House, Hair, and Surf

I thought I'd post a couple of updated pix from the house.  We're getting close to having the building itself complete.  I'm working on the woodwork now and should have it done in a week or so.  After the roof tiles go on, that's it for the main building.  The boys are already working on the perimeter walls.  Once completed we do the front wall/gate, the garden, the master bathroom, and then, finally, we're done.

Also, check out Lucy's hair.  She really wanted pink and who are we to argue.  It's semi-permanent meaning that it will wash out in a week or two but, in the meantime, she's a celebrity.  

Finally, I got a chance to surf the coast of Michoacan last week.  You can get the full report at: www.mondogdl.com.

End of Summer - Back to the good life

Well, we're all back in GDL and settling down for the school year.  Classes start on Monday (finally).  Stina's Mom, Betsy has come down and is helping us take care of the kids while we scope out a new nanny.  We're still looking but have a candidate that's looking promising.

Progress on the house plods along.  As you can see from the photos, the right side of the house is now complete as is the upper porch.  

A portion of the front is also complete which leaves only the lower front porch.  My goal is to have the exterior of the house complete by the end of Sept.  From there we redo the front yard, the fence and gates in front, the fence on the left, and finally the master bath.  If we can have all this complete by X-mas, we'll be delighted.  Stay tuned.

Party Boy

Stina and the girls are still in the US.  They return at the end of the month so I haven't been wasting any time.  I've been going out to bars, movies, and restaurants as often as I'm able.  In fact, I've launched a website to catalog all the cool stuff going on in GDL.  For some reason, unknown by me, bars and nightspots seem reluctant to advertise or even hang a sign out front.  There is also no way that I know of to dig these things up online.  The end result is that if you don't know what's on, you just don't know.  Not anymore!!!  With MondoGDL you'll always know what to do that night.  Check it:  here and leave me comments, and suggestions on layout or events that I should be covering.

Other than that, work on the house continues.  We've finished the left side and are now working on the right.  One of the first things they've done is remove that hideous porch-type / shit box thing.  The house looks much more elegant now and has lost it's boxy, oppressive feel.  

Before:

and after

From here, they'll redo the texture on the right side then move to the front.  Ater that we start on the bathrooms and, from there, the end begins to come into view.  I'm hoping that we'll see that by the end of the year.

It's been a while so let's just get right into it...

We're still adjusting to GDL and, little by little, it's feeling like home.  We've had a lot of visitors in the past months and it's been great to see them.  I've been down to the coast 2 or 3 times and scored plenty of excellent waves.  Summer storms are starting to show and we're supposed to have 24 feet of swell (thanks to a hurricane) this weekend.  If it happens - I'm off like a prom dress.

Stina and the kiddies are in the US for all of July so I'm alone here for a whole month.  I've seen more nightlife in one week than in the preceding 10 months.  Turns out that there is a large and very active hipster scene here but it's almost entirely under the radar.  

To that end, I'm starting a side project.  A web site with upcoming movies, cool bars, shows, art, etc.  Stay tuned.  

Here's what got me thinking about this.  Stina and I went to see Sigur Ros.  I thought, obscure Icelandic, post-rock, band - in GDL, I expected that it would be Stina and I and the guy manning the beer tent.   

As it happened, it was packed, just freakin' packed with hipsters types.  Where do they hide these people?  Since then I've been exploring clubs, bars, restaurants, and have found an amazingly vibrant city.  I used to think that I was the coolest guy here and, once again, I discover that I'm a dork.

What else. . . oh, the house looks great.  We hired the grandson of the original architect (Rafael Urzua) - and he's been great.  Helped us get all of the paperwork and permits through city planning and architectural heritage committee.  We have the drawings for the front and have actually started the work on the facade.  

He also tracked down some photos from the 30's of what the house used to look like.  Our goal is to bring it back to its original state.

We've also just about finished the apartment.    That's where the live-in help will live.  I can hardly wait.  We'll finally have reliable babysitting whenever we need it - we get our lives back!!!!

Went to Lucy's graduation recently.  She's now in the first grade.  She's very stoked to have her own desk.  Both she and Lily continue to be the cutest kids on either side of the border.  

 

The Easter Bunny Cometh

Welcome (a bit late) to 2008! It’s been a while so I’m not sure where even to start.

January and February were filled with visits from gringo friends and family escaping the ice, rain, snow, and cold. It was good to see them all and it gave us a good excuse to check out some tourist spots in the area.

After the last post, my parents and their pals came back with us to GDL. We did the usual trip: downtown, a cantina or two, the open air bus, etc. My dad helped with the wiring and other home stuff – it was great to have him around for advice and an extra pair of hands. My Mom had great ideas and helped get the house in order. I felt bad when they had to return to Chicago – it had been hovering around zero degrees the entire time that they were here.

