Build A House in the Yucatan), and to all our albañiles, gardeners and others who had the fortitude to follow through and make this house possible.

We hope this house, sprung from our imagination and the hard work of many others, brings peace and happiness to many generations to come. Hecho! Estuvo! Now let the Yucatan Living continue…

*****

Like this article? Read the others that led up to it…

Building Our House
Building Our House II
Building Our House III
Building Our House IV
Building Our House V
Building Our House VI
Building Our House VII

And these…

How to Build a House in the Yucatan
Features of a Colonial Home
How to Sell Your Home in Merida
Tips for Purchasing a Colonial Home

In the process of putting the final touches on our new home, we were lucky enough to meet a man named Jorge Sosa, whose business is called The Handyman. Jorge, who was raised in California, worked many years for large maquiladoras here in Merida, managing their buildings, building their buildings and dealing with construction issues. He struck out on his own and created this small company, Handyman, to provide a wide range of services to homeowners in Merida.

While Jorge’s service is a bit more expensive than hiring the guy down the street who may or may not know how to put up that wall you’ve been wanting around your garden, he earns that extra money with a good understanding of how things work around here, an understanding of the tastes of most Americans and Canadians, and a team of capable, clean workers who clean up after themselves. And he guarantees his work, so if something isn’t right, he’ll come back and fix it. And for those of you still learning Spanish, Jorge speaks perfect English.

We asked Jorge to give us a few tips about what he looks for when evaluating a colonial home in this area, something that he has helped various friends with over the years. Since he has experience fixing everything, we figured he might be a good person to tap for this information. The following are some tips on what to look for when buying a colonial (or any other) home here in the Yucatan.

First Things First: Walls

When inspecting a colonial home that you want to buy, the first thing you’ll want to do is review the condition and placement of the walls. You are probably going to find cracks and even plaster falling off the walls. These are nothing to worry about as they can be easily repaired. The most important thing to determine is if the walls are made from cement block or from stone. The stone wall construction is called mamposteria, and walls made this way can be anywhere from one to two and a half feet wide. Of course, we all love the old stone walls, but there are some things to keep in mind when you are assessing them.

Repairing these walls is done all the time, and if the house is more than ten years old, some repair will probably be in order. If there are spots of excessive humidity on the walls, repair will consist of digging out the old plaster around the stones and replacing it with new plaster. This is a messy process (one you don’t want to have to live in the midst of…) because it creates a lot of very fine polvo (dust).

Look carefully at where the walls are placed. Cement block walls are easily moved or altered. You want a door there? a window? No problem! But if that wall is made of mamposteria, creating a new door or window in that space may not be so easy… in fact, it may not be possible without tearing down a large section of the wall. These walls were often built without supporting columns or reinforcement, so removing or altering them may compromise another wall or the ceiling. It can be done, but no contractor can give you an honest bid for this type of project, since it is impossible to know what the opening will need in time and materials until the job has been started.

Run your hands along the walls. If a very fine dust comes off on your fingers, that probably means the walls are painted with cal paint. This is basically a form of very thin plaster with color added to it. While this type of paint allows the old stone walls to breathe, it also tends to stain and flake off. You should count on having to repaint every few years, depending on the humidity in your house. If the cal paint is on an outside wall, you will probably have to paint every second year to keep it looking beautiful. There are vinyl paints here, of course (called vinilica), and they can be used on any kind of wall. If you use vinilica on a mamposteria wall, you run the risk of bubbling as the wall releases its humidity over time. Vinilica on a cement block wall will last for a long time, as long as there are no humidity problems.

Another thing to keep in mind is the height of the walls. When assessing how much it is going to cost to paint a room, keep in mind that many of these old colonials have very high ceilings. This fact almost doubles the cost of painting a room because of the increased area of the walls. Painters will also have to set up andamios (scaffolding) in order to paint the walls and ceilings. You haven’t lived until you’ve watched painters setting up scaffolding around your precious furniture, balancing on old boards with full buckets of paint twenty feet in the air! Plan to paint before you move in if at all possible.

Up On The Roof

When you decide to get serious about a house, make an appointment with your realtor to see the roof (if you haven’t already). It is important that you go up on the roof and inspect it for yourself. If you are unable to climb, bring a friend who can do this for you and perhaps take photographs for you as well.

