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
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Congratulations to both of you! It looks fantastic–amazing to see how far it’s come since the time I visited. Great work!
Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us, but I have to admit that having bats flying down my pasillo would drive me batty. That is because a friend lost a son to a bat bite which they didn’t even realize he had and he developed rabies from it. It has made me phobic.
The pictures and your descriptions are wonderful, and I hope that Working Gringa and Working Gringo have years of peace and pleasure in their new home and office.
That pool of yours is just so darned inviting, I think I just have to have one.
Congratulations! Beautiful home!!!!! Thanks for sharing with us from start to finish.
As usual, your writing and articles are excellent and so very, very helpful and inspiring to those of us who love Merida and the Yucatan from afar.
Blessings on you and your beautiful new home!
Congratulations to both of you! Your house looks very elegant and so beautiful inside and outside. The finishes, the colors, the garden, los detalles are very important. It is too bad that your great size swimming pool was built above ground. It just looks too bulky for the great front corridor. That is the only flaw of the project in order to be a very clean and complete piece of architectural restauration. At the present time I am building a house for Mr. Ian Smith and we have about the same pool size, but it is been built at ground level as mirror. It makes a difference.
Carlos de la Barrera Cardeña.
Bachelors in Architecture
University of Cincinnati
This house is Beautiful .. Marvelous .. Amazing .. Next time I’m in Merida I’d like a tour. Loved reading your progress.
KW in Michigan
Congratulations on a project well done..We appreciate all the information we gather from your writings. We are about to start our own renovation in Merida and will use your experience as a reference. The one thing we can never seem to find the answer to is the cost per square foot range. “handing over large wads of pesos”.. how large are those wads??? I’ma starting to shake in my boots..and hope i still own them after i finish building..not having to sell them to buy toilets ,tiles or taps.
I design and build here in Canada and have seen one of my last projects (a mega Mansion) take 2 years to build so one doesn’t seem so bad considering the scale of what we are about to take on in Merida. Have to go count my pesos and book an appointment with my shrink…I”m starting to think i might be crazy.
I finished reading with regret, because you are such marvelous writers. You transported me, inspired me, and brought to mind the many memories and images of what “home” has meant to me. I know the legacy you have created will bring lasting joy to you and your children, and to the Yucatecans who pass by and through your door.
Bonne chance!
I read through a little further and see it is about $45. per sq ft. to build. Quite reasonable for the awsome quaility you have.Does this price include pool and landscape or is it just the structure. Does this include plumbing fixtuers, tile, lighting etc.?
Have to go read more of your fantastic articles. can’t seem to get enough of them since we found your website.
Thankyou for writing…this information is invaluable.
Congratulations, Felicidades,!!
Now when is the “the blessing” “inauguracion” going to be?, I will be in town next month lol…anyhow thanks for sharing all the heartaches you went through, bottom line is wonderful to call it “home” and looks gorgeous, awesome, thanks for sharing all the process.
we want to see more pictures!!
we want more pictures!!
queridos gringos trabajadores:
congratulations, you did an exellent work!!
i just comeback from Manzanillo Colima from doing a faux in this house with the same problem you have, water stain in concrete painted with cal, and this is what i did,
sand all the area where you have the problem, after that clean it and then paint it with kilz paint (you can buy it online) this will keep the spains from cooming back, after that ask your artisans to paint it again, but remember they have to sand all the wall not just where you have the spot, this way when they paint it again the texture and color will blend over the stain, and acabado!!
WOW! Beautiful. Thanks for sharing. One questions. Is your home in Centro? If so, I am always amazed at how “away from centro” looking the homes in Centro can look……….behind the doors.
What a wonderful post - I am so happy for you to finally be living in such a wonderful space. Congratulations.
May you have many happy years in your beautiful new home.
Thank you, everyone, for your supportive comments.
Sid, yes, the house is in the Centro, equidistant to San Sebastian Park and L’Ermita Park. And it’s true… in true Latin America tradition, you have no idea from the street what is behind the facade.
Suzanne, it turned out to be more like $48-$50 US per square foot, and yes, we think that includes the appliances, water softener, etc.
Congratulations to both of you for this “labor of love”.! Thank you for allowing us be part of this “labor of love”. Muchas Bendicciones, and hope to see your Master Piece, some day…a Yucateca living abroad. Ciao!
Fantastic!
And only one year! What a priceless adventure. Your house is absolutly georgous and a true inspiration. Enjoy!!
Thank you so much for your lovely description of your home building aventura. The world needs more loveliness and you have given it in your elegant words and the addition of yet another beautiful home in our paradise. Muchisimas gracias! And many blessings on your new home.