Just after they left an old, old friend (my highschool librarian!) and his son came for a visit. We had a delightful time just rambling around town and hashing over old times. It was first visit to Mexico so it was fun showing him the ropes. They too, sadly, had to return to the snow and cold of Wisconsin (brrrr).

Some friends from San Fran came down and we spent 4 or 5 days in and around Punta Mita. We surfed everyday and checked out the Sayulita night life. I hadn’t seen these guys for quite sometime and one of them I’d just met. None of them were avid surfers and one was just starting. Nonetheless, they hit double sessions everyday – I was very impressed. We found good surf almost everyday and by the time the weekend was over, I was baked. After a glassy morning session at La Lancha and a monster lunch of fish tacos in the little town of Punta Mita, my pals headed south to the airport while I, sandy, sunburned, sore, and smiling, headed north to GDL - a great trip with some great guys.

The next day my brother, his wife, and his daughter arrived. For the first week or so, I put him to work helping me on the plumbing (more about that later). The second week we checked out the downtown, the restaurants, and even went back to the beach for an extended weekend. We had a great time and we were sad to see them leave.

After this things calmed down a bit and we got back to our normal life. The kids are doing really well. They’re slowly picking up Spanish and now have a few friends that only speak Spanish. I’m not sure how they get on but they seem to communicate well and enjoy each others company – there is a lot of trying on princess dresses involved and, I suppose, this transcends language.

The Easter Bunny came but, because they don’t really have the tradition here, he left the candy in a pair of shoes rather than a basket. The kids didn’t care much what the delivery vehicle was, as long as there was a solid quantity of chocolate.

The house has been entirely transformed since the last post. First, we redid all of the wiring. This involved running new wire through existing conduit to all switches, plugs, and lights, as well as adding new ones. It was a colossal undertaking but everything is now on grounded circuits and split up among 2, 12-breaker fuse boxes. We’ve also run CAT5 for internet to 6-10 places throughout the house. Thanks to dad and my bro for helping me with this (and thanks to Stina for working around the mess and for listening to me winge.)

The plumbing is also new. We installed a fancy cupola-looking tinaco.

This feeds the, also new and very cool, solar water heater. This amazing device circulates the water inside of those glass tubes on the basis of convection alone – no power, no pump. And it gets hella hot! It hovers just below boiling all day and night (it’s very well insulated). After the water leaves here, it goes into an on-demand water heater that’s gas powered. If the water in the solar heater ever comes out cold, the gas heater will boost it up to the right temp. Since we’ve put the solar heater in, it hasn’t turned on once!

The back patio is now complete. The fountain was designed by Stina and built by Lupe and it’s just great. In each of the planters and under the water in the fountain there are lights that shine up. It looks cool at night and is a good place to hang out and have dinner in the warm evenings. The weather is so nice that we just leave all the doors open to the patio at night and we can hear the fountain when we sleep – very soothing (although this may explain why Lily has wet the bed a couple of times).

Before

and
After

My office is amazing – it’s an entirely new structure but the way we’ve done it, it looks like it’s always been there. It opens out onto a roof patio /deck. This week we knocked a hole in the wall in the TV room so that it opens out onto that same deck.

We’ll be able to open the TV room and the office and create one large indoor/outdoor space. We’re moving the giant front door from the front of the house to fill the hole. Our new front door will arrive either tomorrow or Monday.

The primary roof deck (there are 6 of them) now has stub walls, between which, we’ll install ornate metal work railings. After that we paint them and then put down the tile (we’ll use the same stuff as the patio downstairs.) Once this phase is done, I’ll be able to move into my office and the dust level on the second and third floor will stop.

This will represent a big milestone as I’ll be able to unpack my guitars and set up my life. From there the housework can continue without my direct involvements. The boys will be working on the façade, the front wall, the servant’s quarters, etc. but they won’t be in our space anymore. With that, I can migrate from home-improvement to self-improvement mode. I’ve already started my Spanish class (yesterday). Next is my yoga class and either piano or guitar classes.

All in all, we’re happy. I feel like the honeymoon is over and I’m increasingly seeing the warts-and-all side of Mexico. There are many, many elements that are frustrating. I read something the other day that accurately summed it up: “gross inefficiencies masquerading as charm”. As we get more accustomed to living here, the charm wears off, leaving you with just the inefficiencies. That said, there are so many things that I enjoy here – the most obvious being that lack of stress in my life. This is partially an effect of the more relaxed Mexican pace (see: inefficiencies) and partly due to the fact that we don’t have to work our asses off here to make ends meet. I read in the press about the mortgage crisis, falling home prices, job losses, consumer confidence in the toilet, etc, etc. and it all seems so far away. The garbage man comes by and rings his cowbell every day, likewise the ice cream scooter passes with its recorded and bizarrely distorted tune, we gets the kids off to school, fart around the house, take naps, read, go to movies or rent videos, eat and sleep well – it feels like life as it’s meant to be lived.