All colonial roofs need to be sealed with a very heavy latex sealant called impermeabilizante. (Working Gringos Note: we felt we had really become locals when we could finally pronounce that word!) Unlike with walls, with a roof you do need to worry about cracks. The slightest crack in a roof will mean a leak in your house. If the roof has not been sealed at all, you will need to consider the additional cost of doing this in your estimates. A perfectly sealed roof will look perfectly clean and painted white (there are black and red impermeabilizantes, but they are rarely used). The proper sealing job for a colonial roof requires several coats of sealant and cloth in between to reinforce the layers. If the house appears to have been sealed, get down on your knees and feel the surface. If it feels thick and slightly rubbery, that’s a good thing! You also should be able to find traces of the cloth that was applied. If instead it looks like the roof was sealed with paint and you can see fine cracks everywhere, that probably means that the sealant was watered down and/or no material was used.

In this case, you don’t know what you are getting into. The thick coat may have been applied just to groom the house for sale, but it could also mean that the house has leaks and the job was done to temporarily plug the leaks. If you go inside the house, look up and you can see water marks or humidity stains on the ceiling, then you can assume that the job was not done well. Yes, this can be fixed, but fixing it right usually means resealing the entire roof.

In Merida, everybody has a friend who has a cousin who seals roofs. Most people believe that sealing a roof is as simple as applying paint. If you ask around, you’ll find that the plumber, the painter and even the gardener will do the job if you pay them. In reality, sealing a roof is tricky. Although it isn’t rocket science, it does have certain procedures that need to be followed precisely. And it is a very difficult job. Imagine a guy on your roof in the middle of the day in 90-plus degree heat, applying blinding white material to the roof. There is a lot of room for error here, but errors are the one thing you need to avoid. Even professionals can make mistakes, but at least a professional applier will honor a warranty and will repair the mistake.

One last thing while you are on the roof. Look around and see what kind of water storage unit is on the roof. Although the old cement type of tinaco blends in beautifully with an old house, they aren’t particularly healthy. These cement water tanks do not seal well and are not hygienic. Replacing this with a plastic, germ-free unit is a must.

Going Down… the Fosa Septica

In the Yucatan, we do not have city sewers like many cities in the world, so we depend on individual septic systems. Please read this very informative Yucatan Living article before you ask any questions so you can understand how they work.

As a buyer, the important thing to know is what kind of system is in place. In a newly renovated home, you probably don’t need to worry about this. But in homes that have undergone little or no renovation, there are some things to consider. Many homes downtown were originally part of one single mansion that occupied most of a city block. Over time, these homes were divided and sold as independent houses. If this is the scenario for your house, keep in mind that the house you are buying may share the septic system with one or more houses on the block. So when you are starting to plan for renovation of that house, be sure to count on putting in a new fosa septica that serves just your home.

Plumbing and Electricity

As I’ve mentioned above, if you are planning to buy a renovated home, none of this applies… probably. When a house has been occupied by a Yucatecan family or closed for many years, these things will almost surely be an issue.

With a renovated home, be sure to ask for the electrical and plumbing plans from the seller, so it will be easier to find pipes or installations. You can’t use a stud finder in an all-cement house! If the home is not previously renovated, you will probably be able to see the electrical wire running outside of the cement or stone walls. When these things came to this part of the world, families put in galvanized pipes for plumbing and single hard wire for electrical wiring. All of it was done on the walls, so nothing is hidden. If this is what you see, it may be functional, but it probably won’t work well with modern appliances, computers, etc. Most likely, these installations will need to be totally replaced.

Even if the seller says that this sort of work has been done, and some of the installations are already hidden, check the faucets, rooftops and gardens to see if you can see any old and deteriorated galvanized pipe that will need to be replaced. Take a screw driver with you and open an outlet to see if it is a single wire with its installation bristle. If you find this, you can probably count on rewiring the house and having some major plumbing jobs. If instead you find copper pipes or, better yet, PVC or CPVC and flexible multistring wiring, then you probably won’t have much work to do.

Last Thoughts

From stories we have heard, the earliest immigrants to Merida from the US and Canada were often unpleasantly surprised by things they needed to do to their homes in order to live in the comfort they were accustomed to. Still, they bought the houses, they renovated them and now they are very happy here. Hopefully, you will take the comments above as tips to improve your buying skills, not as stories to scare you away from buying. There is nothing in a colonial house that cannot be fixed… it’s only a matter of money and time. And dust. Now that you have read this article, you won’t be caught off guard and will have a better understanding of what you will need to invest in the house you are buying.