MEXICO JUST BEAT JAPAN IN THE LITTLE LEAGUE WORLD SERIES AND WILL PLAY HAWAII OR LOUISIANNA FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP.
Beautiful pics! Could you publish more on your next newsletter? Also, did you start from the beginning or did you buy an old colonial? Congratulations! Carol
Your home is stunning! I throughly enjoy reading your articles; your conclusion “The Fat Lady Sings” is so beautifully written. You really should publish this in book form. Congratulations, I hope one day to meet you in Merida.
“building our house — the end”
Now I ask you, aren’t those beautiful words?
Congratulations!
Your home looks beautiful and I also would like to see more pictures. We are just starting on our renovation in Chelem and this gives me hope there is light at the end of the tunnel
Thank you, everyone. And yes, Casi Yucateco, those ARE beautiful words!! We hope you too can enjoy them soon.
I was on the run the other day and have barely had time to slow down. First off, Working Gringa looked much more rested on both of our recent accidental encounters and I’m sure that had to do with the house being finished. It is amazing the number of decisions a person must go through everyday when building a house, plus the errands, the oversight, the worries… well, it isn’t for the weak at heart. So, big congrats to Working Gringa & Working Gringo!
My house has reached the point where I cannot find anything else for the albaniles to do. Now, I have to decide paint colors and floor materials/designs. Yes, those decisions should be made up-front and the whole design considered from beginning to end. That, however, is an ideal (lucky Working Gringo/a’s!) and in my real life, I cannot cope with all the decisions at once. So… well, I guess the only critical parts are the floors. Those materials are expensive. If the room colors need to change, paint is relatively cheap.
Now, about that above-ground pool. Personally, I think it is stunning. Maybe people who see the pictures do not understand it or get a mis-impression somehow.
First off, it is similar/reminiscent of the old hacienda water tanks aside the Casa de Maquina steam engines. So, points for historical relevance and reference. Secondly, it fits perfectly into the level of a terraza above the garden level. Convenient access. Third, the elevation provides a little automatic mosquito reduction (whether intentional or otherwise), as certain mosquitos hug the ground (the little annoying ankle-biters) and tend not to ‘fly high.’ And last, who says the people in the pool should always be condemned to be at the lowest possible level of construction? Shouldn’t swimmers now and then have a view? Roof top pools are popular in the US for that reason.
I recently saw another above-ground pool in Merida - about 3 feet above ground and 4 feet below ground - edged in angled stone walls like a mini-Mayan ruin. It was not only attractive, but inviting and refreshing. And with the frequency of tropical downpours, a raised pool isn’t going to be flooded with a lot of run-off from elsewhere.
Anyway, now that I’ve got the “raised pool” stick out of my craw, I don’t believe anyone who actually visits your house could have a nit to pick. It’s just incredible. I’ve been trying to rescue my own home from design mistakes ever since seeing yours.
Is it true that new experiences give a person new eyes?
Well, life isn’t perfect, but a roof over my head, warm laughter echoing in the halls, a soft pillow on the bed, and friends to share travails — that’s all that we need in life, isn’t it? That, a cooler full of beer and limes, some great salbutes or panuchos and an above-ground pool…
You know, CY, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves! You touched on all the reasons that we designed and built an above-ground pool, except for one. Our backyard, like many here in the Yucatan, had a lot of solid rock in it. We decided to spare ourselves the expense and the neighbors the heartache/headache of blasting or carving a pool out of that solid rock. Once we came up with a design that allowed for our above-ground pool, we loved it. And now that we’re here, living with it, we love it even more! It totally works.
Felicidades! I have been watching the progress of your home here on this site and having spent the summer going through the same thing with my little casita, I can imagine the relief and pleasure of finishing. Can’t wait!!!
L.
To all hard working gringos and almost yucateco. Please do not misunderstand me when I said that above ground pools are ugly. I think as an architect that for the particular beautiful project shown in this page it just does not fit well. It is true that the hacienda builders built raised big “tanques” as we call them here in Merida. The tanques were raised above ground because of the hard rock and also to allow the water to irrigate the fields from above thru channels you know by gravity. They did not have pumps for water back then and they where not designed to be hacienda pools. I have seen above ground pools and roof pools as well that work great when you have steps or a graded fields, but when you have a flat land it just does not fit well. A good point is that a tanque does not cost that much because there is a lot of savings by not digging into the Yucatecan hard rock. But again this is only a very particular opinion. I think that the house still looks impressive. I hope that I did not offended anybody by my little architectural critic. Congratulations again to Working Gringos for their beautiful house. You worked hard and you deserve it.
Wow! Beautiful! Congratulations. May you live high, wide and plentiful there.
Congratulations! Finally!!