Report from the Beach

(andy blogging here)

I'm writing this from the beach. My parents, two of their friends, and a friend of mine from LA came down for a visit this week and we all took off for the coast. We rented a couple of houses on the Nayarit coast and have been having a ball. The weather has been warm, the food great, and the surf consistent.

Stina actually went back to GDL for the week to attend to the house (and get some alone time) so I'm managing the kids alone but with the help of the grandparents. There is a small pool on the deck of the house we're renting and, between this and the beach, the kids have been in the water most of the time (me too). Lucy even got her first real wave - with her on the front of a longboard, me on the back, we paddled into a few waist-high sets.

A lot to report since the last update. All of our stuff showed up, much to our surprise, in two large trucks two days before X-mas. We spent the next week unpacking boxes and moving in. By X-mas morning, in fact, we were living in the house and Santa was able to find us without incident.

Living in the new house has been a dream - the extra space, the proximaty to the school, having our things around us again, and not having to commute back and forth from the apartment has made our life immeasureable better.

Unfortunately a few things were stolen in customs. Mostly computer stuff and tools but since everything was insured we'll recover. There was a bit of a scare when all three of our harddrives were missing from the boxes in which they were packed. We'd backed up all of our photos, videos, and music on three seperate drives and packed them in seperate boxes. All of the pix and videos of the kids - everything gone in a single instant. In the end, only 2 were stolen and the third, curiously, ended up in a box full of garden plants.

So Xmas day evening was spent with a group of gringo pals. We had a great dinner with wine, candles, music, and wonderful company in a house that, more or less, resembled a home. Besty (Stina's Mom) had come down for the week to help unpack, celebrate the holidays, and assist with the kids as I, on the last day of the year, returned to the US to buy a car.

I flew into LA to visit friends and spent the new years eve watching a band called Dengue Fever - they played early 70's Cambodian pop music (A sub-genre of a sub-genre of a sub-genre - only in L.A.) Had a wonderful time there just hanging out and enjoying the company, food, and night life. Then I flew to the bay area to buy a Honda Element (which, oddly, are not available in Mexico). I immediately went to work upgrading the car and sound system. Props to my friends Robert and Kathryn (for use of thier garage) and Scott (for use of his tools). After 4 days, the car had all of the goodies installed including a stereo to die for. It rained the entire time I was there and, other than missing friends, was glad to see it in my rear view mirror. San Francisco in January - no thank you. I made it to L.A by the first day. The next put me in Tucson (7 hours). The next back in Mexico at Vic and Betsy's house in Alamos (9 hours - great to be back in warm dry Mexico). They were kind enough to put me up and show me around thier adopted city. A 12-hour marathon drive put me back in GDL - home again but with a new car.

Finally, the house. It's hard to imagine the progress that's been made in the 4 short weeks since the last update. The rear courtyard may be completed by the time we get back home this week. The new windows are in. The beams are installed. The walls are resurfaced and primed. All that really remains back there is paint (which, as mentioned) may already be done) and the floor tiles. The closet in the bedroom is done. The laundry room is done (save the paint). The garage is done (again, save the paint). All of the interior paint it done. The upstairs patio(s) have all been demoed. The windows, doors, and stairs have all been ordered and they are hard at work roughing in the walls for my office upstairs. The progess is nothing short of amazing.

My Mom and Dad have agreed to stay on for a few extra weeks to help me with a couple of projects. We'll install a new hot water systems with a vacuum tube solar heater and a back-up boiler. Then we'll rewire the whole place using the existing conduit. Should be fun. I'm hoping that the electric company has come by to hook up my new service while I've been gone this week.

We're still happy as clams in Mexico. I suspect that we're still in the honeymoon period when all or the odd challenges and weird things seem cute and ethnic - an adventure. At some point they may just seem annoying and unnecessary and some of the shine may dissappear. At least this is what we're told by folks that have been here for more than a year or two. So we're waiting, and are prepared for, the other shoe to drop but, in the meantime, it's life as it's meant to be lived.

Progress: House, FM3, and razor blades

(Andy blogging here)

Sorry that it's been so long since the last update. It's been so busy I don't know where to start.


We DID actually find razor blades - WalMart. We bought the entire stock (just in case) and went to work on scraping the floors of decades-old paint. Oh, and just after the last post we (cue the hosts of angels singing) we received out FM3s. I nearly wept!