Editors Note: With these issues, we have only just touched the surface of the vast list entitled "Things That Can Go Wrong in A Colonial Home". Handyman (Jorge) has graciously offered to answer questions that our readers might have about specific problems or issues. Please leave your question as a comment below and he will answer it. If you check the box below this article which says "I’d like to be notified by email when someone replies", then you will get an email when he posts his reply! If you want to contact him directly, you can find his information by clicking here.

As the year comes to an end, we thought it might be a good time for another report on the building of our house in Merida. No, it’s not finished yet. Since we started, our architect, Mercedes, has had time to get pregnant and have her baby (Bienvenido al mundo, Rodrigo!), but the house remains unfinished. It isn’t scheduled to be finished until the end of February, so this is not yet a cause for alarm.

As we prepared to write this article, we read our last article (Building our House VI). Looking at the photos, even our reaction was "Well, not that much has changed in two months!". And it’s true. The broad strokes of building concrete walls, shelving, tejebans, pools and floors has been done for awhile. The last floor finish to be done will be the stone patio between the office and the kitchen, and the stone is set for delivery the day after Christmas. But in general, we are now down to the detail work… what our architects call "the endless end", which we imagine would be fin sin fin in Spanish… a very poetic and valuable expression at this stage.

So what has happened since our last report?

Blinded by the Light

Wandering through our house late one night after working all day, we stepped into the guest bedroom and we noticed light streaming through the window. The streetlight is meters and meters away, but it was shining brightly right into the space that will one day hold a guest bed. We considered buying a BB gun and making short work of the lamp, but decided that would probably not get us off on the right foot with the neighbors. Instead, we talked with the architects the next day and arranged to build a small wall above the roof near the front of the house which would block the light. The architect had a few design suggestions, and the end result is an arched nicho (niche) with a bench in front of it, which not only blocks the light but makes a perfect place to sit and look back at the house we have built. A little problem solved where the solution turned out to be an unexpected gift.

Laundry sinks

The laundry room has been completed (except for paint and actually installing the washer and dryer). We covered the sink with ceramic tile (which we don’t particularly like and don’t have anywhere else in the house) as we were advised that it holds up the best under cleaning fluids like bleach. We also installed a "Mexican-style" cement sink, as opposed to a "Yucatecan-style" sink. The Yucatecan style sink is rectangular, with a washboard-like surface on the bottom, and it tips to one side. We’ve seen them in the most remote pueblos and in the laundry rooms of some of the most expensive homes here. The Mexican-style sink is actually two side-by-side sinks, one for soaking and one with the built-in washboard bottom. Who knew? In any case, they were both available pre-made from the same concrete store that makes columns, molding and other pre-cast concrete and cement items. By the way, these cement items are very inexpensive. As we recall, the sinks both cost about $100 pesos (that’s less than $10 US).

Iron Men

Our architects hired two different iron workers to work on our house. The doors upstairs facing the patio with the outdoor bathtub were done by one man, who did a markedly sloppier job than the other iron worker. His doors didn’t seem quite as well put together, and when he installed his work, he made a lot of unnecessary holes in the walls. Upon observing that, our architects repaired the damage and gave the rest of the doors and windows to the second iron worker. His work has been neat, careful and consistent. In the past two months, he has built and installed bannisters for the inside staircase, the divider between the living and dining rooms and for the stairs next to the pool. He’s also built the three arched iron doors leading into the kitchen and dining rooms, as well as the rectangular-paneled doors for the living room and master bedroom, which
are at this moment resting in the pasillo, waiting to be installed. This man is also creating the custom-designed chandeliers (seven of them!) which are going to light the pasillo. Of course, we have now given him a lot more work than he was anticipating, so he’s now a bit behind schedule. We’re also waiting for Don Martín, the electrician, to actually electrify the first prueba (test) chandelier, install the focos (lightbulbs), and install the chandelier in place to make sure we like the way it looks. If all goes well, the iron man will then proceed to make the other six. If not, back to the drawing board.

