shoestring gringa

Remodeling an old house is always an adventure, especially in Mexico as we’ve learned, and some ideas work out better than others.  Now that we’ve lived more than four seasons in the house, it’s possible to judge what we did right and what was not so great.  Hindsight!  In the spirit of counting my blessings, which I’ve been trying to do consciously over these past stressful months,  I thought I’d share some of the things that have worked out well.

First, there was the choice of this particular house, the blank canvas on which we worked.  Being imaginative types, we’ve always been good at projecting our illusions onto any available hook, making choice a somewhat risky business for us.  But here it turns out we did really good.  Let me count the ways:

Condition/price ratio. This was really hard to find in this area, we spent many months searching.  Most properties we saw were both out of our price range and completely uninhabitable.  This place was semi-habitable as it stood, and the price was low enough so we could still afford to fix it up.  We had to clean up the papers, which took several months and a lot of  legwork, but given the lack of other options it was worth it.

Size. It’s big enough — five bedrooms.  Although we occupy very little space in the course of our daily activities, we need a distressing amount of room to accommodate all our crap, which refuses to get any smaller despite repeated weedings-out and ever-increasing attrition.  This seems an intractable fact of our life in that most of said crap consists of paintings and art supplies (two rooms full), until recently the source of our livelihood, and the Mexigringo’s tools (one room full), the source of all other good things.  A fourth bedroom holds real crap, i.e. ice chests, suitcases, camping gear, cat carriers, hoarded empty bottles, leftover construction materials, etc.  The fifth bedroom we sleep in. One of the painting rooms has enough space in the middle to accommodate an air mattress for guests willing to bring their own bed.  The other painting room has enough space in the middle for my tiny sewing machine and an ironing board.

View. We both fell in love with the gorgeous view of the mountains.  This has only grown with time.

View

Site. The place is uniquely situated on a kind of promontory of rock at the end of the street, such that the windows are a good 15 feet above street level.  This allows unobstructed contemplation of the view while preventing passersby from viewing us through the uncurtained windows.

Location. Less important to us, but still of note, the house is a three-minute walk from the town square, and also the last house in town in this direction, overlooking a milpa and the Alameda, a shady country lane leading to the river.

Climate. We enjoy the most pleasant summer weather in the entire region, being at almost 3000 feet elevation.

Trees. Although the outer patio isn’t terribly large, it contains a number of trees which shade the front room windows and provide a kind of natural air conditioning, occasional fruit, and home to singing birds.

Old adobe. We both love old houses, and I have a real thing for adobe construction.  This house has both.  The walls in the older parts of the house are two feet thick, featuring nichos for objets d’art, wide windowsills for the cats to sleep on, and steady interior temperatures (cool in the summer and warm, once heated, in the winter).

Usable existing tile floors. Not what we’d have chosen probably, but not bad either, and they saved us a fortune.

The basic material was solid.  Next time, what we did with it!