A funny FM3 story: our pal Jorge spilled tea on his FM3 and the ink ran such that it became unreadable. So off he went to the "palace" of government to get a replacement. They told him that a simple $400 pesos and a letter describing what had happened to his existing FM3 and they would issue a replacement. Using his Spanish-speaking friend, he wrote a page-long description of the tea spill, turned in it and waited the usual week. When he returned, he was told that the letter wasn't detailed enough. He kept his cool and asked: "What more is there to say? There was tea, it spilled." Not much dramatic tension to work with here. "You see, tea was first domesticated by the Chinese. . . ." After much pleading, whinging, and refusing to go away, they finally agreed that a page was enough and he was told to return in 2 hours. The FM3 was waiting for him.


Now, on to sewage. . .


(Warning: geeky home-repair detail here, feel free to skip to next paragraph)

If you'll remember, we had to replace the in-floor plumbing in the kitchen. It was old and was leaking (and leaching up the kitchen wall - causing the plaster to fall off). We replaced the pipe in the floor and routed the 4 inch PVC through the wall and into the garage. But now, what to do with it. I decided to put a distribution box with a drain in the middle of the garage floor and then route the plumbing to this. They call it a "registro" here (not sure of the actual translation) It's just a concrete box into which the many different waste lines run. One line then runs out to the main sewer. I expected that I could just buy a prebuilt one. Ah, but no. You have to make it by hand.

A picture is worth a thousand words (especially when you're dealing with sewer) so here you go:

First I broke out the concrete floor and dug a hole in the middle of the floor. Next, I cut the top out of a 5 gallon bucket and ran the lines into it (I ran a new line for a second drain which will accommodate the washer on the other side of the wall and a second work sink).

I covered the bucket with wire mesh and then threw concrete at it. It took several coats but eventually I was able to build it out the right thickness. Near the end I added a drain with a trap so the stinky gases won't enter my workshop/shrine.

I capped the top with manhole cover that I found under the counter at my local hardware store. This week I repour the floor and will slope it all toward the drain. A sewage masterpiece.

And now on to electricity (more geeky home improvement stuff to follow).

The wiring in the house in freakish. I'll spare you the details but a few of the lights were registering either zero, 70, 130, or 240 volts. Depending on which combination of 2- and 3-way switch positions were used. If defies logic but, the best I can surmise, is that many of the lines were doing double duty as ground and hot, depending on switch. I'm pulling EVERYTHING out of the walls and am going to start over. First step was to get clean power to the house. We installed two, new 16-breaker boxes on two separate meters outside. We'll gradually cut over from the weird old system to the spanky new one.

Enough with the technical details. The look of the house has changed so dramatically that it's difficult to relate it to the stinky, grungy place that we originally bought. We changed Maestros and now Lupe is our man. It's made all the difference. In addition to getting more stuff done, he has a great eye and has made tons of wonderful suggestions.

First, the paint.

Stina (in consultation with George and Lupe) gets the credit for choosing the color combinations. They certainly aren't subtle but will blend in a bit more when our stuff (furniture, paintings, etc.) is in the rooms.

Stina bought a half/dozen lights from Tonala to replace the cheezy, mid-70s chandelier/Ethan Allen-type fixtures that were there. The new ones look very cool.

We also decided to change the walls/doors in our bedroom. We knocked a big door openning into the patio area and reconfigure the closet. I was surprised to find that new floor and wall panels are actually made from Styrofoam, sandwiched by wire mesh, covered by concrete. They say that it's stronger than 100% concrete and with only a fraction of the weight.

Before

During

After

Closet

Once the painting was completed, they moved on to the patio out back. First step was to chip all of the existing concrete off (made easier by the fact that it was mostly falling off). Then they hosed it down and hurled a coat of sloppy concrete (with some magic liquid that deters salitre, legend has it).

Another great Lupe idea was to frame the doors with bricks - it was cheap, easy, and makes the doors look a lot better.

The (nearly) finished product:

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. The truck with all of our stuff is supposed to arrive by the end of the year and we we're in a crunch to get the house as far along as we can. At the very least, we wanted to have the painting done and the dust-creating tasks mostly behind us. Mission accomplished.

We still have wiring to do, cabinets to install, doors and windows, etc. but the end-of-year crush is nearly past. It's been a lot of fun too. The workers are really nice guys. We've celebrated a couple of their birthdays with cake, beer, and tacos.

They've even let the kids do some brick work.

I've learned so many new things about how to build/restore a house here. I've also learned a lot of cultural and language things (saving for upcoming posts). All-in-all Mexico continues to be one of the best decisions that we've ever made. We are having a ball!