Polishing

The floors upstairs (and many of the downstairs floors too) have all been polished at least once or twice. Apparently, there is an ongoing debate amongst Yucatecan contractors about whether to polish or paint first. We elected to begin polishing first, to guard the tiles and white cement against any unwanted staining, not just from paint, but also from general wear and tear and the occasional bat that decides our empty house makes a great cave. The white cement counters in the bathrooms and master bedroom are also being polished, as are the yellow counters and shelving in the kitchen. Even the white cement walls in the bathrooms will be sanded down and slightly polished, then sealed to prevent cracking or staining as much as possible. From what we can tell, polishing is an intermittent and ongoing process. The men use both machines and elbow grease, depending on what is being polished. In the end, those mosaico tiles and the cement surfaces shine and glisten. It is quite a transformation.

Chips Off of Many Old Blocks

A lot of work has been done on the floors in the past two months. The long pasillo which reaches from the front of the house in the garage to the back of the property, has been floored with diamond-shaped areas of grey cement, separated by rows of white chipped stone, called rajuela. Rajuela can be any color; the term refers to the style of placing chipped stones side by side. We ended up using rajuela for the pasillo floor, for the water wall that is the focal point of the swimming pool, and as the backdrop for our Virgen de Guadalupe statue that graces the courtyard fountain. (We found our Virgen on the road from Tulum to Valladolid. It was created by the men who have a roadside store set up at about 15 km inland from Tulum.) The work of creating rajuela is tedious, as the large stones must first be chipped into small pieces, and then painstakingly set into place. The result is beautiful, but we pity the workers who have been doing those rajuela lines in the floor for what must seem like centuries now! Our plain grey cement floors look beautiful with the rajuela delineating the diamond shapes, and they rhyme with the diamond layout of the saltillo tiles in our patio and next to the pool… an unintended but very harmonious effect, if we do say so ourselves.

The Back Forty

After all the tile work had been completed, which included Talavera tiles in kitchens and bathrooms, and mosaico tiles on most floors (in combination with white cement), we took the leftover pieces and created a cement potting table in the back area behind the pool. Hidden from view, this table also takes advantage of unused column pedestals for its base. With the big garden and all the outdoor terraces this house has, we think we’re going to put this table and this area to good use.

The area behind the pool is where the pool equipment (regular pool filter, additional saline filter, pump for the pool and pump for the "water wall" fountain that flows into the pool) is now partially installed. We also built two concrete bins in that area for holding and processing compost. All this will be hidden from view from the house but easy to access.

In an informal ceremony last week, we created a sort of monument on the wall behind the pool to the trajabadores (workers) who have built this house. We ordered lunch from a place we’ve found that delivers great lunches (Burrito Express, 926-7851…try it!). Forty burritos arrived individually packaged and labeled… an easy and tasty solution for serving such a big crowd. After lunch, we invited each worker (there were 33 of them) to put his handprint in black paint on our garden wall, and to print his name underneath. Our architects, our assistant Beatriz and we added ours as well. The result is a line of black handprints on our wall, reminiscent of the ancient Mayan handprints you sometimes find in caves in the Yucatan, and a meaningful tribute to the men (and a few women) who built this house.

The same day, we also planted our first tree. A ceiba tree (which was given to us by our friend Lucy from Selva y Jardin) was planted carefully, far enough away from the wall so it can grow for twenty or thirty years (or more!) without damaging it. Working Gringo sprinkled a few drops of ceremonial Coca Cola on the ground, and we welcomed the tree to her new home. A few volunteer native palms that were hardy enough to have survived the last six months of abañile basura being thrown on them were also dug up and replanted along the wall. It has been many months of rock, tile, dirt and dust, so it was a real pleasure to see a few spots of green going into the back yard.

Kitchen

The island in the kitchen, made of colored and polished cement, has been finished for awhile. Ditto the yellow cement shelving along one wall, and the kitchen counters along the other wall. A few weeks ago, the younger half of our father-son carpenter team came by to get our approval on the kitchen cabinets and discuss the color of the stain. We settled on all that and last week, the kitchen cabinets showed up and were installed. We rushed out and bought handles (at a great store called Jako across from Costco), and we’re very pleased with the results. The carpenter will probably finish the installation the week after Christmas. The doors and windows to the kitchen are all made of iron and glass, for maximum visibility to the outside world (and maximum ease of maintenance too). The iron is in (see the first photo in this article), but still needs to get the final coat of paint and to have the glass installed. Once that is done, the walls will be painted, the fan hung, the stove and sink installed (all waiting in the wings for their grand entrance…) and we’ll be cookin’!