I’ve been following your renovation and I cannot imagine the time, money and heart you put into it.
If it’s not too much to ask, please publish all the cost and circumstances of all your expenses from the time you decided to renovate your house to the time you escort the last worker so to speak. We’ve been thinking and talking about buying a property and we’d like to see what it entails.
Thanks,
aroy
OMG!
Your house is totally awesome and aught to be in Better Homes & Gardens. I would love to see it in person it is so beautiful, boy what a job you guys did and I am sure after enduring several projects at our house how thrilled you are to be finally done.
Katie
I couldn’t publish (or come up) all the costs of my minor project, let alone something as lovely as WG’s house. Anyway, houses are all too individualistic. WG’s good advice to find a great architect and work with them is the simplest for any foreingers, particularly those who don’t speak Spanish. “Do it yourself” has a whole different import in Mexico.
I am very impressed with all that you have gone through and accomplised. You had a mention in an earlier article about cashing money at Monex. I have heard that there is an office in NY and if one has an account there, money can be transfered within the states and then have Monex move it to Merida office. This way, one doesn’t need to open an account at one of the Mexican banks ie no visa is neccessary. Can anyone explain more about this and how it works? Or, is it true that one can open an account at certain banks with out a visa?
Someone please correct us if we’re wrong, but we don’t think you need a visa to open a bank account, but you definitely need a passport.
hi!!!
We are here in MErida finally!! we moved 3 weeks ago. so if you need people to fill up your pool please let me know. I have 3 gringos and 3 gringo kids that would be more than happy to volunteer hehe
Regarding the Bank account, I thought you HAD to have a VISA, well, we should get that figured it out soon.
Here in Quintana Roo some banks require an FM3 to open an account and some don’t care. It is all at the whim of the person you’re talking to. But you knew that.
I can’t believe it is DONE! I’m so happy for you and it is simply breathtakingly gorgeous! Felicidades!
CONGRATS ….. What a wonderful home/showplace. I have been following your articles for quite sometime and feel very fortunate to been a part of the process. My husband and I are looking to invest in Merida the first part of next year and have gleaned much information from your wonderful articles.
I did not see if you answered Carol’s question regarding a renovation or scratch construction. How large is your home?
Regarding opening a bank account I have also found that it is necessary to have a visa for such a transaction.
Enjoy!
Did you tile your pool? We are looking for somebody who is tiling a pool, it is hard to find, if you could help us, we would appreciate very much.
Kindest regards
Marianne
Congratulations! Your new casa is stunning! I’ve been following the house building saga faithfully, and I’m delighted to see that it’s finished. I love the choices of colors- the rich blue and golds are stunning, and so perfect in Yucatan. My husband noticed the rajuela and cement floor immediately (I have a feeling it’s going to influence the patio he wants to put in, though I wonder which one of us will be doing all the chipping!). The gardens are lovely too. At times I dream about being in a climate where I could grow year-round, and my orchids could live mounted in the trees, without their heated greenhouse . The pool and verdant courtyard make such a lovely cool retreat! Considering Yucatan’s hard rock, it makes sense to have it above ground, and it’s done very nicely. Again, congratulations on your house!
Congratulations! I certainly understand how happy you must be because my husband Jorge and I have also just completed a renovation. It took five months to transform our “35 year old family home” into a comfortable, airy nest that totally suits our needs at this time in our lives…’sans enfants’! Every morning when I wake up and pad out to my new kitchen, overlooking the pool and garden… I have to pinch myself. I feel so very blessed to live in Merida. I know your website has real estate articles and they are very interesting but your series on building your home from start to finish will be missed by many… maybe you’ll start a new series on someone else’s building project? Or perhaps you could do features on “Merida Houses… and the People Who Live in Them” This would be very useful for those who are contemplating building a home in Yucatan.
Congrats on your lovely home! I was born in Merida but came to live in california at 3 mths old, and that was back in ‘61. Growing up I spent many a long 3 mth summer going back to Merida and now as an adult I long to visit (if I could) every year but with a family it makes it difficult. Thank you for letting us travel with you and experience the building of your beautiful home. But we definetely want/need more pics!!!! Hopefully I can convince my Lebanese husband that we should retire to Merida and experience what you and Working Gringa are experiencing. Thx for sharing!
Minnie
From Turkey, Banco Azteca (in Elektra stores) does not require clients to have an FM2 or FM3. However, Banco Azteca clients cannot write cheques of any kind, including cashier’s cheques.
fabulous work, and fabulous words…you really have a way, WG!! Congratulations… enjoy many years of health and warmth in your new home!!
Thanks so much for taking time to share ! Your info is most helpful and
appreciated !