Appliances

We have purchased a number of appliances for our new house. Thanks to a growing number of U.S. chain stores here in Merida, we’ve had no problem finding familiar brands from back home. These stores include Walmart, Sam’s Club, Home Depot, Sears and Costco. There are also a number of Mexican stores where you can shop for appliances. The most well-known of these is Liverpool. As you can imagine, we’ve spent a number of hours shopping around and have found the lowest prices at Costco. However, another important consideration is maintenance and repair, so we are careful not to buy a brand from Costco that is not well supported by authorized dealers in Mexico. As it turns out, the only U.S. branded appliances we’ve purchased are the washer and dryer, manufactured by Whirlpool. Our stove is actually a popular Mexican brand called Mabe. All of our air conditioners, as well as our refrigerator, are made by a company called LG. We had never heard of LG before moving here, but we have come to appreciate the reliability and affordability of their products. Plus, you’ll never have any trouble finding someone to service an LG appliance.

What Lies Ahead

There are a lot of things that are partially completed that need to be finished. The largest jobs that lie ahead are the painting, the garage door, the landscaping and irrigation, the stone patio and the chicum finishes.

We have employed our painter, Isauro, who we have used over the years for repainting the interior or exterior of our former home, Casa del Panadero. He is a very good painter and he and his team are both good at what they do and neat about it. Before we started painting, we asked Isauro for a presupuesto because he is not working under our architects, but directly for us. He walked around our house and measured every wall and ceiling. His final presupuesto came out to about $76,000 pesos, roughly $25 pesos per square meter. We have agreed to pay him based on work he accomplishes, so each Saturday, we go through the house, counting what has been done, and then we pay accordingly. This arrangement seems to be working out well.

Another worker who we wanted to employ directly is Carmelo, the man who did our stone patio at Casa del Panadero. In his case, he is so busy installing over 3,000 square meters of cut stone at the new Yucatan Golf Club, that he said he could only provide the stone. We would have to ask our albañiles to install it. So we arranged for our architect to visit him on the jobsite to understand the process. And the stone will be delivered this week: 40 square meters of it for $32,000 pesos. A lot more expensive than the paint! We’re budgeting another $4,000 pesos to install it. We’ve been told our albañiles earn between $125 and $200 pesos a day, so this is about 25 man-days of installation. Hopefully it will go a little bit faster than that!

The other main job still left to be done are the chicum finishes on the pool, the outdoor bathtub, the bar and the two outdoor cement banquets. Our former home had a plunge pool covered in chicum finish. It is an ancient Mayan technique of mixing white cement with secret ingredients which may or may not include an extract of chicum tree bark, cement, Coca-cola, urine, water and honey. Whatever it is made of, it has a lovely honey color (as compared to the greyish white of plain white cement) and it is especially water resistant. On top of that, it ages really well, developing a lovely mottled patina that we think looks ancient and very rich. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there are very few people who know how to make the chicum concoction, and it costs about $25 pesos per square meter as opposed to white cement which costs about $15 pesos per square meter. It’s more expensive, but we know it will be worth it.

The garage door has been co-designed with our architect and is being built by yet a third iron man. He has been telling us it will be deilvered any day now for a few weeks. So we suspect we’ll see it any day now.

The landscaping and irrigation is a big "to do" on our list. Our architects have a gardener who can come in and dig holes and plant plants. But we need to come up with a general outline of what we want in our garden, and then have the irrigation designed and installed. We plan to plant a few big trees, a big patch of grass and a few palms, heliconias, gingers and bananas to start. Then we’ll let the rest grow somewhat, well… organically!

Everything else that needs to be done now is partially done. Some lighting fixtures are in, some plumbing fixtures have been installed. Some white cement walls and mosaico floors have been polished. Some metal and glass doors are installed. Some wooden doors have been refurbished and installed. Some of the kitchen cabinets have been installed. Some of the pool equipment is in. Some of the water system has been installed. Finishing up all these little things are going to drive us crazy for sure. We can’t wait to move in, but they don’t call it the fin sin fin for nothing. Wish us luck!

To read the past progress of our house project, here are the links:

Building Our House VI
Building Our House V
Building Our House IV
Building Our House III
Building Our House II
Building Our House